Wirehead Studios

http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=announce.php (http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=announce.php)

Mentions Doom 3 as well.  I hate cheaters, but God I hate the hassle of Punkbuster updates.

Punkbuster is a failure at stopping cheats. It was orig. for Half-Life and it basically blocked nothing.

Punkbuster doesn't update. FACT. It just sits there locking you in spectator mode. I'd love to know how the hell people actually manage to PLAY in a PB server cos I sure as hell can't.

Between PB servers and sv_strictauth my choice of Q3 servers is pretty damn limited. While I understand the intention of both of these, all they serve to do is spork over those players who 1. don't cheat and 2. own a legit copy of Q3 that some other bugger happens to have the CD key for.

With this in mind, Q4's SP game had better be up to scratch :shout:

Punkbuster: busting your ass thats what.
Peice of shit.

Punkbuster doesn't bother me when it works

Unfortunately, every time they update I have to go to their site and download the updates manually. pbWeb is only effective occasionally, and the in-game updates NEVER work.

thats odd , it works every time for me .

and I don't hate PB either.

Last year at quakecon we had two guys from punkbuster staying in out room.( thank you jess!) when they showed up i let them in the room and said ".... oh im sorry your client is out of date you will have to leave". Now they know how it feels.

I don't hate the concept, but Punkbuster creates more problems then it fixes. And to be honest, I never seen anyone cheat in Quake 3.

Just check out this thread I made about it.
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetquake/top...490&tid=1728462 (http://www.forumplanet.com/planetquake/topic.asp?fid=1490&tid=1728462)

I finally fixed the problem by getting a new key.

Nice one, Woods! I'd have done the same. In fact, I'd have banned 'em :evil:

Getting a new key without forking out another ?20 on a fresh copy of Q3 is no mean feat. I've had one key come up as invalid straight out of the box, and no keygen has solved the problem to date.

I find it ironic that the security measures put in place by developers end up having an adverse effect on those who actually went out and bought the program in the first place. I might as well have warezed the damn thing.

I could get into the whole WPA/Steam debate again, but I won't. Besides, I don't even know how to cheat in online Q3.

I've had problems just connecting to servers using sv_strictauth 1.  I get "Invalid CD-KEY, Mistyped CD-KEY?"  I have never shared my CD-KEY, I have never downloaded a program that hijacks keys, nor have I been infected with a trojan that might steal them.  I know it's not mistyped, and I have all the ports open needed for playing Q3 online.  I actually have THREE valid CD-KEYS because I own 3 legitimate copies of Quake 3 - one is my original, the second is a Linux edition I got for $1in a collector's tin, the third is Q3 Gold, which I got Team Arena with.  None of these were working, I kept getting the same message.  Then, miraculously, the problem goes away on its own and I can play on Q3 servers again?  No explanation, it just starts working one day.  This is not even a punkbuster issue, it's an issue with the Id Master servers, but for a long time I could not connect to ANY server unless sv_strictauth was 0.  My patience for "authorize" crap hit an all-time low about this time.  I paid for it, I should be able to use it.  Period.

Then we move on to Punkbuster...  My main beef with Punkbuster has been that it is entirely user-unfriendly.  Besides the running list of complaints, I used to be on a modem and if you think in-game Punkbuster updates are bad with broadband, try doing it on a 26.6 dialup, especially when your upstream is half of your downstream.  It's bad enough you have to deal with packet loss and high ping, but the stupid client validation would hitch the game, usually right when you're getting shot at or about to make a shot, and since it did this about once a minute or so it made for an unplayable game.  Oh yes, and let's not forget the undocumented "we will check for a connection for 5 minutes before actually letting you into the program" feature, great for all those who want to play offline.  I thought my computer had locked up the first few times I ran into this.  I had to find out myself to set all the punkbuster cvars to 0 to keep THAT from happening.  What about those less tech savvy who just want to get their game on?

Anticheat measures should be silent.  They should be out of the way, and non-intrusive to the gamer.  I'm all for kicking cheaters off servers, but you shouldn't have to drag regular players kicking and screaming through hoop after hoop just to play.

Never had any of those problems myself. i must have been lucky.