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Bungie Wields the Banhammer
Gamespot reports that an update to Halo 2 via Xbox live has dropped the hammer on cheaters who have been warned in previous weeks to cease their malicious ways. From the article: "These undefeatable foes aren't some new alien species that have invaded the ruckus created by Bungie. These are the work of hackers and modders, gamers who spend time improving their stats with cheats at the expense of others. As with any high-profile title, cheaters will run rampant in an effort to 'pwn n00bs' and generally frustrate those who play fairly. Bungie has not taken kindly to these folk."
Halo for PC isn't that bad though. Since its fairly easy to run a modded map, the people that like to do weird stuff play those maps. Regular people play the other maps.
The ones that get out of line can usually be taken care of with a little social engineering. If they're relatively new to the game, having somebody tell them to "press Alt F4 for the mod list" sometimes works. Other times you can just annoy them until they leave. For example, follow them around and keep walking in front of them. This usually has the effect of making them TK you. 6 of those and you're banned from the server.
So there are ways of dealing with jerks online, you just have to know how to handle yourself most importantly.
Has anyone gotten banned for having non-Halo 2 mods on their Xbox, e.g., disablable modchips, software mods, cheats for other games, installed Linux? I think I have the font exploit somewhere (not that it worked for me) and I know I have the "Emergency Linux" MechAssault hack - will Bungie bother me about these, or does it only look for Halo 2 hacks?