Intrepid players of the Battlefield 3 beta (which began last week) have taken to hacking servers to boost the player count from 32 up to 128. Joining such a server, however unwittingly, may result in your EA account being banned.

An official post from developer DICE on the game’s forum (seen above via Rock, Paper, Shotgun) asserts that playing on a hacked server can compromise your account and “may lead to having your account banned by EA.” A follow-up post states, “If your account gets banned it does mean any EA game you have on your account would also be unavailable.”

While reports of any actual bans have yet to surface, this is still troublesome for beta players. The hacked servers appear in the official Battlefield 3 Battlelog, the game’s browser-based server selection site, and as such are relatively easy to join – thereby making it quite easy to get banned and locked out of other EA titles you’ve purchased.

Hopefully rather than issue scores of bans, DICE/EA will use this as an opportunity to test and bolster the security of their servers. In the meantime, beta players should tread carefully and avoid servers running any extra game modes or player counts higher than 32.

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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  • espaghetti - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link

    Thanks for the heads up Craig!
  • zdw - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link

    There's hidden 128 player support in BF3, which on one of the larger conquest maps would be just awesome.

    I hope they relax these arbitrary limits after the release of the game. Obviously, there is demand from players.
  • ContractMan - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link

    EA could care less about their players or what they want.
  • seamonkey79 - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link

    How much less?
  • webmastir - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link

    ^this.
  • B3an - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link

    Oh god not another one... You mean couldN'T you idiot. Basic English here!

    If EA could care less then that implies they do care.
  • augiem - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link

    You must have one awesome life, dude. Kudos to you!
  • Proxy711 - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link

    Anyone else think its completely absurd to get EVERY EA game on your account banned for doing something this minor in a beta?
  • JarredWalton - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link

    This is stupid EA death-threats at their worst. Go ahead and ban an account from the BF3 beta if you must, but that's where this should end. As zdw notes above, the real problem is that the BF3 beta code was apparently easily "hacked" (tweaked really) to allow more than 32 player modes. I'm betting there are some major bugs when the game officially launches, with rampant cheating, haxors, etc. resulting in bans because EA would rather ban than spend the time fixing their code.
  • Ratinator - Monday, October 3, 2011 - link

    You do understand what Beta testing is do you not?

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