Infinity Ward blames PS3 for Modern Warfare hacks

Infinity Ward’s Robert Bowling has pinned the blame for the many Modern Warfare 2 hacks and exploits on Sony and its PS3, but has vowed to ensure it is not left in such a powerless position with future titles.

Hacks have left many a Modern Warfare 2 player distraught, with hackers making hundreds of hours game time utterly pointless – statistics are being altered and in some cases profiles are being wiped.

“Sony has recently acknowledged a breach in security on the PS3 which resulted in games to become exposed to exploits and hacks,” Bowling said on the IW forums. “Modern Warfare 2 is no exception to this security exploit and we understand that some of you have experienced problems with stats and other issues associated with this.”

Bowling added: “Games rely on the security of the encryption on the platforms they’re played on, therefore; updates to the game through patches will not resolve this problem, unless the security exploit itself is resolved on the platform. Regretfully, Call of Duty games are receiving the bulk of the hacker’s attention, due to its high player counts and popularity. However, the number of legitimate players severely outweighs the bad apples.”

Bowling’s advice for Modern Warfare 2 players is to stick to games with friends.

“If you are concerned about playing with players who are hacking, I encourage you to play exclusively with friends by utilising the party or private match options in Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty 4 to avoid such players as much as possible until this issue is resolved by Sony.”

Moving forward game hacking should be less of an issue, with Bowling pointing to Black Ops as an example.

“Let me assure you, while we are very reliant on Sony updating their firmware and security to address the core problem of this issue. We are looking at every option available to us to help any user affected.

“This only applies to legacy games such as Call of Duty 4 and Modern Warfare 2. In the future we plan to adjust our approach to not rely solely on platform security and reduce the ability for this to happen in our games, as has already been displayed by the work Treyarch has done on Call of Duty: Black Ops to prevent similar measures.”

It’s good to see Infinity Ward taking the time to address its fanbase, but it’s certainly a troubling situation for Sony and something which must be remedied in order to restore player trust in the PSN service.