Make Cheats, Not War

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the not-the-intended-impact dept

Online gamers who use “cheats” to beat opponents are nothing new. However, with the tremendous popularity of the new “America’s Army” video game (created by the US Army as a promotional tool), some are complaining that cheaters are threatening to bring down the whole game. Worried about how this might impact some of the best publicity they’ve gotten in years, the Army has decided to fight back against the cheaters – though, some wonder how well they’ll do. The article also profiles one cheat writer, who is quite proud of what he does. Amusingly, he gets annoyed with people who use his cheats (“I’ve sat there for hours on end, writing the thing. They’ve just downloaded it from a website.”) and has written a backdoor to disable his own cheats when he comes up against players using them.