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So imagine this: You're a huge gamer who bought the Xbox 360 on day one. You stood in line for over 20 hours in the pouring rain, just for Microsoft's newest console. Pretty hardcore, right? It gets better. Imagine now, with me, that over the course of the past several years, you've played games on your 360 nearly every chance you got. You've racked up a huge Gamerscore, only to have it all taken away one day without ANY warning.
This is story of SlapStic reader "JackTheWhack." Jack, whose real name is Jack Barbosa, not only had a huge Gamerscore; he had more than any other person in the entire state of New Jersey: 121,250, in fact. He achieved this impressive score through renting via Gamefly for games that he was only mildly interested in, while he purchased many games that he thought could give him more lasting enjoyment. Obviously, with a score that high, he was a MASSIVE 360 fan.
Last night, while playing Mirror's Edge, Jack received an achievement that he had already gotten earlier in the day. Confused, Jack went and checked out his Gamercard, where he discovered with considerable horror that he now had a Gamerscore of 25, and that his Gamer Zone had been changed to "Cheater." He was also unable to change his Gamer Zone to anything else. This all went down with no warning from Microsoft, and not so much as a letter explaining things once they had done it. JackTheWhack had just gotten over three years of his gaming record wiped clean. There was no trial, and there was no jury; Microsoft simply assumed that he was a cheater, and took all of his Gamerpoints away from him.
This all seems very strange, especially given the fact that Jack was interviewed by Microsoft last Thursday to be featured as a "Spotlight Gamer." He was told that his interview would be up on the 360 dashboard in around two weeks. So at what point did Microsoft decide that instead of being worthy of attention, Jack was a dirty cheater that deserved punishment?
Jack Barbosa claims that he is no cheater, and he called Microsoft themselves to see if he could get things straightened out. They essentially informed Jack that he was just out of luck, saying that it was "abnormal for a person to achieve an undisclosed amount of achievements in such a short period of time." Jack even tried to find out what games or achievements on his Gamercard were in question, but they refused to comment.
There are things working for Jack to make it seem obvious that he did not cheat. For one, he didn't get the full 1,000 points on many of his games. Like many gamers, he simply gets as many achievements as he can before moving on to the next game if things start taking too long. So with a lot of games he DOES have the full 1,000 points, but more often he has closer to 500, or even as low as 5 for games that he really didn't take a liking to.
I came upon all this information about the situation through an interview that I did with Jack. In it, he mentioned that he was selling all of his 360 products on his Amazon.com storefront. I asked him if he would consider going back to his 360 if he somehow managed to get all of his Gamerpoints back, to which he responded, "I will never return to Xbox, even if a new system were to be released. I would be gone." He also went on to inform me that he will be purchasing a Playstation 3 as soon as possible and that all he wants from Microsoft is a change in their policies that will keep such a thing from ever happening to anyone else.
UPDATE
Microsoft has responded to this story, in the form of a letter that I received from Major Nelson himself. It reads:
Hey guys, I saw your story on ‘JackTheWhack’ earlier today. I wanted to let you know that we have investigated this situation and the evidence overwhelmingly supported an achievement reset. Our commitment to supporting safe, secure and satisfactory gameplay for the more than 14 million members of the Xbox LIVE community remains a top priority. Microsoft will continue to employ and bolster anti-cheating policies to counter such activity.
All the best,
Larry Hryb
Director Of Programming, Xbox Live
Gamertag: Major Nelson
UPDATE DOS
So with this whole "JackTheWhack" fiasco pretty much done by now, I have to say that I myself am on the fence about Jack's innocence. I still don't believe that he did anything worthy of losing all those points, and he probably earned a fair share of those Gamerpoints by just playing. However, he also seems like the kind of guy who would do things like set up servers for the sole purpose of getting achievements, and it could be such things that caused Microsoft to react.
All I'm saying is that we'll never know for sure whether or not JackTheWhack deserved what he got, but I'm confident that I did the right thing by posting the story in the first place. The little man ALWAYS needs to get his in a situation like this, where a massive corporation begins handing out its own brand of justice. I'm happy that I could provide that to Jack, and that's really all there is to say.
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= Adios
haha this is funny