Modern Warfare 3 cheaters: how Infinity Ward will stop them

MW3 producer talks daily updates, "500 settings per weapon"

"In the last game, we didn't have the ability to make a lot of changes to the game post launch, and that hurt us," the game's executive producer Mark Rubins told OXM in an interview published as part of our ultimate Modern Warfare 3 guide in issue 79.


"It was so blindsided, with all the cheating and hacking and stuff. We had no idea that Microsoft's consoles were going to get hacked after we launched, so we launched and then literally within weeks, the console had been hacked and opened up, and that means they can tear out code, put their own code in, write to memory, they can do all the stuff the developer can do in order to cheat.

"And we had no awareness of this happening and we did our best to close down those gaps and holes, but it was a significant challenge and it was something that we couldn't adjust afterwards, and it took many patches to fix. And patches take time, because you have to go through certification through the first parties again and that takes 10-15 days."

Where plugging the holes in Modern Warfare 2 was a laborious process, Modern Warfare 3 is designed to be easily updateable. "So it's a big problem, but what we've done with this game is we've given ourselves the ability to update on-the-fly - like every day if we want to, or every afternoon or whatever, we can sort of update a few files that work on balancing guns or balancing issues.

"So for instance, in Modern Warfare 2 the SCAR was notoriously the weapon to use," Rubin went on. "It was overpowered. Well, we didn't even have the data back then to see why it was overpowered. Now we are taking in data, we're listening, we're looking at the stats on the weapons and we can actually tweak them on the fly when the game's out there, so that's going to be a huge gain for the game I think in general, just having everybody be more involved with the game post launch."

Unlike many Modern Warfare 2 players, Rubin doesn't consider quick-scoping a cheat, arguing that it's "something that the hardcore guys really like doing". (Hit the link for a thorough dissection of how aiming works in Modern Warfare 3.

The division between Infinity Ward's last Call of Duty and Modern Warfare 3 epitomises an industry trend, Rubin believes. "Really it's a transition. Originally you put a disk in and that's it, you maybe got a patch once in a while because of some crazy bug fix, but it wasn't a lot of daily fixing - it's not like an MMO where they iterate.

"We're in uncharted territory! I don't know how it's going to go, honestly. We have a basic plan: we're not going to overreact and we're not going to just react to whatever we see. Of the two things that we added, one the ability to change things on the fly, but the other was the ability to acquire information. So the first step is 'Oh, people are complaining that the SCAR's overpowered. OK, well let's pull all the stats.' And we look at it and we go well, OK - it's sort of overpowered but it's overpowered because its damage at range is significantly better than everybody else's. So that's where it's getting its advantage and that's how it's being used, and so then we can tweak that little tiny slider.

We have this thing called a GDT which is the file which has all of the settings for a weapon. Honestly, for every single weapon, there's close to five hundred settings that determine damage, sway... it's this huge file that just goes on and on and on. And it has every little bit of information about the weapon in it. It's actually insane."

Worried that all this patching and updating will chop your Modern Warfare 3 experience into a parade of download bars? Lay your fears to rest. "When we do the daily thing, you won't even know. As soon as you log in, there's a quick little file that downloads and overwrites some things before you even get into the main menu."

Elsewhere in issue 79's Modern Warfare 3 guide, Sledgehammer Games creative director Michael Condrey insists that Call of Duty delivers "a ton of innovation every year". Presumably low-level design and technical tweaks form part of that. 'MMO Call of Duty' certainly sounds like a step away from the orthodoxy to us.