Infinite was, so I'm told, a complete wasteland of cheating. 343, or what at that point was left of it, had no experience with anti-cheat because they'd never built a game for anything other than xbox, where cheating (until recently) was near impossible. So they launched Infinite on pc with absolutely no mechanisms in place to curb cheating and guess what happened? Everyone cheated. That game was the end of an era in so many ways that I've lost count. MS and MS Game Studios deserve a special place in hell for their gross mismanagement of that property. Typical corporate America: they fired the people who did the actual work while maintaining the bloated salaries of upper management. Then they hired in a bunch of temporary contractors to build the game, probably at greater expense than if they'd just kept the team they already had. Then they let the contractors expire and there went the last group of talent that actually knew anything about the game, how it worked, or what their audience expected. A game built by committee, managed by no one, while a team of "leaders" sucked up all the payroll while waiting for a better gig somewhere else in the company. Eventually even a lot of them lost their jobs, though ludicrously not for malfeasance, but because xbox needed to save money after their acquisition spree. Irony. They fire what's left of their **bleep** management so they can acquire more studios and franchises, some of which they almost immediately shut down while keeping others alive for a longer, more drawn out death like the one they dealt Halo. Poor, poor Call of Duty. Something I never thought I'd say.
But I digress.
Yes, I specifically remember the quote from Respawn about bronze-to-pred runs being "minimally" damaging, and I don't think I have ever been more angry with a developer in my life. And that's saying something after the fiascos of Halo. It's these kinds of moments that birth conspiracy theories. There simply isn't any way on earth that the developer is unaware of the toxicity of smurfing, by anyone for any reason, and so they make a statement trying to minimize our indignation and convince us that we're being crazy or hysterical or babies. Which makes it all so much worse. And all because, says my personal conspiracy theory, Smurf accounts pad their player numbers OR the population of smurfs happens to significantly overlap with the population of players who have a history of spending money on the game.
I'd call it "reprehensible" but that word isn't nearly strong enough. Maybe "unethical" bordering on "immoral."
