"One Shot, One Kill, No Skill: Why a Regular Gamer Started Paying to Cheat at Video Games

The tale of how a man from Canada became a person who pays a monthly fee to cheat at video games is like many stories about good people who slide toward the more nefarious extremes of life."

Full Article - Kotaku

Sad - I know I'm not even a fair player in BF3, BUT when i do rank up or complete an assignment it is so much more rewarding!  

To all of my clan mates - thanks for dealing with a jumpy, over caffeinated, nervous old man that shoots at his own shadow too often and sorry in advance for taking the odd shot at you, if I haven't taken a shot at you yet, I'm sure I will soon.

Careful bigconn - you're liable to get a knife in the back!

LOL - wont be the first time OR the last!

I cant belive the article actualys makes it sound like the  what the guy was doing is ok.Has the world really gotten to the point where these clowns are made out  to be normal people getting thier fun by cheating? Oh ya it is ok because I paid money to do it just like I paid for the game. Well I paid for the game also and I expect to play on a level field like the rest of us. I say every one that  does cheat be burned alive!

Too long. Thought this was going to complain about Snipers, but Sniping does take skill. But yeah cheating is bad.

I read the entire article, which was a bit longer than I expected it to be.  At the end, I did not sympathize with the subject of the article or relate to him, as I expect the author tried to invoke from the reader.
My personal stance on cheating in games like BattleField 3 is firmly set against it, in all forms.  I am thankful that DICE seems to take cheating so seriously, even though I feel that it will never be removed from the games I play.
I have reported few players for cheating, but when I do - I drink Dos Equis.

There isn't a 'sniper' class in BF 3, it's recon.  Sniping from 600 m away on the side of a mountain, top of a building, crest of a hill, or the team spawn and being able to adjust for bullet drop and bullet time, doesn't equate to skill, nor is it of any use to your squad or team - it's just away to increase/maintain your k/d ratio. Its a TEAM game and every class has a role and brings something unique to the squad/team, recon being no different.  Ideally the recon class is played in one of two ways imo:

Aggressive Recon: pushes the front lines, places a spawn beacons in a useful discrete place [generally behind enemy lines] for the benefit of the squad, uses the tug to reveal enemy movements, runs with the squad, arm with, PDW/Shotty/Rifle with low powered scope or iron sights.

Over Watch Recon: provides squad over watch protection on objectives, and is always positioned to cover the squads targeted objective. Uses the MAV and/or High Powered Scope and the Q button to mark enemy positions on the mini map and ideally communicates via voip, or utilizes the Soflam to laser enemy targets on large maps.  

Both these ways of play contribute to the squad/team and take advantage of the classes powerful tools,  taking pot shots at random enemies/or the oppositions equally useless sniper from mount sniper does not. PFC.DustBunny is the best Recon I've ever played with [and unfortunately only a few times], he is awesome with the MAV & VOIP,  selflessly calling out and marking targets like the squads guardian angel.  I remember steamrolling the opposition on Noshar Canals Conquest with PFC.ProForce in a LAV.   He called out/marked enemies on the objective, alerted to any incoming re-enforcements, and when or where it was safe to repair.   He was the teams true MVP and was likely the biggest deciding factor in the match.

Sadly, 99.9% of BF 3 Recons, play "Bush Wookie Sniper", enjoying an afternoon of peace and tranquility on Mount Useless.

Yeah I Hate "Snipers"

LOL, Let the flame wars begin. :P

ps. I particularly love it when you have a Bush Wookie Squad Leader and they won't give up the position; that's when their uselessness gets taken to new heights as the squads only spawn point outside of any capped objectives,  instead of the potential two useful extra spawn points [SQ. Leader and a "Recon" Squad Spawn Beacon], you get one >>>>>  Destination No Where.  BTW, No "Recon" should ever be the SQLeader either because the squad loses part of the benefit of the beacon, that extra spawn point.

pss. The points for "Recon" Spotted [MAV/TUGS/Soflam] Squad kills should be equal to the points for the kill to encourage team play.

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tl;dr: No such class as sniper, it's recon; Bush Wookies are useless; Yeah, I hate "snipers".

I just don't see the point of it. Half the fun of the game is going from 20-6 to 6-20 and back. I was in a thread discussion on the Battlelog forums and we were asking why the don't do a hardware guid ban of some type to send out a message. Ban a few $400 graphics cards or that nifty i5 2500 cpu they have and it will stop tomorrow!

I really hate spawning on some guy and finding out he is as far away from the action as possible. It's a long jog.
Makes me want to knife him and grab his extra canteen for the long journey.

Way I see it, even if I'm not capping as much, or racking up kills, when I'm counter sniping I think of the number of soldiers that don't get killed by taking out those snipers. In turn I'm helping them to cap objectives by killing the people that want to kill them.

I always just try to play the game and enjoy it. If you spend to much time thinking about what if or what the other person could be doing the fun goes away.

I just don't get it...
I don't understand the whole rationale around cheating.  At the end of the day, the people who do this are only cheating themselves.  No one benefits from a result that is not truly earned.
I don't understand the mentality that leads someone to deliberately go out and undermine another person's enjoyment of something.  It's rather like the graffiti "artist" who defaces public or private property for their own kicks.
Last of all, I don't understand how the author of the article could be so accommodating of these people.  It reads almost like "this guy has some real problems so we should accept poor little old him".  Get over it!!!  At some point in this miserable individual's life he would have been told that to impinge on another person's right to enjoy or participate in something for your own negative reasons is just plain WRONG!!!
We have all paid for the right to play this game, and cheaters effectively "steal" from us each time they engage their cheat codes.