H1Z1 dev unbanning cheaters who publicly apologise on YouTube
"I want to make sure it's clear there are consequences for cheating."
H1Z1 developer Daybreak Game Company's president John Smedley has found an interesting approach to the cheating problem. Over the last few days the developer has banned somewhere in the neighborhood of 25K players for cheating, leading many pleading to be reinstated. Smedley has agreed to let certain reformed cheaters back in the game under one condition: They publicly apologise on YouTube.
Further rules: The apologies have to be listed as public and not marked private. Smedley also said the apologies should be addressed to fellow players rather than the developer. "Although you hurt our business this is about them not us," the developer tweeted.
Right now Smedley has three H1Z1 cheater apologies on his Twitter, should you want to check out his own brand of public humiliation-based justice.
"So far we've unbanned three people out of 30k we've now banned. One of which is probably about to get re-banned for taking his video private," Smedley added on Reddit.
"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 three 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."
Smedley noted that this YouTuber apology offer will expire at noon PST, by which point he expect about four or five folks will get reinstated.