Infinity Ward blames MW2 hacks on PS3
Future games won't rely on console security.
Frustrated by Modern Warfare 2 hacks? Infinity Ward feels your pain. But don't blame the developer. Blame Sony and the PlayStation 3's compromised security.
Infinity Ward's creative strategist Robert Bowling, aka fourzerotwo, took to the official Infinity Ward forum to discuss the PS3's recent troubles.
"Sony has recently acknowledged a breach in security on the PS3 which resulted in games to become exposed to exploits and hacks," Bowling said. "Modern Warfare 2 is no exception to this security exploit and we understand that some of you have experienced problems with stats and other issues associated with this."
Apparently PS3 Modern Warfare 2 players are susceptible to hacks that affect their statistics and, in some cases, delete their progress. One gamer, ktell, described the problem on the Infinity Ward forum.
"This issue is really out of hand. I can't log on without getting deranked, vulgar messages across the status bar on the bottom, etc. etc. Infinity Ward should be policing the lobbies looking for exploiters and banning them. It may be a Sony glitch (although the hacked files are related to MW2's game data), but Infinity Ward can at least patrol their own games.
"I mean seriously - I spent 27 days playing that game, unlocking, ranking up etc. Now all my challenges, perks, guns and kill streaks are gone? And my KD is like 10 million to one now?
"Un-f'ing real. You should at least be able to restore my account to where it was. What's up with that?
"This is horrible, just horrible."
According to Bowling, Infinity Ward is powerless in the matter.
"Games rely on the security of the encryption on the platforms they're played on, therefore; updates to the game through patches will not resolve this problem, unless the security exploit itself is resolved on the platform.
"Regretfully, Call of Duty games are receiving the bulk of the hacker's attention, due to its high player counts and popularity. However, the number of legitimate players severely outweighs the bad apples."
Bowling's advice: only play with friends.
"If you are concerned about playing with players who are hacking, I encourage you to play exclusively with friends by utilizing the party or private match options in Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty 4 to avoid such players as much as possible until this issue is resolved by Sony.
"At this time, we do not have the ability to restore or adjust individual stats."
Looking to the future, Bowling promised gamers that Infinity Ward will not rely on platform holders to stop hackers from ruining its future projects.
"Let me assure you, while we are very reliant on Sony updating their firmware and security to address the core problem of this issue, we are looking at every option available to us to help any user affected.
"This only applies to legacy games such as Call of Duty 4 and Modern Warfare 2. In the future we plan to adjust our approach to not rely solely on platform security and reduce the ability for this to happen in our games, as has already been displayed by the work Treyarch has done on Call of Duty: Black Ops to prevent similar measures."
Eurogamer has asked Sony for comment.