Ubisoft Considers Punishing Players Who Exploited A Game Glitch

Ubisoft is looking into a punishment for players who exploited a game glitch in their recent title Tom Clancy’s The Division. The company released an update this week that included a new mission called, “Falcon Lost” for the Incursions portion of the game. Incursions are 4-player missions meant for high-level players. The missions are supposed to be challenging, but this one is extremely punishing.

According to Hardcore Gamer, “it’s so difficult that they [the developers] can’t even beat [it].

Within a couple of days of the update, players were able to find a way to beat the level that involved using the mobile cover skill.

Ubisoft designed the ability as a way to take cover when there is nothing else to hide behind. However, players discovered that using the ability against the wall allows the player to glitch through the wall. In the Falcon Lost level, going through the door of the starting area is what triggers the enemies to begin targeting the players. By going through the wall, the targeting event never occurs, and the players can waltz through the area while being completely ignored. All that is left to win the level is to blow up an APC, which is a breeze since even attacking the APC will not trigger the enemies to start aiming.

Ubisoft views this as cheating and asserts that it is against its code of conduct. It is looking into a punishment for players who used this glitch because the rewards from the mission are some of the best in the game. The company sees this as not fair to players that did not use the exploit.

Ubisoft was not forthcoming with what the punishment would be only saying that it was “looking into what can be done in terms of punishment for those who have exploited [the glitch],” reported Destructoid.

Punishing cheaters in multiplayer online games is nothing new. In fact, many developers have created very creative ways to punish cheating players. A rather funny and fitting example would be in the game Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. According to Cracked, this game ranks players by tracking their wins and losses. So players figured that if they were about to lose, they could just disconnect or reset to save their undefeated ranking. However, Capcom had already thought of this, so in addition to tracking a player’s wins and losses, they also kept track of their disconnects. If their disconnects started looking suspicious, those players were sent to a special server. This server contained only players who were known to disconnect when close to losing. The punishment truly fit the crime. Players on that server could never win because they were playing against other players who would quit before they could be defeated.

Ubisoft does not appear to be that creative. The company has already indicated that it will start handing out three-day bans for players caught cheating and moving to permanent bans for repeat offenders. However, this particular instance is different in that it is not a situation where players are actively hacking the game. In this case, players are merely using a bug that was missed by developers and testers, and this is what has many players in an uproar over Ubisoft’s announcement of punishment.

https://www.facebook.com/AssieWood/posts/965911736863616

The consensus among the angry players is that Ubisoft is trying to punish players for using a bug they, the developers, missed. They feel players should not be punished since it was they company’s fault that the glitch existed in the first place.

However, others are not disappointed that Ubisoft is taking action against the cheating players. Danny Bartsch expressed on Facebook that this was “good news.”

https://www.facebook.com/danny.bartsch/posts/10154049309243895

Danny feels that “when you have a ton of people getting geared through glitches, that is cheating, its [sic] no different than downloading a cheat from a website.”

Bartsch was not without negative comment on the game, however, calling The Division “trash” and expressing how the developers should be “embarrassed they failed so miserably.”

What Danny seemed to be referring to was that Ubisoft released the game with some major flaws. Forbes published an article with the headline “10 Fixes ‘The Division’ Needs Immediately.”

The article claims that there are “some major, structural problems with the game, or issues with gunplay, skill use, loot and so on.”

Despite all the clamor, Ubisoft is not likely to do anything harsh to the players that used the exploit.

Destructiod states, “players can probably expect nothing much more strict than a slap on the wrist.”

This assumption is reasonable. After all, Ubisoft would not want to alienate players this early in the game. The Division was only released last month. Reports indicate that developers have already issued a Hotfix for the bug. Ubisoft is expected to make an announcement on their punishment decision soon.

[Image via Ubisoft]