Monopoly Secrets

I’ve been reading reports that players paying hackers real world $$ for Monopoly City Streets cash.

Apparently, hackers have found a way to hack their computer’s communication with Monopoly’s servers to trick them into giving certain players enormous sums of cash.

Can anyone confirm this? Have you seen it happen?

If this is happening, the developers should be able to put some simple safeguards in place real quick to prevent it. Oh, I don’t know, maybe they could flag accounts for review that somehow earn $1 trillion in the middle of the day?

The official blog update today promises system maintenance, starting this morning, to deal with multiple account cheaters.

The game will be down for 3 hours starting sometime between 10 and 11 AM Eastern. During that time, systems will be put in place to eliminate the multiple accounts many cheaters are using.

And the official word on multiple accounts? One account per player, please. But we’ll let you have up to 5 per computer, just in case you’re sharing it with your family.

In other words, cheaters can now only use 5 accounts per IP address… A good change but still probably too easy to work around. I expect to still see plenty of multiple account abusers until more stringent measures are put into place. A good additional step would be to allow users to report abuse within the game.

Lots of players are still very angry with the unannounced drop in rent values yesterday. Some have even quit the game.

What do you think the developers should do to get rid of multiple account cheaters, for good?

What about families? Is anybody playing with their kids? In spite of all the setbacks, it is a very family-friendly game.

There’s an interesting discussion brewing of cheating on Monopoly City Streets. If you create multiple accounts, for any reason, should that be considered cheating?

A small number of people have made an art out of creating multiple user accounts. Just take a look at the Global Leader Boards. They must have spent the last few days doing nothing but creating new accounts and transferring the startup money to their main user. (Sounds incredibly boring to me.)

But what about creating another account or two as a back up plan? Or to help out in rough times? Should this still be considered cheating?

I think so. If the game was designed for you to have 2 or more characters, it would have given them to you with one login.

What about alliances? These groups of players are working together and actively sharing resources for a variety of purposes. Some are just trying to help each other out, while others are actively attacking “any bad players.” (Some are just out to steal, kill and destroy. Shame on you.)

I think alliances are great, as long as it’s for noble purposes. They can bring a whole new dimension to the game.

Are you part of an alliance? Which one? How big is it?

Something has to be done about the cheaters in Monopoly City Streets.

After only a couple days of live gameplay, the leader boards are filled with people that have cheated to amass enormous unrealistic fortunes.

Hasbro and the programmers behind this game need to find ways to crack down on these guys, and quick. If they don’t, they risk loosing the ability to have real competition in the game. Not to mention, all the serious players are getting annoyed.

How do you think the cheaters are getting away with this?