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According to Sega of Japan, Phantasy Star Online has had a few issues with cheating recently. As a result, they have released an official statement to explain the situation. Apparently, some Japanese gamers have found a way to hack the character VMU files, and basically max their characters, items, weapons, etc. The Japanese servers have been shut down several times (which would explain why Japanese players are flooding certain US servers), in order to find a way to combat the hacks. Sega does not want these hackers ruining the game for the rest of the PSO players, by "illegally changing character data".
This problem goes way beyond the usage of simple cheat devices, and Sega is busy tracking (and eliminating) the cheaters. We will keep you up to date.
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All I have to say is this doesnt worry me much. Since I started playing I rarely played with someone who wasnt from this board and all of my games have been cheat free =).
Playing as Keahi on Phantasy Star Portable 2 - US Version.
Don't believe everything you read, I'd say. I'm not sure Sega legally can ban/eliminate cheaters since there's no license you must agree to stating that you may not cheat. They'd basically be denying you a service you've paid for, even though they never told you anywhere that you may not cheat. The only time they could do this is if you did something that's actually illegal, like hacking their server. The VMU and save files don't belong to them, so there's no law broken.
i would have to disagree as here we don't pay for the use of the servers in japan they do. there fore I imaging they would have to sign some sort of thing to in order to get an ID and pass to use.
they may be breaking some sort of contract. and who's to say that they can't u dont' own the servers using it is a privilage of sorts.. there is nothing stopping sega from bringin them down and keeping them down.
What's stopping them is the advertising they've done (including on the packaging) stating that it supports online play. At least here in the US, bringing the servers down permanently or banning a user sets them up for a fat lawsuit. No server, no online play. If Japanese users had to sign a contract, that's a different story.
Besides, don't you get sick of everybody lying about cheaters getting banned, already? It's not helping.
The original statement from Sega makes it sound like whatever cheat these people were using causes actual problems with the server. This is probably illegal (DOS) and if that's the case, then they probably could get banned. Maybe hacked character data causes crashes on the server or something, who knows. Otherwise, they're SOL on this, especially if they tried to ban people in the US.
Cheating effects the quality of service for other players and can also cause problems with the PSO server.
These are definately grounds for getting banned. I wouldn't even make it to court.
Now, if honest users were accidentally identified as hackers and banned, thats a completely different story!
I totally agree...
The quality of service thing is not even an issue. I don't like the fact that people who started after I did got to level 100 in half the time (when they discovered the cheats) but hey, I bet it was fun for them, even if it's not for me. Some people like having duped items and cheats, it's more fun for them to have things instantly. The quality of the game is not something you can pin down to just the "honest" users... I'll bet at least half the people online either cheat or don't mind that people cheat, so the quality of the game for them is improved or unchanged by cheating. I've noticed a lot of people are terribly closed-minded about this... the way THEY like the game is the way it must be for everyone.
Messing with the servers is a completely different story, as this affects everyone in a bad way... and this could be grounds for being banned.
Another thing to note is that Sega is not allowed to retrieve data from you other than the serial number and access key, and the data you send voluntarily. There is no magic signal sent that says "Look at me, I'm a cheater!" so they can't figure out who's cheating and who's not unless it is a hack which affects the server, which falls into the "illegal" category. That means it's unlikely that a legitimate user can be mistaken for one of these cheaters.
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