Dont get me wrong , I'm all for battleye , long may it live , what I'm saying is sable dealt with it badly and it could cause trouble for bi if steam get too many complaints , wrong time wrong place so to speak as the new flagship game is coming from them soon IE Arma 3.
$able's role is really just to develop the tech. If anyone was at fault there, it was me. PR isn't really my strong point and I could have discussed it better with both BI and possibly users.
Btw way off topic but are you going to develop Dayz for A3 ?
I'm hoping to have it developed as a separate product, whatever that might be. This way it won't restrict the enjoyment of ArmA2/3 dedicated fans and can make its own changes with it's engine to suit it's unique requirements. Obviously due to it's success many companies want the chance but I think selecting the best way forward there is very important.
Regarding the ban's themselves:
My only mod-apping experience was on the Amiga, many many years ago. And I suspect what I did in those days is so different from what happens today that I wouldn't be classed as such (nor much use). These days it would be classed as downright piracy with a bit of cheating thrown in for good measure. But I do feel like I have some understanding of the motivations and spirit behind today's mod-apping. I maintain a healthy skepticism with everything, and keep an open mind. The same applies to the global bans. But I have to admit I've yet to see any evidence that GUID's can be spoofed successfully to both GameSpy and Battleye. The vast majority of people contacting us are admitting that they hacked, and asking to be unbanned anyway. I use fraps and overlays all the time (almost constantly) and I haven't received a Battleye ban. I can't change my stance on this without evidence to the contrary no matter how passionately someone claims it to be the different, at the end of the day Occam's razor needs to be applied: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
I feel sorry for the kid's who got caught up in something they didn't
really understand, and then possibly got in trouble with parents (or older brothers) who didn't
really understand what they had done (only the results). Having said that, ArmA2 is a mature rated game so theoretically supporting them playing the game isn't right either. There is a tragic nature to the situation, the solution here is what I think we can all agree - is that the security needs to be improved at many levels. What doesn't need to happen is for me to get all judgmental and angry at the people mod-apping, people are always going to mod-app games. But those who do need to realize that they're in the grey-zone and, particularly non-internal reputation systems like Battleye, will come down very hard on it.
For a system like DayZ, there will be, soon, a layered approach to bans. You have server level bans, global level bans (battleye), and database level bans (dayz). The database level banning is currently a manual process based on reviewing the very large amount of data gathered. Automating this with tools will present a very obvious picture as locality is easily recorded as is things like inventory, who fired what, who moved where. So I see security for DayZ as being conducted at many levels - but it should not be driven by me at the design code (sqf/fsm) level. Hence why I don't have a problem helping out with the odd scripting question here on the forums.