15,000 HALO: REACH Players Have Credits Reset for Cheating

Bungie has punished cheaters who have been caught manipulating the HALO: REACH gameplay system; credit resets and temporary bans have been issued to over 15,000 cheaters.

Developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 console, HALO: REACH has easily become one of the most popular games of the year; even though it only released last month. Unfortunately, with massive popularity comes the inevitable need for some players to cheat. This time around, though, Bungie isn't taking the gameplay manipulation lightly. The developer has issued the following statement, which should bring a bit of clarity to those users who have mysteriously lost their credit stockpile:

Good evening,

We are in the process of applying credit resets to approximately 15,000 users who we have identified as the most egregious Challenge Reset abusers.

A one day credit earning ban has also been applied, mostly to ensure that recipients receive an in-game notification of the action taken.

As with any such measure, we have taken the time to carefully select our criteria to eliminate false positives.

A more comprehensive pass will be occuring in the coming week as our automated Banhammer mechanisms grow accurate enough to satisfy our high bar for burden of proof. If you are thinking about getting an easy 50k credits by using this exploit, I would strongly advise you to reconsider.

The company goes on to clarify that "No bans were handed out for..playing too much Gruntpocalypse [or] using the target locator too much."

HALO: REACH sold over $200 million worth of units on it's release date alone. How was it possible for Bungie to catch this many credit thieves red-handed? Further information from the company sheds light on the predicament, and proves they won't be fooled by false claims of innocence:

Specifically, we targeted an exploit that allowed players to complete a Challenge 20+ times via itentional network manipulation (i.e., disconnects.)

Spot checks have revealed the telltale signature of this behavior on every denier so far, so don't be fooled by the protests of innocence. We aren't.