As I sat at my desk today minding my own business, I got an instant message from my buddy, and BSR web-designer-guy-thingy, Chris that read, “DUUDE. Bungie did a mass credit reset on idlers. :)”
Hell. Yes.
If you aren’t familiar with the Xbox game Halo: Reach is the fourth installment of the wildly popular Halo series on the Xbox console. In this game as you play through the single-player campaign and battle other players online you earn “Credits” for each match you play. As you earn these credits you “rank up” to higher ranks, unlocking new armor pieces to pimp out your Spartan along the way. Since the release of this game there has been a bit of a problem with “AFK” (Away From Keyboard) players – players who just turn on the game, enter the lobby for online multiplayer matches, and walk away. The game will continue to keep putting them into matches despite the fact that they are doing nothing, and they will be earning credits along the way. Essentially, they are being rewarded to doing nothing but turning their Xbox on and letting it sit there for hours on end, hitting the maximum 60,000 credits you can earn in a single day.
As someone who plays Halo: Reach 3-12 hours per week with Kill-tacular-tron, his brother, and Chris, this can be a bit frustrating. Part of the appeal of the game is to play it and earn your rank as you progress through the game and earn new armor pieces. Sure, this is a small part of the appeal – most of it is just getting online with your friends and having fun trying to destroy the other team of n00bs – but it’s a fun and rewarding way to measure your progression and time spent in the game. These people who “AFK” ruin the experience of the game for those unfortunate enough to be stuck with a team mate who just stands there as a sitting target for the other team, or is of no help in a game of Firefight.
Bungie implemented a Credit Reset and a two-week ban on earning any more credits for every person they deemed to be a chronic “AFK”-er. Meaning the rank that they have spent hours obtaining and then in turn bragging about has been set back to the beginning, their credits are now at a zero balance, and they can’t even start earning more credits for two weeks. Justice. Has. Been. Served.
As soon as I heard this news I immediately rushed over to the official Halo: Reach forums for all the bitching and moaning goodness that was surely there. And it was. You’d be hard-pressed to find a forum for a video game so full of people leaving long-winded explanations as to why this game “sucks” and why they won’t play it any more – despite the fact it apparently took them a few hundred hours of play time to come to this conclusion. Sure enough, with this Credit Reset and temporary credit ban comes a bevvy of crying about how unfair it is even though Bungie has been warning the community this was coming for literally several months now. This credit reset and temporary credit ban is not a one time thing either. Going forward Bungie and/or 343 Studios will be monitoring for “AFK” players and should you fall into that category the same fate will befall you.
I think this is a great move by Bungie, and I’m sure most who play Halo: Reach will agree. The punishment is harsh, letting this group of cheaters know there are consequences for trying to cheat the ranking system, and hopefully the rest of the Halo community who actually play the game will experience far less online matches in which one player or more are non-playing “AFK”-ers.