14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has said that it is preparing to take action against all those players who have used illegal means to gain those hard to get Achievements that can make a gamer’s profile look good.
The company is saying that the Gamer Score of those who have cheated will be reset and that all those “glitching” or violating the Terms of Use will be unable to go back and re-unlock any of the Achievements on which they were judged to have cheated on. The measure seems balanced and fair on the account that Microsoft should make sure that those targeted are indeed cheaters.
Stephen Toulouse, aka Stepto, who is one of the team members of Xbox Live charged with watching out for cheaters, said, on his blog that Microsoft would "be hitting the most egregious offenders first while we investigate the full set of people who have done it."
Stepto added that "We tend to issue resets for a very clear set of actions that users take to get achievements without even playing the game. So those of you boosters, if you're not glitching or doing other things in violation of the Terms of Use, don't worry. Also to be clear, this isn't any type of bug or issue caused by Gears of War 2, it's just people cheating their profiles to toggle a specific achievement they didn't actually earn."
Microsoft is very keen on keeping the playing field for those who engage on multiplayer using the Xbox 360 as clear as possible. After all, the whole idea of Achievements and Game Scores is to allow players to show each other their accomplishments and special gaming moments, creating a healthy sense of competition and rivalry.
Tainting the competition is one of the things that could put some people off from using Xbox Live, which is a significant source of revenue for the gaming division of Microsoft.