Hackers have begun punishing regular Battlefield 3 players with the exploit

Jan 25, 2012 10:49 GMT  ·  By

It seems that the Battlefield 3 online experience on the PC has been disrupted once again, as a group of hackers has uncovered a vulnerability in the Punkbuster program, which is used to prevent cheating in the game, and has begun to ban legal players for no reason whatsoever.

Battlefield 3 was released at the end of October and, since then, has delighted millions of players across the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 platforms, largely with its multiplayer mode.

Now, PC gamers are encountering a special kind of problem when connecting to Battlefield 3 servers that use the Punkbuster program to detect and punish cheaters. A group of hackers has uncovered a vulnerability and has started bragging that they’ve banned over 150 players.

EA has become aware of this serious issue and has issued a statement in order to calm down PC players.

"We are aware that some Battlefield 3 players are experiencing connection issues with Punkbuster enabled servers. This problem is limited to a small subset of players on PC and will not impact players on PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.”

As of yet, the company is still investigating the issue, so until it comes up with a solution to the exploit, it recommends that players should avoid any sort of Punkbuster-enabled servers in order to prevent hackers from banning their accounts in an unfair manner.

"We are actively looking into the specifics of this issue and we are confident that we will have a permanent solution in place shortly. In the meantime, if a player's connectivity has been affected, we recommend that in the interim they join servers that are not running Punkbuster. There is a filter setting for this in the multiplayer server browser."

Expect an official solution to this Punkbuster exploit for Battlefield 3 on the PC to appear as soon as possible from Electronic Arts.