Welcome to the home of the Auto-MBL - a large scale ban list system, collecting data from thousands of member servers - please see the "About Auto-MBL" link for more details. PunksBusted is home to a thriving community of server admins encompassing all PunkBuster enabled games. Our forums can also be visited using the links on the left. From all of the PunksBusted staff, we hope you enjoy your stay.

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EA Digital Illusions CE AB has contracted with Even Balance, Inc. to integrate PunkBuster™ Anti-Cheat software into the soon to be released title known as Battlefield: Bad Company™ 2. We will soon be opening a section on our website to support PunkBuster™ for Battlefield: Bad Company™ 2.

Our primary sql server run out of diskspace, so I had to switch to secondary server to get everything running again.

Streaming should been fine all that time.

There will be downtime in near future because I need to get primary server also back in action, when that happen, I can't tell yet.

Sorry about downtime.

This is more than an opinion piece. This is the end of IW products in this community and a more sinister side to this. There is anger building and IW are trying to stop it with vague, "maybe" , "let's see how this develops" platitudes.
Please link your friends to this news item here at PsB.

There is some Horrific news out of a podcast with Rob Bowling, community manager at IW in and interview over at BashandSlash.com about what Modern warfare 2 for the PC will be. There will be, No PB, No more dedicated game servers, No game Admins running them and the Mod/map Community is Abandoned completely with no tools and no way to change the game!! This also impacts the game server providers leagues etc. IW has just announced the end of any customer content and the freedom to play the game the way we like.

Here is the link. Listen to the podcast and read the followup.
BASH 123: Pwnt! at BashandSlash.com

Also goto the online petition and add your name.
Dedicated Servers for CoD:MW2

All you dedicated Server admins and mod/map makers just got thrown on the virtual garbage heap without so much as a thank you for making their games what they are today. Now that you did all that hard work, they'll just take your money to built a system that locks you all out. IW feel they can go it alone now. "Thanks for all the fish".

This is also a very serious long term threat to free gaming everywhere. They see money being spent and they want it. IW are clearly saying they will force you to do it their way, or hit the road! If you don't become just an average player then losing you as a customers just isn't in the numbers, so goodbye! This new model isn't about anything more than a way to bring in more money beyond just selling the game. This is about controlling every segment of gaming and later charging for it. For a long time game companies have looked fora model where you don't buy the game but where you subscribe monthly to play it. You can bet the other game companies will be watching because if this works they will jump in and once it's the norm so will the billing per month be the normal way to play FPS games.

There has been much discussion around the net about these systems and where game companies wish to take them. They still want our money and these game companies are thinking in terms of consoles now in how they do it. So PC's need to fall into line with that model and online FPS is just another path to make more money from. Once this model becomes more widely used, your added content will cost all players money. Free places to play will be no more. They can say it isn't in the plan now, but dressing up a pig still makes it a pig. You see it in consoles and mmorg's and it will come to FPS. They want everyone to pay a monthly fee. The basic online game maybe free to play online, but if you want to go past that, then sign up and for pay content.

Don't be fooled by this, 'it will make it more accessible for everyone' line. That simply means more customers that later when they turn on the pay content portion of the IW.net system. I don't believe. 'our intent is not this', line either. Intent only means today, it doesn't mean it won't happen after they get this up, running and debugged. In my opinion just like history shows us when systems like IW.net have been created, that it is nothing more than a distribution and billing system. It steals our freedom to decide.

The PC gamers and communities are not the same as the console gamers and we don't want to be! This will kill our freedom, creativity and much more. It will become just another way to dip into our pockets and nothing more.

Please listen carefully to this interview in it's entirety and pay special attention to what he says and what he doesn't say. Especially when he claims not to know, or should that be, IW just keeping secret their intentions for this system later. It's very long but the further in you go and down to the last second you will hear just how devastating this really is. It will be harder to rebuild a community once it is gone, if at all.

I for one will not support this. They won't be getting my money and I'm just a an average player demographic. Get the word out to all the other admins, clans and leagues. We can't stop it now, but we can certainly hurt them and hurt them badly for treating the core of their sales. Then they will see how the not so average player impacts their bottom line.

Sept. 1: We will be doing some equipment maintenance within the next few hours. The site should only be down for a few minutes. The task at hand involves installing a new switch so it shouldn't take long.

Update: Sept. 1, 8:45 PM EDT: The new switch has been placed in service. Still working on getting it configured properly.

Update: Sept. 2, 9:30 AM EDT: Just about finished. JiiPee has a few more tweaks to do and we're done.

Update: Sept. 2, 4:20 PM EDT: JiiPee has done a masterful job completing the new switch setup and all systems are go.

Auto-MBL support has now been added for Wolfenstein. You are now able to submit new applications or edit existing accounts to add in Wolfenstein servers.

The pb_sv_logport required is 24434, as detailed in the Auto-MBL streaming wiki.

This announcement was made in the AA3 Forum, but in case you missed it:

Because of a security issue due to the coding by the developers, PsB had withheld support for AA3 streaming servers; however, that has now changed, thanks to the efforts of [CLS]Airborne, the Hazard AA Clan, Canonball, Magician, and JiiPee. PsB now offers full support to AA3 streaming servers.

We're aware that some people can not see the closed forums, are receiving mails that their servers stopped streaming while the servers are still streaming, certain errors while trying to update the banlist , signatures showing 0 servers and there might be a few others, but all of these are related to the down time from a few days ago.

The scanner is still catching up with the logs streamed, this problem will solve it self as soon as the scanner has caught up.

As many of you notice, we had a little unplanned downtime. Database server run out of disk space and it took a while until I got information "Houston, we have a problem..."

Well I took this time and made a master master replication setup, so now we have 2 sql servers serving same data. Also data transfer over 100Mbps network connection took many many many hours. You might think that 100Mbps is quick, but (our gig switch blew up recently) when you need to copy 250G of data, it's not very quick anymore.

But we are alive again and last I need to say that streaming was working just fine all this time.

Thanks, over and out! // JiiPee

Punkbuster will go in another great game. Here is the announcement: Activision Publishing, Inc. has contracted with Even Balance, Inc. to integrate PunkBuster™ Anti-Cheat software into the online multiplayer section of the highly-anticipated Wolfenstein™, executive produced by id Software™ and developed by Raven Software and Endrant Studios. PunkBuster Anti-Cheat features will be available "out-of-the-box" with the retail release of the game on August 4th, 2009. Here is the official news release. EvenBalance:

It's time for a little note to everyone. I'd like to report that the data center is doing an awesome job and we appreciate the work that they are doing. Their "Up-Time" is the best I have ever seen. I also want to mention that the PsB staff is busy doing an excellent job taking care of the many, many aspects of running the site. Remember that all of the staff, including me, volunteer their time and skills to the gaming community at large and are unpaid. The PsB staff work for the love of online gaming and nothing else and I hope you guys appreciate that. Donations pay the bills.

With that being said, PsB is still busting cheats (!!!) left and right! We all know that there are still cheats out there that are not detected yet but I hope everyone can see a positive difference in their gaming experience.

The current goal and original goal of PsB is very simple. That is to play a game that is not ruined by cheaters. That's it. That is the whole goal.

PsB started with 4 game server admins and the PunkBuster program created by a "Quaker" named Tony Ray. Quake 3 was what we played and cheaters were rampant. After many nights discussing and complaining about the same cheaters on the different servers, a light bulb went off and the first multi-server ban list was born. We shared this list amongst ourselves and banned any cheater caught on any of our servers. Get busted on one server, get busted on all servers! That's power in numbers! By reporting each cheater to the main list our noble goal was being realized. We were not thinking big at that time. We did not even consider anything but our own 4 servers.

About that time word got around as to what we were doing and more and more game server admins wanted to join the coalition against cheaters. It went from 4 to 8 to 20 to 100 to 1000 and on and on. The server admins, being a smart group, understood the concept of caught on one, banned on all. The cheaters figured it out late as usual. hahhah! Being busted as a cheater is a heavy price to pay thanks to all the members of PsB!

There are a lot of copy cat sites out there but PsB was the first and it's members are still the best! You guys "got it" and you guys are the real good guys in the gaming world. Me and the staff just facilitate the streams and ban lists. Yes it does take a lot of our individual time but on our end it's for a good cause. The real truth is that the members (and yes as you know, we do screen to make sure you are worthy of being a member) are the real hero's.

If you play a certain PB enabled game and are sick of the cheaters, get a group together and protect yourselves from the cheaters. There is power in numbers and and PsB pledges to support you. Our services are free and open for you to use. Your protection will be as good as you make it. Get the fellow admins of your game to join and you guys work together. Let's have some fun and play some games!

And the last thing I want to say is that 99.99% of all PsB bans are based off of the PB anti-cheat program. A lot of sites ban for a lot of different reasons of which may or may not be verified. We just don't do that. As the old saying goes, we would rather let 100 guilty players go than ban a single innocent player. The PsB ban lists are based on the PB program (and they do a damn good job if I might add). No half baked, flaky bans here. If a player is on our list, you can count on it. The only way bans can be lifted from our list is if Even Balance, Inc. (Tony Ray's company) says it was a false positive. We are not the judge and jury, we are only the list keepers.

Join PsB today, go kick some butt and kill your friends!

Take care,
DEFAIN
PsB Founder

Just wanted to post to say sorry about the brief outage. One of the PsB switches at the data center went out. It was a new switch purchased at the same time as the new server. It had only been in service for approx 5 months. They usually last almost forever. Weird...

Anyway, the the data center is loaning PsB a switch until I can ship a new one out to them. All is well in PsB land for now. Things might be a little slower until a new high speed replacement arrives.

Again, sorry for the outage.

-DeFain

Dear server admins and community friends.

A rather long news item but a very important one. We are finally able to report the impressive and important news about the new data server being purchased, configured and installed in the PsB server farm! It has taken us longer than expected to finally pull it all together. Even though we met the new server donation goal, we were still short approximately $1,200. This was due to last minute hardware specification changes. We felt it necessary to make the hardware improvements so the new server would better withstand the test of time.

To start out, we would again like to thank everyone who donated and for their generosity towards the server goal. That was quite outstanding! The money that was sent in is greatly appreciated and has been used in such a way that in the near future, the quality of services provided to you by PsB should greatly improve. Your donations are going to work for you right here at PsB!

It started out as a tough year looking back, with some bad luck thrown in to boot. In early 2008, we moved the PsB servers across the country to a new collocation facility with what we thought to be better DDoS protection. Along with moving costs, we lost two main hosting sponsors. Our old data center and sponsor, QwikHost, was unable to take the DDoS attacks. We were forced to move the servers out of their facility. Luckily, we found another sponsor pretty quick. They recommended a new data center in Texas. Just when we were settling in the new location, we realized the new DC couldn't handle our situation either. We had to move again. This time we found a well protected DC on our own. Unfortunately, during this last move, one of the servers was damaged. It has been on the fritz ever since. This is the server that is being replaced by the new server. And just when you think all that can go wrong has already gone wrong, something else happens. That new sponsor, goes out of business. PsB was on the ropes right about this time. Fortunately, with a lot of determination, brighter days were ahead of us.

There we were in a great new data center with no sponsor. That’s when ClanWarz came on board. Our luck had changed. With the new PunksBusted/Clanwarz team, we knew we were stable once more. We also knew that we could now move forward again but that all our plans and projects had been delayed by about a year.

The costs that PsB has suffered were not trivial, but everyone pitched in. Nobody gave up and for that, we are very thankful.

The server goal was set at and reached $3700 quickly after having drained the bank account. When we first set the goal amount, there was a set hardware path. However as real life would have it, new information came in just after we started the fund drive. We had to adjust so we could meet PsB's long term plan. We also took another look at our existing servers and costs to host them etc. We had to tweak the new server spec a little based on moving some services around to accommodate the new software that we have been developing, among other considerations. The new price came in a little higher for this server. That was the extra $1200 mentioned earlier. The hardware changes were necessary as it means a lot more computing ability down the road. It also means we can finally simi-retire the old damaged server mentioned above.

It is a tremendous cost to keep PsB running between hardware and collocation charges over a year. It's not like renting a web server that's for sure. It is unfortunate that most of what goes on is unseen, except for what you interact with directly. This is where we feel we must point out that Clanwarz is fully behind PsB's purpose and wants to help the community. They have done so quietly for many years now, even before they helped out with our hosting costs and this new server. Clanwarz has put their money down once again. Stepping up to the plate and topping up the funds that PsB needed for this new server and to get it racked. They simply said how can we help? Thanks to Clanwarz, PsB did not have to delay while we raised the extra donation amount. I'm sure everyone is more than happy about this and appreciates what Clanwarz has done to help, without fanfare, or asking for anything in return.

We want to emphasize to all of you that Clanwarz is a great company dedicated to help the admin and clan community and has done so repeatedly behind the scenes for a long time. PsB knows they are reliable and dedicated and therefore we have no problem asking you this: If you are considering a voice server especially or a game server, then click on the big Clanwarz link on our web page and have a look at what they have to offer. Clanwarz They have service just about everywhere in the world. If you need a Ventrilo server or Teamspeak server click those links. Check out the rest of their web site and see what we are talking about. Clanwarz has local service almost everywhere. Just look at all the locations; US, Europe and Asia. They also have game servers in as many locals as well.

Now to further news on what is happening here at PsB. The new server is racked. JiiPee and the crew are working hard on it. You may feel some delays, as he posted earlier, because vast amounts of data and some of our services are being moved around to different servers and sync'd up. The old server is a big 4u sized machine and has been removed from the rack to save on rack space costs. It has served us well, and will be used for an off-site backup server as well as for new duties of support and development work. It will still be used for a long time yet, just not on the front line at the DC. We will squeeze every ounce of work out of the old girl as we are able, for some time to come. We waste nothing. Her new home will be a spacious garage in the warm southern US with a broadband connection linked back to PsB. So there you go. Recycle, reuse and no waste.

There will be slow incremental benefits that you will see as the new server is brought fully online. One more or less in the immediate future is that you will notice things get faster. We also can now go back and focus on all those new admin tools, new features, website upgrades and especially cleanup of old legacy stuff with some major rewriting of that software. The main rewrite is a huge job that will take months to fully complete. It goes to the heart of our system, so it has to be done with great care before it is integrated over our main live system. Terabytes of data have been saved since day one PsB went online. It is more information than all other anti-cheat sites out there by an order of magnitude.

It has been over 7 years that PsB has been running and some rewrites have been in the works to advance PsB capabilities for some time. What is happening to our proprietary software will change hopefully and completely alter how PsB operates. Everything from getting a contributing account to how we collect information from servers. It will make our security, accuracy and verification far more sophisticated and advanced beyond anything yet available when completed. We are just now completing Phase One which included this new server. The next major phase will require many months of work with the small coding resources we have. They will work hard however because they, like you, also believe in what PsB does and specifically how we do it. We'll post important milestones in the news as they go live. You will notice in a few months that the website will change a little and evolve. However, most of the work will not be visually apparent because it will be happening to the systems behind the scenes.

Last but not least and very important: We will open a new funding drive for some of the less expensive items PsB needs to upgrade or parts that need to be changed out. Things like a new switch that is running out of room. A new KVM card for one of the servers needs replacing. Some ram upgrades and some HDD additions. There may be the need for a smaller server late in the year to handle some new work but it is not required to be as powerful or as expensive as the main servers.


PsB is strong and the future is bright!

Kindest Regards,
The PunksBusted Team

Welcome Rep6. Community generosity made it possible.