In Second Life™ we have griefers. I think that is because cheating in Second Life isn’t really possible in the word’s common sense of usage. It’s that long term debate about whether Second Life is a game that I think drives use of the word griefer. If it isn’t a game, how can you cheat? It pushes us to more precise language.

Black Desert Online

However, in Black Desert Online™ (BDO) there are cheaters. Recently they have been causing a problem. Apparently a number of us sent Massively Overpowered links to a video of hackers at play. No one was hearing anything back from Daum in response to complaints, so put it on Massively. Result: Daum, the creator of BDO responded and is now following up with a hunt for hackers. See: Black Desert Turns to Its Playerbase to Hunt Down Cheaters for Prizes. 

This doesn’t prove Daum was moved by publicity or wasn’t already figuring out what to do and this is all just a coincidence in timing. But, people can certainly point to a chain of events to in some measure support the claim it took some outside pressure.

It is an interesting concept, paying players to find the bad guys, sort of a bounty hunter thing.

Requiring a video makes the reporting rather complex. In SL we can snap a screen capture to send with an abuse report. Someone in SL Support gets that and presumably pulls server logs to verify what happened. Is watching a video less work? Better evidence?

Of course in SL people abuse the abuse reporting system to grief people by filing a load of false reports. There are whole teams working on the more-is-better principal often hopping to fake out the Lab. Then the Lab does their griefing for them. It adds complexity to the Lab’s efforts to keep griefers out.

Daum thought of that too and mentioned they are taking steps to avoid having the abuse reporting system gamed. They actually set up a special reporting system just for the ‘bounty hunters’.

I’m not sure the idea would work in Second Life… nor am I all that sure how well it is going to work in BDO. But, I like the Bounty Hunting for game rewards idea.