This week, Daybreak Game Company President John Smedley announced via Twitter that the company had just banned nearly 25,000 cheaters from its popular zombie survival game H1Z1, but booted players may get a second chance at the game if they are willing to embarrass themselves on video.
Smedley revealed that 24,837 players had been banned for cheating, and he encouraged players to continue using a cheat site called TMCheats so that more could be caught and banned.
When questioned about why he would encourage players to use TMCheats, he responded, “You don’t think we know these cockroaches? We do. We are going to be relentless and public. Screw not provoking them.” He added, “As a proud PC gamer that site and others like it disgust me and we collectively need to put them out of business.”
Say you’re sorry
Despite Smedley’s not so subtle disdain for cheaters and the services who support them, he did offer a way for players to be unbanned.
“Dear Cheaters who got banned. Many of you are emailing me, apologizing and admitting it. Thank you. However.. You’re doing it wrong,” Smedley said in a multi-part tweet. “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.”
He continued, “Please be sure not to reveal any info. That’s important. Not trying to do anything other than highlight a serious issue.”
Daybreak is the latest in a string of game companies that have handed out bans to players who use cheats. Last week, Blizzard Entertainment reportedly banned over 100,000 World of Warcraft players for using bots. If that number is accurate, those bans represent roughly 1.4 percent of the game’s entire population.
Daybreak is also not the first studio to take pleasure in embarrassing its cheaters. Earlier this month, a member of the Guild Wars 2 staff publicly shamed a known hacker by stripping the equipment off of his character and forcing him to leap to his death. The hacker’s account was then permanently banned.
Image credit: H1Z1 | Daybreak Game Company LLC