H1Z1 Developer Offers Forgiveness to Cheaters who Apologize over Youtube

Cheating in PC Games: It’s bad, don’t do it.

Okay, that’s a pretty vague statement, and when it comes down to it, pretty hard to really quantify. For example, are some mods ‘cheats’? Can you cheat in a single-player game? What about botting, or using a script to take some of the tedium out of grinding in a MMORPG? As PC Gaming grows more prevalent and interest in gaming expands, people are going to continue to modify their games and alter the core content, so where do we draw the line to call something a cheat?

All of these questions, and more, will not be answered today, but I think we can agree: at least as far as multiplayer games where cheats negatively impact your fellow players or give you an undue advantage, those are pretty straightforward.

Which was why John Smedley, CEO of Daybreak Games Studios, must have felt pretty good when his company did a great sweep of H1Z1’s player base (much like WoW earlier) and banned an impressive 30,000 cheaters from their servers. Specifically, ‘ESP’ cheats, which gave users information on other players—like health and position—that’s supposed to be secret.

Well, he’s not without mercy, and Mr. Smedley decided to extend the olive branch to the banned cheaters: and on twitter earlier today, wrote the following—

“Dear Cheaters who got banned. Many of you are emailing me, apologizing and admitting it. Thank you. However... You're doing it wrong. If you want us to even consider your apology a public YouTube apology is necessary. No personal information please. Email me the link. And I will Tweet it.”

A public apology to get yourself un-banned? Interesting. The offer was limited, however, and ends later today (it’s probably over, by the time you read this) but already four people (of the 30,000 banned) have decided to take him up on his offer. But why? According to a reddit post he later put up…

“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 3 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.”

I can get behind that line of reasoning easily enough, but, Reddit was quick to point out there’s at least a little hypocrisy in his logic, linking to a particular video of our very own John Smedley saying “Once a cheater, always a cheater”.



Which, to be fair, doesn’t exactly invalidate his above point, but it does contradict the notion of forgiveness that’s laced within the message--particularly 2:30 in with another developer clearly stating "no second chances".  Plus: this video is just... mean-spirited.  It feels as if they're more interested in mocking hackers than forgiving them, which shines this whole offer in a rather vicious light. 

Still, it happened. Even if only four people wind up taking him up on it, that’s still three more cases against cheating on the internet. Here’s hoping it accomplishes something.