Do you like people who cheat in online games? Daybreak president John Smedley does not. After 24,837 H1Z1 accounts were banned for cheating (7,000 of them esp hackers banned just in the in the last few days), Smedley took to Twitter to discuss exactly what he thinks about cheaters. In his own words: “You think we don’t know these cockroaches? We do. We are going to be relentless and public. Screw not provoking them.”
Smedley went on an extended rant about cheaters and the sites that cater to cheating programs last night and this morning, declaring that cheaters who truly want to apologize should make a public apology video and send it to him. “If we ban 30k and unban 20 for making videos that are seen by a lot of people, and they apologize, I’ll take it,” he wrote. But you’d better really mean it! “Please address your apology to fellow players, not us,” he stated. “Although you hurt our business this is about them not us.” He also announced a wipe coming on Thursday in order to “get rid of the banned people’s stuff” and “purge their existence.”
Smed’s retweeting the apology videos; we’ve embedded the first few below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtYxFKDfN48
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtk7OZZ9nNY&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyUJGG9H-po&feature=youtu.be
I’ll give you my perspective. So far we’ve unbanned 3 people out of 30k we’ve now banned. One of which is probably about to get re-banned for taking his video private.
I want to make sure it’s clear there are consequences for cheating. You don’t just get to make a video and get unbanned. This is a very limited time thing to try and raise awareness of what’s actually going on. You may say “hey there clearly aren’t consequences if you are unbanning people”. Let’s get back to the part where I said we’ve unbanned 3 people. If these videos go far and wide and it elevates the importance of getting rid of the cheaters in PC gaming, I feel it’s an excellent trade.
Why?
Here’s why. These guys could easily go right back in, make a new steam account.. use an HWID hack and play anyways. Yes, that’s the reality. It’s ugly, but there it is. And it’s true for every single PC game out there. Even the ones that say it isn’t.
So is this the right move? I don’t know. But doing the same thing we have been doing is a tough fight and I’d like to at least try something different.
Video submissions end at Noon PST today anyways. Maybe by then it will be 4 or 5.
Smed
