Over the past week, a ton of innocent Battlefield 3 gamers have been wrongly banned from the game, the result of a hack movement protesting the use of (ahem) anti-cheat software.
Of interest in the wake of the bans is who, or what, is to blame for the security lapse which allowed them to take place. There are two parties involved, one the makers of Punkbuster software, the other a volunteer service called GGC-Stream.
Who are both pointing the finger at each other.
Tony Ray, the founder of Even Balance (the company behind cheat detection software Punkbuster), says itās because GGC was attacked. āIf a 3rd party admin group is not careful about who they let join, then they are open to attacks like this. Other 3rd party admin groups have had similar attacks over the years, all of these stop when they start being careful with who they let join their membership.ā
GGC, though, say itās Even Balanceās fault. In a statement issued on the groupās site, they say āWe do ask ourselves where the security hole at GGC is that some people are talking about now. Itās a fact, that the problem is not GGC-Stream, but Punkbuster itself and Evenbalance is aware of that for years now.ā
While Even Balance tells Kotaku it is catching and banning members of the group claiming responsibility for the attacks, you can bet those unaffected must be laughing their asses off at the confusion/blame game.
