For some people they feel a rush or sense of pride when they hear the accompanying *bloop* sound after a feat like beating COD4 on Veteran. For others, achievements are an annoyance and the notification after earning one is barely noticed. The average 360 gamer likes them, loves to earn them, but probably won’t spend two straight days finding all 500 agility orbs in Crackdown for a lousy 50 points.
For a growing group of gamers, achievements become an obsession. An obsession that, for some, leads to cheating. Not the famous Contra Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, B, A kind of cheating, the kind that will give you 1,000 gamerscore in Perfect Dark Zero in a few seconds. There are several forms of gamescore cheating, all of which are in direct violation of the Xbox Live Terms of Use (ToU). The players who participate in this dastardly act are often referred to as “gamesavers.”
Gamesaving is unknown to many. What exactly is it? Who does it? And most commonly heard, “Why do people do it?” Why would anyone want to have 1,000 points in a game like Assassin’s Creed if they’ve never even played it? Is it for status; some sort of perceived respect from other gamers? Whatever their reasoning, there are literally thousands in the 360 community who have used gamesaves.
Some players will do whatever it takes to get ‘the edge’ over the next guy.I see it similar to the steroids issue in baseball. It forever tainted the integrity of the game and made fans question the accomplishments of the perceived ‘clean’ players. The steroid users and their falsely inflated numbers, smacked disrespect in the face of the clean ballplayers, much like the gamesave crowd does to the 360 Community and the legit achievement hunters out there.
Back on March 25th, 2008, Xbox Live’s Major Nelson made a formal announcement on his site that there was going to be “Gamerscore Correction” performed on those who Microsoft (MS) deemed as the most serious offenders of “gamesave tampering.” They were seen as the worst of the worst violators of the Xbox Live Terms of Use, by tampering with their gamerscore and achievements. Their punishment? All of their gamerscore, legit or illegitimately earned through gamesaving was reset to zero; nada, zilch—with no chance for an appeal—it was wiped out for good. They could begin to earn achievements again, by playing games the way Microsoft intended. Most of the original seven gamers who found their score reset lost over 200K gamerscore apiece and thousands of achievements. Even if 90% were earned legit, it didn’t matter. All gone.
I met one high-profile gamesaver in an Xbox forum debate over a year ago. His gamer tag is Shuckey. At that time, he was consistently found on Trixie360’s Top 25 list of most viewed gamer profiles. We naturally had a cobra/mongoose relationship because of my anti-gamesaving views. After zero contact in a year, last month I saw he’d sent me ten XBL messages. A little confused and expecting the worst, I began opening them and found instead he told me he wanted clear the air on the subject of gamerscore cheating and tell me the depth of his involvement in the gamesaving community. Although I was skeptical of his motive, I invited him to tell me whatever he thought I needed to know.
He quickly responded to me by e-mail. I was taken aback with the amount of information he gave to me on the subject, including naming names and his own personal admission to directly violating Live’s ToU. Not only is he claiming to be a gamesaver, but one of the original gamesavers who’s partially responsible for the whole process. He admitted to writing some of the saves that spread throughout that sect of the community.
Cheating has become a business, with it’s own sub-culture. Sites exist to sell gamerscore for money. There are other sites and forums where cheaters meet daily to trade saves and come up with new ways to circumvent the system MS put in place.
Shuckey, aka Marc C. shared with me that he is a 1996 Purdue graduate in Architectural Engineering, worked at GamePro Magazine for a stint, and at 3D0 and Midway as a game designer and programmer within the last ten years. He’s been married for six years, with a toddler son. Assuming that information he shared is accurate, he isn’t the booger-picking little troll I envision coming up with elaborate ways to cheat at video games.
Here are excerpts from what he told me, in his words:
So why am I telling you all this you ask? During all those years of playing and programming, I collected every video game system and at least 80% or more of each game catalog for each system. I owned a Game Genie, Game Shark, Pro Action Replay, or other such device for every system I’ve owned, including my Neo-geo Gold.I did not buy these things to collect. I used them to be able to beat games and do things you could not normally do. I am what you call a compulsive person. I do things 100% until I can no longer keep up at the same pace. I want all the cars unlocked in Gran Turismo. I want all the characters unlocked in Soul Calibur 2. I want 100% completion in Grand theft Auto 3. This is just my personality. Am I a cheater? According to the big companies like Nintendo, Sony, and Sega, yes I was, even then.
But I paid $50 dollars for a game and if the learning curve or difficulty were too high or too hard, or worse, the game was super cheap, people in general feel ripped off and did not get to fully enjoy their purchase. Same goes for 360 games. I paid $60 for the game which includes the achievements.
I got my 360 before launch but never had time to play it online due to the fact we were about to have a son and were moving from our condo to our house. But when GRAW came out, I wanted to play online. So in March 2006, I started playing on Live. I played every game that came out and became compulsive about Gamerscore. I have played with CerealKiller5 and StripClubDJ (Two of the original Major Nelson reset gamertags) since Xbox days. I became friends with StTheKing (the #1 gamerscore leader for much of the first year of the 360’s release) because of Strip. I got caught up in the whole Gamerscore group. I actually got a transfer kit because I wanted to do sports rosters without having to do them by hand. Just download a save someone else made. I had done it for every College Sports game that had come out on the PS One.
hen the Gamerscore scene got hot when an article about STtheKing, StripClubDJ, and TheGrayWolf hit. At that time, we were all Legit. Then it just got away from us. We let it consume our lives and bury the real gamers we were. Without gamesaves we were still the best…..with the saves, we just had a higher gamerscore number.
"By the time Strip hit 100k it was out of control … all those awesome gamers were reduced to just a bunch of gamerscore addicts waiting to get a fix."
Then STtheKing started dissing on others when gamesaving and trading began. It then just became a contest of who could do which game first Legit to make saves. It got ugly with Rance6 becoming #1 by paying people to do his stuff, then it became an all-out war.
Leaderboards have nothing to do with it, that’s the biggest misconception out there. Proof if it, were it not for MGC (MyGamerCard.net) nobody would know who was the highest achiever unless it was printed in a mag or online somewhere.
I was one of the original members along with CerealKiller5 , Ang R Wound, and Roofus (aka Sufoor) on the 360GS site. (This is in reference to the most notable site dedicated to gamerscore cheating. I’ve read claims to well over 10,000 registered members. All three gamertags mentioned were victim to Major’s gamerscore reset). Now I can not tell you specifics on what the Resigner is nor how it does what it does, only what it can do.
The last Fall Dashboard Update stopped 80% of all gamesaving because it required an offline, non-updated Xbox 360. But the Resigner (see full story for more information on the Resigner) changes all that, thanks to me. I know how the non-updated Xboxes were able to “resign” saves so they now became yours. You could use them no matter what. So the Resigner was thought of, developed and then implemented. It works by removing half the data that was the other persons ID from the save then infusing your ID with the save, making it yours.
I do not condone hacking games because at least with a save, someone did it legit at some point. Hacks at first were done without having dates, then they found the key to putting on dates. Now they can put any date on they want and can make a tag look 100% Legit if they took the time to do it, which I doubt they would really do.
This is just a taste of what gamesaving is, how it became what it is, and why some of us, not most of us did it to begin with. Most of us were the best players in the world and competition, just like in professional sports destroyed us all. Now people think we are just a bunch of losers who just load up a save someone gave us and get 1000 in something without having to do the game. Some do, most do not.
My take on the whole thing is this….I could care less what people do or don’t cheat….it’s their time and their choice. Me, gamesaving anything does not impede on anybody’s fun on Xbox Live. Going into a Ranked match in Gears of War and hearing a 12 year old kid say “Achievement Match, this is for achievements, if you are not going to do it, leave now”. That hurts my fun on Xbox Live. People boosting in a game or better yet kicking you out of a game because they are boosting impedes on my experience on Live in a derogatory manner.
These are some of the highlights. When Shuckey sent this to me, his original profile had over 159,000 gamerscore. It has not yet been part of Major’s reset movement although, he would certainly qualify to get the same cheater watermark as given to the others. If gamerscore had a tangible value, I could maybe understand a little better what motivates gamers to go to these kinds of extremes. As it is, it would seems a more pleasurable alternative to finding ways to cheat, would be to enjoy actually playing these games.
I often see the suggestion that MS should offer some kind of reward for gamers who earn gamerscore. Maybe something like a 1600 MS points card for every 5,000 or so gamerscore earned. On the surface, that’d be a nice incentive and would encourage some people to play through a game again to boost their score. But today, with people out there going to these kinds of levels for something currently worth nothing, imagine how far some gamers would go if you added greed to the equation…
Source: The Blue Skittle-djdsf
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