Official Statement of PBW regarding cheating
 

Recently a player on PBW realized that it was possible to hack the SE4 executable code in a way that allowed for a player to gain communications channels without actually meeting another race in the game.

This in itself is not extraordinary. It is common knowledge that practically any software program can be hacked given enough skill and determination from an individual interested in doing so. In the Last year we have Banned two people from playing at PBW due to cheating, one of which we strongly suspect was using hacking methods similar to what he has described to us.

He brought this issue to the attention of the PBW admins, and communicated it to Malfador Machinations as well. He was eager to see the code patched by Malfador to eliminate this possibility in the future.

Unfortunately, due to a misunderstanding, and perhaps a slight lack in judgement, he tested this cheat out in a couple of actual PBW games. This naturally complicated matters greatly. There has been some call from some people that were unaware of his prior contact with the PBW admins to ban him for cheating.

We feel that action is unwarranted at this time. We accept his explanation of the events and can tell you for sure that he did inform us of the existence of this cheat before he used it in an actual game. We believe he is being honest when he says he misunderstood not to test this in an actual multiplayer game, and that his intention was to help us by demonstrating that this actually did what he said it could do.

We are not going to ban him, although we have required from him assurances that he will not use this or any other hack or other cheats in any other PBW games. He has also assured us he will not share the knowledge necessary to duplicate this cheat with anyone other than Aaron Hall at Malfador.

Of course there may be some that will wish not to play against him at all in the future. That is your right as well and we respect that and will honor it by not allowing him to reregister under a different name as was suggested as a possible course of action. However we would ask that you would consider his intentions as well as his actions when making your decision whether or not to allow him in your games.

It is our sincere hope that it won't be an issue for anyone else and that we can quickly put this behind us and get back to enjoying the fun and competitiveness of SE4 and PBW.

PBW Admin Team