Frankie has posted a news item about the mass (temporary) banning of “boosters” from playing Halo 2 on XBox Live.
“Yesterday several thousand players were banned, all people who were found to have played a significant number of games with known reported modders. ”
Frankie describes the phenomenon of “boosting”:
“Since the banhammer came down hard on people using modified content on Xbox Live, a new trend has emerged – “Boosting” with modders. People are using free trial accounts and using mods to boost their friends or their main accounts as much as they can until they eventually get banned.”
My only concern with this is that in matchmaking, you don’t necessarily know who is modding or not before the game begins. You may end up playing a series of games with/against modders, without your knowledge. Mind you, I’m sure the query Bungie can run is sophisticated enough to track down the real culprits, and it sounds to me that they are probably arranged games rather than matchmaking games. Overall, it’s good to see Bungie continuing to take a hard stance on all forms of cheating in Halo 2.