In the survival MMO H1Z1 , studio president John Smedley is making headlines again: Banned hackers must publicly apologize if they want to play again.
The studio “Daybreak Gaming Company”, formerly SOE, doesn’t need advertising or a marketing department. The boss takes care of the press, hype, and excitement himself. With bold words, Everquest co-creator and current studio president John Smedley declared war on the hackers and cheaters plaguing the shooter H1Z1: They wanted to take nuclear action against these scumbags, it was said at the beginning. Since then he has regularly announced his successes with pleasure to reassure fans and show: We care. This is necessary as H1Z1 is considered infested with cheaters.
In the announcements, Smedley has sometimes gone a bit too far in the past, as he mentioned a hacker site in one post. He suggested players check out how much they complained about the harsh measures of H1Z1. The hacker forum was pleased with such attention: all this new clientele. Smedley later deleted that part from his post to fans. This time, Smedley seems to stretch the bow a little further.
If you want to play, you must be humiliated
After the last, particularly large ban wave against wall hackers, many reached out to him, apologized, begged, and pleaded for forgiveness. They wanted to be allowed to play again; they would never do it again. Smedley’s idea: “The minimum for us to consider this is that a public apology comes via YouTube.”
If you want us to even consider your apology a public YouTube apology is necessary. No personal information please. Email me the link
— John Smedley (@j_smedley) May 20, 2015
A few took up the offer: they recorded apology videos with their face cam, trying to justify their actions with “everyone does it.” Smedley prominently linked the apologies on his Twitter channel. When it became known that the first would be pardoned, the community reacted: “This is not acceptable. We don’t want cheaters anymore. They should stay away.”
Smedley’s response: “We have unbanned 3 out of 20,000. And with one, we will probably revert it because they set their video to private.”
The virtual pillory
Why did he do that? Because it probably doesn’t please everyone to be confronted with the hate and frustration of H1Z1 players under the video. They are not gentle at all. Jokes about the character of the cheater, personal insults, or anything else are common. Alongside some scattered comments that it takes guts to apologize this way, players are sometimes wished cancer or a violent death. The cheater must show their face, while the insulting crowd remains anonymous. One of the videos has already garnered 47,000 clicks. The creator has since disabled the comments. For good reason: they were less about his actions and more about his appearance.
Five players emerged and were pardoned. That’s it. The offer has now expired. According to Smedley, the controversial action was mainly about bringing more attention to “the cheating issue.”
ok. that’s it. 5 people. no more. some think that’s 5 too many, but I’ll trade the attention on the subject of cheating for that any day.
— John Smedley (@j_smedley) May 20, 2015
Furthermore, Smedley states in a post on Reddit that the war against cheaters has been going on for so long and is quite hopeless. Banned players create a new Steam account, use hacks to bypass the hardware ban and just continue. That is the ugly reality, but it is reality. It was time to try something new.
Mein MMO says: Now one could say Smedley is just providing the pillory. He forces no one to stand before it. And he doesn’t give rotten fruits to the angry crowd. But at least Smedley has booked the marketplace, set up the pillory, and summoned the angry mob. That the H1Z1 community would react to such apology videos harshly, mercilessly, and more than a bit hurtfully was predictable.
