Guild Wars 2 hacker 'publically executed' in MMO for cheating

Sometimes the ban hammer isn't enough. That's what Guild War 2 developers ArenaNet decided when thinking of ways to punish a player found to be cheating and hacking his way to victory in the MMO's player versus player (PVP) mode.

User DarkSide had been accused of using multiple hacked accounts that allowed him to teleport around the game's world, dish out huge damage to players and then escape from harm, all in ways that shouldn't be possible in the massively multiplayer role-playing game.

ArenaNet's punishment involves a forced suicide for the character within the game and a public stripping. The developers will also work behind the scenes to delete the character and associated accounts from the server entirely.

A video of the "execution" was uploaded by the ArenaNet staff who took control of the account, stripping him of his clothing, making him leap to his death, then logging out and deleting the account. You can be see the video below...

In a scenario very similar South Park's famous World of Warcraft episode Make Love Not Warcraft, teams of players would attempt to take down DarkSide but failed in their attempts. Eventually a video of his cheating in action was uploaded online, which gained the attention of ArenaNet.

"We don't need to see it in-game," said Chris Cleary, a Game Security Lead at ArenaNet in a forum thread (via Mashable). "Sometimes good video evidence is enough for me to track down who it was. In this case, the video was enough for me to find out who it was and take action."