Anybody else remember the World Rankings?
To be frank, cheating sucks, and with the rise in popularity of leaderboards thanks to their mandatory status on Xbox Live Arcade, cheating has become a big problem. Microsoft prides itself on being an environment free of cheating, hacking, or any other sort of malicious type of gameplay. It starts with being temporarily banned, and repeat offenders will eventually discover that their entire Xbox Live account may be disabled indefinitely. The system, however, is not perfect, and one gets the impression that it relies on whether or not the publisher of a specific game wants to punish those who would willingly break the game. Such is the case with last week’s Xbox Live Arcade release of Sonic Adventure.
The Dreamcast marked a major push to bring online multiplayer in to the living room, and it was kicked off with Sonic Adventure’s “World Ranking” system. The World Rankings were an early stab at internet-enabled leaderboards, and for a while, Sega policed the World Rankings to stomp out cheaters. Regardless, you would constantly hear crazy stories back then – about special Dreamcast controllers with non-standard analog sticks that allowed players to complete levels faster than those using the default Dreamcast gamepad. While it’s easy to identify a cheater who completes Emerald Coast in under ten seconds, it’s a little harder to pick out who’s exploiting the game to gain an extra second or two over the competition.
A week in, none of that tight control seems to be present in Sonic Adventure XBLA’s leaderboards, which has allowed cheaters to run wild. It’s commonplace to see the #1 spot held by somebody who inexplicably completed a level in an impossible less-than-zero minutes, with a score totaling in the millions. Though it started with only a couple of levels being effected, today it plagues the leaderboards for every single level that supports them:
Other Sonic games are similarly effected. Looking up leaderboard statistics for Sonic Rush Adventure on the Nintendo DS will reveal numerous people who can magically complete every level in the game in zero seconds, and to date, Sega has done little in the way of preventing these people from submitting bogus time trial data – painting a grim future for the leaderboards of Sonic Adventure. Even Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, while also harmed by players exploiting collision detection glitches to reach the top spots, never really punished cheaters – but Sumo Digital did work to remove their times from the leaderboards.
Sonic Adventure 2 was slated to see a new implementation of the World Rankings system, this time with a login system to allow members of Sega and Sonic Team a better method to track and ban cheaters. It was, however, cut due to time constraints. The natural evolution of a system like that would be Xbox Live, which ties all of your gaming activity to a single username. This should theoretically allow Sega to restore the sanctity of Sonic Adventure’s leaderboards – but only if they choose to do so. With so much else in the Xbox Live Arcade port of Sonic Adventure feeling a little sloppy, will Sega’s treatment of its leaderboards follow suit?
What do you think? Do you think cheaters should be dealt with and removed from the Sonic Adventure XBLA leaderboards? Does the PSN release of Sonic Adventure even have leaderboards, and if it does, are these problems present there, too? Sound off in the comments below.
If you missed it the first time, don’t forget to check out our Sonic Adventure XBLA review here.
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Its also gonna happen with Sonic Colors, no doubt about it. The Wii is has its share of hackers as well. Just look happened with Mario Kart.
Oh and what did Nintendo do? Nothing.
“What do you think? Do you think cheaters should be dealt with and removed from the Sonic Adventure XBLA leaderboards?”
Uhm, my answer is NO FUCKING SHIT
Just so you all know, the PSN version indeed has leaderboards and as of this comment all of the times appear legitimate, so cheating hasn’t plagued the PSN version yet… save for a weight of 9998610g for Big in Emerald Coast, which seems a bit high =\
Give it time, AJB.
-T
I think it’s the same guy that was using exploits in ASR a couple months ago.
I feel bad for people like that guy instead of playing the game they spend them hacking or breaking the game in order to be on the leaderboard for pure internet whore reasons and think doing this makes up for their bad social skills.
I guess he is compensating for his horrible horrible username THEno1SonicFan really REALLY?
Do you know what’s great about these hackers… They have their gamertag right there at the very top of the list! Microsoft, might not be doing anything right now, but at least it isn’t very hard to track these idiots down…
Unless they also hack their gamertag, but that’s just lame… :S
For Sonic Rush Adventure see the Japanese website it’s not plagued by the cheaters, and I’m first in the Pirates’island (Casey) Muhahaha… Sorry.
HAX!
I loled at this article.
“somebody who inexplicably completed a level in an impossible less-than-zero minutes, with a score totaling in the millions.”
Hilarious XD
This is nothing new, it happens with most games. You’ll always find at least one sad wa**er who feels the need to boost his way the top of the leaderboards just to gain a small bit of self respect. I seriously don’t understand why they do it in the first place, what do you gain from being number one in a game like Sonic Adventure? Do you get lots of prize money? I say let them carry on, it’s only their own time they’re wasting because most people don’t carre about leaderboards.
@Dr.Eggfang
No, that person who was in ASR was “Da1AndOnlySonic”. This guy is clearly changing his submitted time manually, whereas Da1AndOnlySonic was pulling off glitches in game to get a lower time. Just to note: these people are actaully hacking their submitted times, to literally -impossible- levels.
I saw his profile before he set it to private and he had sonic 4! i had a good look at all the achievements and it seemed legit
I asked him about it and he said because im that good
Then he switched his profile to private
where’s the fun cheating like this? simply discusting
Raise your hand if you saw this coming. *raises hand*
No game is safe from hacking, sadly. Even the Halo games has its fair share of hackers pulling off bullshit in multiplayer battles. It’s an ever-increasing problem with any online game out today. =/
I thought the official leaderboards for Rush Adventure listed US, UK, and JP simultaneously? Anyway, they have been doing something for unreasonable times there. For instance, if you check the rankings on your DS they’ll list the top places as people who finished in a millisecond, whereas those records don’t show up on the online leaderboards.
i.e. My DS tells me I’m ranked 21 on ML1, but I know that when they update the leaderboards it will show me as 18.
The strange thing is, I was coming on this site to comment that for some reason the boards have been down for the past few days and I wanted to know if anyone else is finding them impossible to load?
I’ve been following this site for about a year and a half and yet this is the first time I comment. It was way too relevant to my situation to resist
*two and a half. My bad, I forgot we’re in 2010!
Heh; yeah – he’s due to be banned anytime soon be it by either SEGA/MS. He’s gotta be using a J-TAGed Xbox 360 (as he’s been playing Sonic 4). As soon as you sign into XBL, your guaranteed to be banned.
Oh well, if they’re gonna hack, then they should know what kind of trouble they would get…
@Blippa
I get the impression that’s because the leaderboard times on the website haven’t been updated in months. I’ve never had any of my time trial records display on the website.
@Ryan Bloom
Actually, they have been updated within the past month or two because I managed previously to get a time up there and they updated it (the website) to show my time. Now the page won’t even load. I’ve tried it from multiple computers and browsers and that’s still the case…