Bowling: I-Ward will "not rely solely on platform security" after PS3 crack

Infinity Ward community head Rob Bowling has said that it will no longer solely rely on the first-party security of consoles, following reports that Modern Warfare 2 online stats were affected on PS3.

PS3 Modern Warfare 2 players have reportedly had their stats hacked and, in some cases, fully deleted.

The news comes after PlayStation 3 was fully compromised by hackers this year.

One user on the IW forums described the situation as "horrible, just horrible".

"Games rely on the security of the encryption on the platforms they're played on, therefore; updates to the game through patches will not resolve this problem, unless the security exploit itself is resolved on the platform," said Bowling.

"Regretfully, Call of Duty games are receiving the bulk of the hackers' attention, due to its high player counts and popularity. However, the number of legitimate players severely outweighs the bad apples.

"If you are concerned about playing with players who are hacking, I encourage you to play exclusively with friends by utilizing the party or private match options in Modern Warfare 2 and Call of Duty 4 to avoid such players as much as possible until this issue is resolved by Sony.

"Let me assure you, while we are very reliant on Sony updating their firmware and security to address the core problem of this issue. We are looking at EVERY option available to us to help any user affected."

Bowling concluded: "This only applies to legacy games such as Call of Duty 4 and Modern Warfare 2.

"In the future we plan to adjust our approach to not rely solely on platform security and reduce the ability for this to happen in our games, as has already been displayed by the work Treyarch has done on Call of Duty: Black Ops to prevent similar measures."

To catch up on everything in PS3 Hackgate, including insight from analyst Michael Pachter and Braid developer Jon Blow, hit this.