BF2 Server Crackdown

There was a mild controversy about EA blacklisting Battlefield 2 demo servers that had unlocked weapons and exploited the games python scripts to allow someone to get all the weapons in the demo, etc. Initially, I didn’t give this much thought. Seemed pretty clear cut to me. The demo is essentially shareware. It’s time-limited, and only has some of the weapons. I don’t have a problem with this.

Well, not surprisingly, EA is going to continue the practice with full version servers. Okay, so now the game has unlimited game play. Well, apparently, with the full version there is support for add-on python scripts. And… apparently one could exploit these python scripts to unleash some demonic power or accomplish world domination. So, if EA finds that your server has modified python scripts, or too many weapons unlocked, your server gets blacklisted for a week.

The initial reaction to this seems to be along these lines:

“OMFG! IF I WANTS TO HAX0R MY SERVER, LET ME!”

I’m going to feel dirty after doing this, but here goes… EA is in the right. They’re trying to have persistent stat tracking, similar to what has been seen in Halo 2 for Xbox Live. You have a unique username in BF2 multiplayer that will have stats attached to it. This has been a huge hit in Halo 2, and it only makes sense to have something similar for PC. Note that many games have already done this, America’s Army and Unreal Tournament come to mind immediately. The difference being that the developers of America’s Army didn’t leave a huge gaping security vulnerability called PYTHON SCRIPT SUPPORT.

So, even when EA is in the right, they’re still wrong. If they wanted locked down stats, they should’ve kept the game in QA a bit longer before replacing (yet another) buggy Battlefield game. Now, that being said, it is EA’s right to control their stats program anyway they like, and complaining about it is similar to complaining about Bungie banning cheaters in Halo 2.

So, deal.