Bungie nabs 15,000 Halo: Reach cheaters

In late August, Microsoft permanently banned a number of individuals who procured illegitimate copies of Halo: Reach and ill-advisedly played them on Xbox Live. Now, the Washington developer has slammed 15,000 players for exploiting the game's credit system.

According to a Bungie employee post on Bungie.net, the developer has reset credit tallies for 15,000 players who have "egregiously" exploited a credit rip-off. The post reads, "Specifically, we targeted an exploit that allowed players to complete a Challenge 20+ times via itentional [sic] network manipulation (i.e., disconnects)."

Bungie did not specify any further details, but the instance spoken of highly resembles a credit hack that surfaced following the game’s release last month. This cheat allowed players to rack up huge credit bonuses by manipulating the game via the means listed above.

In addition to having their credit total nullified, players found to be cheating must sit through a one-day ban from amassing any additional credits.

The resets and bans were detected by Bungie's automated banning mechanism, which, Bungie admits, didn't grab every cheater. That 15,000 figure is likely to rise soon, because Bungie will conduct a "more comprehensive pass" in the coming weeks to seek out and deal with additional cheaters.

"If you are thinking about getting an easy 50k credits by using this exploit, I would strongly advise you to reconsider," reads the statement, penned by Bungie designer Tyson Green.

Halo: Reach is the final Halo title developed by Bungie Studios. It raked in over $200 million in its first 24 hours of availability and was critically lauded across the board. Bungie's next project will be a 10-year franchise published by Activision, will be set in a new universe, and will run on an entirely new game engine.

In other online Halo: Reach news, Bungie has bifurcated its planned October matchmaking update and has decided to drop the first patch this Tuesday. The update adds a myriad of alterations to the online component of Halo: Reach, chief among them being what Bungie calls the eradication of "a metric ton of small, but annoying bugs and gameplay issues."

Reach fans can read more on the plethora of changes coming to Halo: Reach this Tuesday at the Bungie Weekly Update.

For more on Halo: Reach, check out GameSpot's review.