Gamesavers?

[Blind Rage]

We accept them or nay?

[L3giOn]

They will be allowed to join the site, but they won't be allowed to show their gamertag or dicuss gamesaving in any way. We won't condone gamesave discussion here.

[Blind Rage]

Good plan. The non-gamesavers get to show their cards right?

[L3giOn]

Of course! ;)

[Blind Rage]

:D Thanks for the quick answer.

[L3giOn]

No problem man. We'll make an official announcement on our stance within the next couple days.

[Blind Rage]

Alright I like what you guys are doing. :D

[Grimm]

See what is a gamesaver?

I mean do they save each part of the game for you to get the achievements or somthing?

Can someone explain? thanks :D!

[Rocket]

A gamesaver is someone who loads up another persons save file to gain the achievements without doing anything..thats the short and sweet version..

[Shadow]

Yeah they recover someones account who has saves for certain games and then they upload the saves and get all the achievements

[deathbypig37x]

No problem man. We'll make an official announcement on our stance within the next couple days.

Although it has not been officially announced, if you haven't picked up the vibe already, gamesavers are deply frowned upon at x3h. Now, we will not attempt to do anything to them, that would be wrong. All we wish is to make certain liberties and privlidges of this site unavailable to them, seeing as how they are down-right megadeath-cheaters.

With that said, there is no real reason to discuss futher any bad feelings towards them. All there is left is a clear official announcement. That is all.

[angry]

In my eyes i am sorry if people get upset but i F***ING hate Gamesavers full STOP!!!. :mad:

[Josef]

I hate ACTIVE gamesavers, people who have gamesaved but stopped and given up their tag are fine in my books.

[angry]

I hate ACTIVE gamesavers, people who have gamesaved but stopped and given up their tag are fine in my books.

True True But i will agree with you to a certain degree, as i think the GS should be set to 0 and start up again.

[Flea]

I really hate gamesaving and feel it did wreck gamerscore to a point,
but i dont even think about it anymore,
why get worked up about what someone did once upon a time?
theres no point.

A lot of gamesavers now wish they didnt do it,
or only did it because everyone around them was doing it.

I just try and stay at the same level as some of my mates to keep it intresting,
take Skuff, we have been swapping places for the last 9 months or so,
in who has the highest gamerscore.

Its been pretty intresting, and i feel this is the true value of gamerscore,
trying to get one over on someone you know.
:)

Oh and i hate you skuff stop getting points.
:(

[cc99999]

I wrote a nice long article about gamesaving. X360A deleted it because they are tards:

Gamesaves and the Dilution of the Xbox 360 Talent Pool

The Xbox 360, at this point in time, can be looked at
as a revolutionary, but also a failed platform. Like
in Bioshock, Microsoft’s grand vision of a unified
online experience has deteriorated into a grotesque
cacophony of gamer duality.

At its core you have two distinctively similar groups
of hardcore gaming enthusiasts who have become divided
on a central, unforeseen issue. Questions which reach
into the very nature of societal motivations and
behavioral science are at play. To put it simply, at
what cost Achievement Points?

But first, let us take a step back.

It is my opinion that the first tangible advance in
console gaming this generation is the “Achievement”.
To put it this way, achievements are the Buddha Nature
of 360 games- they are what connects the experience of
one user to the next, they connect obscure import
titles to mainstream releases, they connect
dispensable movie tie-in titles to defining pop
cultural events like the launch of Halo 3.

Thanks to achievements, there is a certain equality to
be found from lesser known and better known titles.
To compete with the very best gamers in the community,
one has to be a well rounded, constantly toiling
gamer, who shows no shame playing children’s games, or
repeating simple tasks ad infinitum to complete
endurance achievements in games like Ridge Racer 6,
Rumble Roses XX, or Perfect Dark Zero.

The quest for achievements has brought to bare, a
hitherto unseen fanaticism amongst Xbox 360 gamers,
namely those who enjoy the many online community
sites. X360A, for instance, boasts a member roll of
nearly 30,000 members, A360P boasts a similar number.

Perhaps the most well known of the community sites,
mygamercard.net, has over 1.5 million registered
gamertags in their database. This roster of gamers,
especially the top 1,000 or so, are in no small part
responsible for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 being the
vanguard console for software attach rates (currently
sitting at 6.3 titles per console).

Its hard to imagine, but the achievement system has
been broken far longer than the amount of time it
actually worked. At around 55,000 points, Rance6, an
excellent gamer by any measure, used a form of
cheating called gamesaves to eclipse ST TheKing and
take the number 1 world ranking.

At that time, many people at the top of the
leaderboards knew that fair play in regards to high
gamerscores was a thing of the past. Not long after
the explosion of gamesaves (no doubt helped along by
Rance6 giving so many western gamers access to
complete and nearly complete Japanese titles) the top
100 gamertags on MGC.com were mostly inflated by
cheaters.

Skilled gamers were cheating, unskilled gamers were
cheating. Elite gamers at the top had tough decisions
to make- cheat and stay at the top- or allow lesser
skilled cheaters surpass them.
This was the decision that faced many top tier gamers,
including TheGrayWolf, a 25 year old life long
hardcore gamer who had spent nearly a year going
toe-to-toe with ST TheKing for the number one spot in
the world. Eventually, TheGrayWolf gave into
temptation, began his career as a gamesaver (a term
coined by what’s left of the legit community).
TheGrayWolf has gamesaved several thousand points and
still maintains a ranking near the top of the
leaderboards. An even more notorious cheater, Sufoor,
sits at the top of the list having breached the
security in Microsoft’s operating system and having
hacked achievements in hundreds of games.


I wanted to get in touch with him, and find out what
made him do it, I wanted to know what code of ethics
the gamesavers used, which tactics they saw as unfair,
and whether the Gamerscore system is even salvageable.

I present to you our conversation:


CC: First off, thanks for taking the time to do this.
How old are you, what do you do for a living?

Lazy: 25, self employed small business owner.

CC: Have you always been a hardcore gamer? Before the
360 did you consider yourself an “Elite Gamer”?

Lazy: Yes, I have always been hardcore about gaming.
When I was little, it was my dream to be one of those
Nintendo Power counselor guys (cc99999- funny he says
this, I’m sure I wasn’t the only kid of our generation
to place the Nintendo Power counselor guy a rung above
Astronaut for coolest job in the world). I have been
hardcore about gaming for as long as I can remember,
whether it be playing NES games, or local BBS games
(back in the days of the 14.4 connection).

I was ranked in the top 10 out of 200,000 Warcraft 2
players in the days of KALI and Battle.Net. I have
completed just over 1000 different titles.

I guess in many ways I am your classic UberDork.

CC: What is gamesaving?

Lazy: Gamesaving is exactly what it sounds like. Using
someone else’s gamesave to unlock achievements you
didn’t earn. Before last fall’s update, it was simply
a process of copy and paste the save on your CPU.
Now, it is done either by using a save that Roofus or
Angerwound has disabled the security on, or by using a
source profile that has the achievement and glitching
it to the second profile.

CC: How did you first hear about it?

Lazy: I first heard about gamesaving when Angerwound
came and posted in a thread that the leaders were
posting in on the Xbox.com forums.

CC: Was there cheating before then?

Lazy: Before gamesaving came out? Well, people could
still cheat by recovering someone else’s profile and
beating a game for them. This wasn’t a really big deal
before gamesaves and profile glitching, because the
other person has to legitimately beat whatever game
you wanted them to play, and in the meantime your copy
of your profile was not valid.

CC: Ok, so around what score did the legit
gamerscore leaders fall?

Lazy: The score where we finally got overtaken by the
gamesavers was 55,000.

CC: So, do you blame Microsoft for gamesaving?

Lazy: I don’t think Microsoft is to blame for
gamesaving, but they definitely should have seen it
coming. They’ve had over a year to crack down on their
security, so I think at this point they are guilty by
omission.

CC: Does Microsoft seem to care about the problem?

Lazy: Not enough to make a difference. They took all
the saves from the gamesaves database and tied them to
whatever console they were created on. As far as
banning or suspension, that would cost them revenue.

CC: Alright, then in your opinion, is Gamerscore
fixable?

Lazy: Absolutely, it is fixable. What I have come to
realize is that MS is not going to fix it until enough
people are upset about it. The loss of revenue from
not fixing it has to be greater than the loss of
banning accounts that do it.

What I mean by that is they have turned a blind eye to
the second profile glitch, until now, when it is being
used not only for achievements but access to betas.
Now they’ve noticed it.

CC: Taking a look at the MGC.com top 25 leaderboard,
estimate how much of their scores are legitimately
earned?

Lazy: I honestly have no idea. I can tell you this,
for most of them, they have not earned a majority of
their points. Many accounts have had several owners at
this point. One person gets sick of it and sells it to
another person. Sometimes for as much as several
thousand dollars. Though, that was before hacking and
I doubt you could get near that much now.

**

OK, enough of the introductions. TheLazyWolf is an
intelligent and complex person. He’s a legitimately
elite gamer who has in the past and still uses
gamesaves (he gamesaved the easy 1000 points in Surf’s
Up, by his own admission).

I think if we solely focus on the what is it, who is
doing it, why? Type of dialogue we will fail to see
what we are truly missing. You see, the brilliance of
gamerscore is that it was a two pronged way of
measuring ourselves against our fellow gamers.

The 360 is unique because, through gamerscore,
people’s gaming habits were broadcast for public
consumption. While most of us have had the opportunity
to use cheats all the way back to the NES (thanks to
the Gameshark) there had never been a point where one
person, or a group of people, could cheat a game that
they were playing and effect the rest of us.

This is the ugly Pandora’s Box of the Xbox 360. You
open up a new world of competition and possibility-
but in doing so, you unleash the better devils of our
nature. I agree with TheLazyWolf on this point, a
company as creative and experienced as Microsoft
should have known that certain savvy users of their
product would tirelessly seek out exploits and ways to
inflate their scores. For every move 360gamesavees.com
and their ilk were making, Microsoft should have had a
counter, either programmatically, or legally.

For the damage to the gamerscore system lies not only
in the fact that a couple hundred cheaters were able
to have games hacked or gamesaves for them- but for
the obvious fact that nearly every Xbox Live Community
site has been marginalized by the obvious falsehoods
found in gamerscore reporting.

(continued)

[cc99999]

Back to Lazy.

CC: What do gamesavers think about Kaens Gamesaverless
List? (cc99999- It’s worth mentioning, that this leaderboard is outdated.)

Lazy: Honestly, I don’t think it even shows up on
their radars. Its kind of a hard link to get to if
someone doesn’t give it to you.

CC: Are there just as many elite gamers in the ranks
of the gamesavers as there is on the Kaens List?

Lazy: Yeah, this is the one thing that bugs me about
the legit attitude. Before hacking, someone had to
create the gamesaves that everyone was using. Does
that mean their cards are necessarily a good
representation of their skills? Not in the least.
Still though, I’d take Furydog, MagicMe, and Jaydogg
against any 3 legit gamers. I’d also like to mention
that TeamSaxo, III Spirit III, and JapanTOP are truly
elite gamers.

CC: Isn’t there a point when someone who is regularly
gamesaving games, stops enjoying playing them?

Lazy: Well for some it hasn’t been about the games for
a long time, for others, they play the games they like
and gamesave the others. I don’t think it would be
fair for me to stereotype them. As stated, I’m guilty
myself, and the games have always been fun for me.

CC: So why on earth did you gamesave Surf’s Up?

Lazy: I wanted the points, couldn’t justify spending
the money, and was pretty sure no one was going to
doubt that I couldn’t beat that one legitimately.


**

I wanted to know if TheLazyWolf’s feelings were shared
by other members of the gamesave community. So I set
out to ask some of the top players that he listed
questions about what effect gamesaving has had on
them, whether they regret it, and if gamesaving has
caused them any hardship in the online community.

I tried to contact Japan Top (formerly Rance6),
MagicMe, StripClubDJ, and zz Fury zz. StripClubDJ
declined to comment, I did not get a response from
Japan Top or MagicMe. But I did hear back from zz Fury
zz who agreed to be interviewed. At the time of the
interview, zz Fury zz’s Gamerscore exceeded 140,000,
placing him in the top 50 on mygamercard.net’s top
Gamerscore leaderboard.

CC: Have you used saves? How many points of your score
are from saves?

Fury: Yes I have used saves. I would say 40,000 of my
points have come from saves.
(If true, this would put Fury just over 100,000 legit
points- well within the top 15 legit scores on the
Kaens leaderboard).

CC: Were you high up on the leaderboards before
gamesaving was commonplace?

Fury: I was 7th on the leaderboard when I started
gamesaving. I remember because I was one spot behind
Stallion83 and we would talk shit about the guys who
were gamesaving.

CC: What drove you to gamesave?

Fury: I started gamesaving because I did not want to
get passed by less skilled gamers. I have always been
competitive so I convinced myself that if it wasn’t
against any MS policies it would be no problem.

(Again, sorry to interject- you will find, at least
amongst the elite gamesavers this is a common theme.
The top score at this time was around 55,000- so
gamesaving a couple games to stay at the top would
have, at the outset, seemed like no big deal. Although
it is quite clear, that both TheLazyWolf and zz Fury
zz had reservations about what they were doing and
started gamesaving when the system was pretty much
fucked.)

CC: Do you consider yourself an elite skilled player?

Fury: I do consider myself an elite skilled player but
I am by NO means a natural.

CC: In your opinion, would you say gamers on the top
25 of the MGC leaderboard are the best gamers on Xbox
Live, very strong gamers, average gamers, mostly below
average?

Fury: Most of them are average gamers with the two
exceptions being LazyWolf, and Noggin I consider them
some of best gamers on Live.

CC: Sufoor, and several other gamers have clearly
hacked achievements (including glitched ones). Do you
mind this?

Fury: I mind but I have learned to accept it because
in the end its just video games. Hacking has killed
my hunger for total gamerscore but I still love
getting rare and difficult achievements.

CC: Does the legit community's attitude towards
gamesavers bother you?

Fury: It does bother me because the majority of them
have a snobbish attitude towards gamersavers. Its
funny because they assume my whole Gamerscore is
cheated and there score of 15,000 legit points some
how makes them a better gamer than me. I try to get
along with everyone, I don’t agree with Hacking, but I
will help someone with a hacked card if they ask for a
tip with an achievement. A lot Legit gamers� will say
”I don’t help your kind to a gamesaver or hacker
asking for help.

CC: Are there many gamers who have gamesaved that
would legitimately have over 100,000 points at this
point? The legit community claims 18 of their group
has.

Fury: I would say there 17 guys including me who would
have 100,000 legit.

(I looked through some of the top cards, while 17
seems like a fairly big number- and you have to take
what you are seeing on these cards with a grain of
salt, I think its fair to say that there are several
gamesavers with scores over 100,000. I would like to
point out, however, that I do believe that even
without gamesaving, Stallion83 would be the undisputed
#1 in the world, which is quite amazing, really).

CC: Who are the best gamers on XBox Live, in your
opinion?

Fury: LazyWolf, Noggin Shotz, Stallion83, Pervypriest,
Teamsaxo, and Buzz 360.

(Buzz 360 was recently deleted from the Kaens List for
having used gamesaves, his completion percentage is in
the 90 percentile, which is incredible- even without
the small handful of games that we spotted to have
him removed from the list, you can see no small amount
of legitimately earned difficult achievements).

CC: If the legit community was developed before you
chose to gamesave, would you have?

Fury: I don’t think that would have had helped me
because when I have my mind set nobody can talk me
down.

CC: Do you think sites like X360A should allow
gamesavers to contribute to their community in an open
fashion?

Fury: I think everybody should be allowed to
contribute to any site but that’s just my opinion.
Gamesaving is not a felony. We’re all gamers and we
can help each other.

CC: What role does Microsoft have in gamesaving?

Fury: MS has a starring role. MS would have stopped a
lot of people if they would have at least put out an
empty threat saying Gamesaving & Account Trading =
BANNED.

CC: Do you think MyGamerCard.net is also responsible
for it?

Fury: No, they are not responsible, but they seem not
to mind the problem.

CC: Why do people do it?

Fury: I don’t know. I only know why I did it. When
legit players ask me for my help or advice with
gamesaving, I always say DON’T DO IT.

CC: Does gamesaving ruin earning Gamerscore?

Fury: Gamesaving ruins it for some people but if
gamesaving, account trading, or hacking, ruins
Gamerscore for you, the truth is you were never really
a Gamerscore whore.



I can empathize with people like zz Fury zz and
TheLazyWolf. Both deserved the rankings their hard
work and skill had entitled them to. I don’t believe
that there was any incentive at all to stay legit when
the gamesaving started. Clearly, Microsoft and
MyGamerCard.net were not exercising any editorial
oversight for their services, and just as quickly as
some of these gamers had gained notoriety due to their
high scores, they were getting attacked by wave after
wave of cheaters.

After reaching deep inside of my own feelings, I
realize that I have overcome certain prejudices about
gamesavers. As a friend of mine, and gamesaver,
CyHawk68 once said, I’ve been gamesaving since the
NES.

The truth of this statement is undeniable. We have all
used cheat codes, glitches, Gamesharks, other people’s
saves, and other shortcuts in games without fear of
reproach. It seems that Microsoft’s outsider
perspective on gaming didn’t sufficiently acknowledge
our desire to achieve what we cannot.


The biggest issue for me with gamesaving is that it
obscures our abilities to compete with one another and
treat our accomplishments fairly. Many top tier
players became gamesavers, perhaps the price they pay
for this act is to not be compared to the so-called
legit community. The problem is, with such a diluted
playing field, the top legit gamers are hardly pushed
as hard as they used to be. Also, the exclusivity of
truly difficult achievements is muddied to the point
where you don’t know what to believe when you read
someone’s gamercard.

Of course, there will always be easy games to spot the
cheaters- and it truly is human nature to be greedy,
so many gamesavers will continue to fall in the same
familiar line, but somewhere along the way what we
lose is the ability to be in awe. This is what
Microsoft has failed to protect. This is what the
gamesavers have taken from us.

There will never be a legit leaderboard. The console
is too old for new people to truly have a chance to
compete at the top of the spectrum. There are no ST
theKings or TheGreyWolfs walking into a Gamestop right
now to purchase their first system.

To compete with one another, we are going to have to
use the sample size that we have. For the legit
gamers, that means a diluted talent pool that
continues to get smaller and smaller (at the top), for
the gamesavers, it is a constantly expanding group
with a dug in culture of cheating with a suspicious
eye cast amongst themselves. In gaining such lofty
scores, the gamesavers have lost the ability to be
impressed with each other’s accomplishments.

I am more saddened by gamesaving than I am angry with
the gamesavers. This is a drastic change for me, on a
personal level. You see, I do believe that there are
many fantastic gamers out there who will never be
listed on Kaens List. I believe most of them would
rather see the legit gamers stay legit, I even dare
say, most of them root for the legit gamers to
accomplish the things they can no longer do.

Gamesaving is an albatross for TheLazyWolf. I think he
knows that.

The legit community should be ever vigilant, should
push for policy changes on Xbox Live, should deter
people from using this method to inflate their scores,
and should promote fair play.

They should also welcome back the valuable members of
the community, who, for whatever reason, made a poor
choice and have lived with the consequences.

The leaderboards may never get cleaned up, but that
doesn’t mean our consciences can’t be.

Lazy, Fury, or any gamesaver. If you want a quick
shot at penance, I’ll be available for a couple online
matches in Rumble Roses XX. Sorry about all those
things I said about your mothers (just kidding, I’m
not like that).

***

I requested an interview with StripClubDJ. He declined
due to the fact Microsoft had just banned his account
until 9999.

A request for comments from MagicMe and Japan Top went
unanswered.

Thank you to TheLazyWolf, Stallion83, and zz Fury zz