Sledgehammer Games Promises 'Reverse Boosting' Bans in Advanced Warfare
Create a game system, people will immediately look for a way to cheat it or cheese it. That’s just the nature of the curious, lazy human animal.
Sledgehammer Games Co-Founder Michael Condrey recently wrote about exploits players have been using in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and how the game’s banning policy will address them.
Condrey singled out as an example “reverse boosting.” Reverse boosting is not griefing, exactly, as it involves players intentionally killing themselves to crater their stats and get matched with lower-skilled players they can then easily bully and push around.
But it does ruin a match if you end up with a reverse booster on your team.
“No one wants to lose an objective based match by effectively being outnumbered while their teammate shoots grenades into their own forehead 100 times in the corner. It’s not right, and it hurts you and your team’s online experience. Call of Duty is both social and competitive, and we respect and honor that. Part of the competition that is core to our values is that players do not adversely degrade their team’s ability to compete fairly,” Condrey said.
With that in mind, he said, reverse boosters can expect to be subject to bans, along with other players who do things that make the game suck.
“We have a low tolerance approach to people who ruin the experience for others through cheating, boosting, reverse boosting or being caught with toxic emblems in game. We don’t like seeing any of these happen, and we’re pushing to eliminate these behaviors from the game,” Condrey said.