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Tech

Watch These Banned MMO Cheaters Beg for Forgiveness

H1Z1 has pardoned five cheaters after they posted public apologies.
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Cheaters in online games are such a prevalent problem, that even games that haven't been officially released yet are already infested with them.

H1Z1, a massively multiplayer online game set in a zombie apocalypse which is still in early alpha, suffers from a severe cheating problem, which it recently elevated by banning about 30,000 offending players.

However, John Smedley, the president of developer Daybreak Game Company (which was called Sony Online Entertainment before Sony sold it off earlier this year), decided to raise awareness for gaming's cheating problem by pardoning a few players and letting them back in the game if they posted videos in which they begged for forgiveness.

You can watch one of the groveling videos above, in which the player admits to using a cheat called ESP (extrasensory perception). The cheat, which is one of the hardest for developers to identify and prevent, highlights other players in the environment, even through walls, which gives the cheater a huge advantage.

Smedley has been posting more deliciously pathetic apology videos to his Twitter, and they'll give you a nice schadenfreude buzz, especially if you've ever been harassed by cheaters online.

Cheaters can always get back in the game by buying another copy for $20 and opening a new account, but they're not only losing money that way, they're also losing the untold number of hours they put into their existing character.

So far, Smedley has pardoned five players, and it doesn't sound like he's willing to extend his mercy any further.