Xbox Live Gamerscore Corrections

For any of you that have been cheating, or more commonly known as “game-saving”, for gamerscore on Xbox Live, your days of having a high gamerscore are limited, at least that is what the Director of Programming for Xbox Live, Larry Hryb has said in a few of his recent blog posts.



Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, explains in a blog post what his team is doing to the accounts of the most serious offenders:

• Resetting the entire Gamerscore for an account to zero
• The account will be unable to regain all previously obtained achievements and Gamerscore, however, the players will have the ability to gain future Achievements by earning them fairly, like the majority of the Xbox LIVE community does.
• The account will be clearly labeled as a cheater for the community to view on xbox.com, see below for a screenshot. In dash, the personal view of the gamercard will be labeled too.

The vast majority of Xbox LIVE members play games legitimately to earn Achievements and are unaffected by this. Anyone who plays inside the actual game to get Achievements does not fall into the category we are taking action on.

Xbox.com has a Q&A on the topic, answering some questions, including:

Under what circumstances does LIVE correct a specific gamerscore? Specific and automated criteria are used to determine if a player has earned achievements by using tools that circumvent the game or avoid game play entirely. A player who meets these criteria has their gamerscore corrected. How does LIVE know a player has been cheating on their gamerscore versus another player? We look for abnormal achievement and gamerscore activity using criteria that identifies users who have used external means to earn achievements without really playing the game. Users who play games legitimately to earn an achievements are unaffected by this.

Back in October Larry and the XBox team informed users that they will no longer be tolerating account sharing and Gamesave tampering, stating:

"If you decide to employ some nefarious techniques to artificially increase your Gamerscore or obtain achievements by manipulating the Xbox software without playing the game, bad things will happen. What type of bad things? For one thing we may remove the entire Gamerscore for an account that contains manipulated gamerscore. Let me be more clear: If you use tampered gamesaves to boost your Achievements and Gamerscore, you may sign in to Xbox LIVE one day and discover that we have removed your Gamerscore. Once we do that, you will never be able to re-earn those achievements on that account. Even worse, you might have your account and/or console banned from Xbox Live."