Program created to execute in-game characters in case of mob rule

11 May 2015

A program was developed especially to kill the character DarkSide in Guild Wars 2

Due to what had been seen as an affront to the gaming community, an online character called DarkSide in Guild Wars 2 was executed in-game with the help of a program developed to take over his character.

In a case of online medieval justice, the court was a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) and the defendant was DarkSide, a player accused of treachery, deceit and theft at the detriment of the gameplay.

According to The Guardian, the person controlling DarkSide had developed his/her own program, which allowed them to teleport, steal from characters and kill some of the game’s leading characters with the press of a button.

After significant evidence was recorded by players in the game with video capture software, the moral guardians of the online game decided that the only punishment worthy of the crimes would be the demise of DarkSide.

To seal his fate, one of the game’s heads of security, Cleary, developed his own program, which took control of the offending character’s profile, stripped him of all DarkSide’s clothes and forced him/her to jump off a bridge to their death.

“We don’t need to see it in-game, 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,” said Cleary to those accusing him of the in-game crime.

Cleary’s swift justice had been met with much praise in the community with one commenting: “That’s pretty gangster”.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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