Guild Wars 2 hacker’s character publicly executed in-game
Justice is served. Talk about a harsh punishment for a video game hacker of Guild Wars 2.
A video of game developer ArenaNet’s public execution of a hacker’s character recently emerged on YouTube, garnering over a million views in less than a week.
Here’s what happened.
A user going by the name of DarkSide (perhaps in reference to DC’s supervillain?) had been accused of teleporting around the game world, dealing obscene amounts of damage then easily escaping harm in Guild Wars 2.
“Got lucky and killed him? He’ll be back in 10s no matter where you are on the map. People eventually get tired of it and quit,” said a forum user Jayden Ennok in a thread.
Groups of players went on a futile mission to take him out, until they had enough and posted videos of the hacker in action, which finally got the attention of ArenaNet employees.
In the video titled “RIP DarkSide”, the hacker’s character (controlled by staff) stripped to his underwear, waved and jumped off a ledge to his death.
Watch the video here:
Instead of allowing DarkSide to respawn, ArenaNet security logged out and deleted his characters permanently, simulating an actual (pirate-style) execution.
Will this be a deterrent to hackers in future? Some seem to think so.
A user in the comments section of the video, NewNecro, said: “This video was intended to be a proof of ArenaNet’s staff actually looking into the matter of hackers in-game.”
Another user, Galiant2010, feels that the ones who are thinking about hacking will be dissuaded by the prospect of messing up their accounts and wasting time, money and energy.
The harsh reality is that there will always be those trying to exploit a game, but this method of serving justice is obviously amusing many players around the world.
