Sega, Microsoft Tackling Sonic 4 Cheaters

By
Tristan Oliver
– October 21, 2010

Is A Scoreboard Wipeout Possible?

As was the case with the XBOX Live re-release of Sonic Adventure, Sega’s latest 2D Sonic has now fallen victim to persistent cheaters and hackers.

Sega’s Aaron Webber affirmed via the Sega forums that the top ranks in the XBOX360 edition of Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I, at least, have been marred–notably by someone under the handle THEno1SonicFan, who also posted impossible times to SA.  Webber said Microsoft is on the case and has just now taken action.  TSSZ News editor Ryan Bloom has since confirmed THEno1SonicFan was outright banned from XBOX Live for this and the Sonic Adventure compromise.

“Props first to Microsoft, as they took care of banning a couple of the cheaters on the boards,” Webber said Wednesday.

A couple, but not all, as we’ve found.  Ryan also checked out some of the other top cheaters, under the tags mokuro07 and wadco0l.  Both these accounts and THEno1SonicFan had viewed similar videos, according to recent account activity. The former is especially suspicious as it holds so little Gamerscore, while the latter has no XBOX Avatar set up.  We can’t confirm if these are duplicate accounts for THEno1SonicFan, but both remain active and functional as of the time of this article’s publication.

Webber’s words follow initial confirmation last week MS had been alerted to the situation.  But that procedure might as well have been red tape, with nearly a week of inaction, and more compromises with each passing day. Wednesday’s news was welcomed, with ways to remedy future situations now being considered.  But it could ultimately mean high scores and times on Sonic 4 leaderboards for XBOX 360 have to be wiped clean, though only as a last resort.

“Right now we’re trying to see if we can delete individual times from the boards,” Webber explained.  “We know that we can go with a complete wipe of all times, but I don’t want to do anything that drastic just yet until we have a method to take care of the cheating in the future, too.”

You may remember a similar nuclear option was considered but never executed for Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, albeit under much different circumstances.  In that instance, characteristic differences between bikes and cars were cited, but shortly after ASR fell victim to a serious glitch that did record low lap times.  That forced Sumo Digital to individually ban times created under the circumstances.

As it stands now, Sega is investigating whether individual wipes are possible.  Webber reiterated in a later post he doesn’t want to enforce the nuclear option.

“I don’t think this drastic a measure is really the best route, unless it’s the only option left,” Webber said.  “I’d like to explore all other possibilities first!”

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