image: thankyoutc0

It has taken a long while, but it seems the master plan of netCoders has finally culminated to its ultimate destination in where it will prove that PunkBuster is a faulty product. And for the first time, I see some justification for their actions, even a small sense of thankfulness is soaring though my minds. Seriously!

Why?
As an admin for a long time, I have seen how cheat makers have advanced on Punkbuster. In corporate terms, the cheat makers have innovated much harder, based on their sheer determination to prove a point. They can beat the system.

With many hackers in the world, it has not been about hurting the population. In fact, hacker's first drive is to the world that they can control a system, which is trusted blindly by an entire population to safeguard "its world". It is that sheer challenge of being better than another software developer.

In essence, Punkbuster has been providing us with an outdated product that is barely updated or innovated in order to be that one step ahead they were 4-6 years ago. Indirectly, we are paying for their services. When we buy the game, a portion of that money is used to pay Even Balance for their service, which they have offered to game developers/publishers as its anti cheat program. The game developers buy a service contract for a certain duration of a few years, in which Even Balance is obliged to keeping this game "clean" for that period.

As you have seen with ET and RtCW, the amount of PunkBuster updates have seriously diminished over time, which meant that the game developer/publisher did not renew its service contract with EvenBalance that this old game was being kept cheat-free.

We have never complained about this service. While we have seen PunkBuster losing the battle against cheat makers for years in a row now, we have barely complained for the fact that we get no value for our money.

Normally, if you buy a faulty mp3 player, you go back to its store to ask for a refund or a replacement. For some reason, we have accepted the fact that PunkBuster simply cannot cope with the developments of the cheat makers.
However, is that true? Would it really be impossible to be that step ahead of cheat makers/hackers, even if that would be only temporary? More importantly, do we as paying customers really accept being offered such a shitty service?

In effect, they are making people aware of what is going on. It might put this issue on bigger agenda's rather than just some anti-cheat admins.
In effect, they might be at the forefront of waking up the gaming world that Punkbuster is doing a crap job while cashing in on our money.

This is where netCoders have come in and perhaps some small degree of props is owed to them.
Whatever happens from now on and it might get interesting tomorrow, it might also have a positive effect helping every gaming community in the long run.

Some people will say this is complete bullshit and nC are still trying to kill ET. Just bare with me for four more paragraphs.

Continuing in a corporate context, although nC has been shouting it would try to kill ET, it surely can never have been their true intentions. The primary satisfaction of a cheat maker is the sole challenge of 'beating the system', cracking a code and I doubt that it is not any different over at nC.

However, a very close second has become the money they have been earning in selling their cheats. I think that Pansemuckl and his friends perfectly realize that if it would kill ET or any other Punkbuster game for that matter, it would kill its market. It's entire economic system of revenues will crumble to the ground leaving them with the sole thought that they killed their source of income. They might have succeeded in cracking a program or code, but meanwhile they have also killed the entire catch-and-mouse game of trying to crack the PB updates and code, add new features and so on.

The nC have called it a 'holy war' and although the term 'holy' might be over exaggerated, its attacks can be justified to a certain degree.
I bet that nC feels that it can do anything with PunkBuster as it pleases. Just with any other hacker, once they have reached that point, their urge to win the challenge has vaporized. The only thing then left is to claim the victory, hopefully triggering a new cycle of challenges.

By claiming this victory, game developers, publishers and gamers will recognize the real failure of PunkBuster. More optimistically, Punkbuster might be pressured by its clients such as Infinityward for CoD4, id Software for Quake 4 and SplashDamage for ET:QW to put more effort in safeguarding their games. Because, if this continues, the game developers will end up being hurt furthermore when gamers quit playing its game, losing the loyalty gamers have to for example the ET or CoD sequels.

And when PunkBuster will start innovating its anti-cheat program again, then the key challenge for cheat makers is back...trying to crack the code once again. Then...the race is back on.
We will have a better functioning anti-cheat system and the game might be significantly cleaner in the competitive segment of the game and nC have their new challenges.

Time will tell, if we owe them a little bit of props...

Ow btw as a final statement: We don't need them. In fact, we don't even want them. But the best thing is, they need us, both clean players and cheaters...Just think about it for a minute and you will know this is true. If you don't understand why, just pm me ;)