Sony has been the number one target for hacking lately and I'm sure they're scrambling like headless chickens to rectify the matter. Jeff Buckland of Atomicgamer.com recently published an article addressing the severity of PS3's situation, including the legal ramifications. Needless to say Sony is in deep electronic fodder and isn't any closer to solving it's predicament. This infiltration has the potential to affect many games and has already been hard at work exploiting the current king of FPS: Call of Duty. Infinity Ward has released a statement admitting to the slew of hacks seen in Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty 4, but clarifies that nothing can be done until Sony cleans up it's mess first.
Infinity Ward staff member Fourzerotwo published a statement on the site's forums a few days ago, explaining the plethora of cheats found in MW2 and COD4 and how Sony's security issues affect the remedy process. While IW isn't wiping it's hands from the debacle, they are sending a clear message that the blame tips to one side more than the other.
Fourzerotwo:
"Sony has recently acknowledged a breach in security on the PS3 which resulted in games to become exposed to exploits and hacks. Modern Warfare 2 is no exception to this security exploit and we understand that some of you have experienced problems with stats and other issues associated with this.
Games rely on the security of the encryption on the platforms they're played on, therefore; updates to the game through patches will not resolve this problem, unless the security exploit itself is resolved on the platform. Regretfully, Call of Duty games are receiving the bulk of the hacker's attention, due to its high player counts and popularity. However, the number of legitimate players severely outweighs the bad apples.
If you are concerned about playing with players who are hacking, I encourage you to play exclusively with friends by utilizing the party or private match options in Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty 4 to avoid such players as much as possible until this issue is resolved by Sony.
At this time, we do not have the ability to restore or adjust individual stats.
Let me assure you, while we are very reliant on Sony updating their firmware and security to address the core problem of this issue. We are looking at EVERY option available to us to help any user affected.
This only applies to legacy games such as Call of Duty 4 and Modern Warfare 2. In the future we plan to adjust our approach to not rely solely on platform security and reduce the ability for this to happen in our games, as has already been displayed by the work Treyarch has done on Call of Duty: Black Ops to prevent similar measures."
One thing is clear, Sony is not even close to coming out of the woods yet; and more importantly neither are the players. As suggested, right now your best defense is to set up party games with your friends via matchmaking. At least IW has learned it's lesson and will take appropriate action in the future to ensure an issue of this magnitude doesn't happen again. Unfortunately I'm afraid that PS3 owners, COD4 and MW2 fans in particular, will have to wait for SCEA to iron out the kinks. Anyone know where to purchase bulldozer sized irons?
