'Virus' killing off Borderlands 2 characters, XBox users warned

Published October 30, 2012 3:39pm

Players of the popular "Borderlands 2" game on the Microsoft Xbox platform were advised to take precautions to prevent their characters from getting killed off by "modders."

In a forum post, Gearbox Studios community manager Chris Faylor said some users violated the Xbox Live Code of Conduct by "sabotaging" characters of legit players.

"Recently a few users have begun violating the Xbox Live Code of Conduct by using an external application to maliciously disrupt the experience and sabotage characters of legitimate Borderlands 2 players on Xbox 360. Fortunately it’s easy to avoid this scenario," Faylor said.

Faylor, who said the apparent issue does not affect players on PC or PlayStation 3, added a patch has been submitted to Microsoft and will be released soonest.

In the meantime, he advised Xbox 360 players of Borderlands 2 to play online only with trusted individuals in non-public sessions.

Also, he advised players that before ceasing play, they should select "Save and Quit" from within the pause menu while their character is alive.

"If after the death of their character players find themselves at the main menu of Borderlands 2 instead of respawning in-game, be sure to immediately select 'Continue' to resume playing as that character," Faylor advised.

A separate article on Sophos' Naked Security blog said the culprit appeared to be a software flaw.

It said users of the first Borderlands release were infected in 2009 with a virus linked to shields within the game that were referred to as "glitches" shields or "marcus bobblehead" shields.

"The infected items would make players invincible and drop loads of in-game cash into their accounts, but couldn't be disposed of. It spread like a virus within a game, infecting players who encountered an infected player," it said. — TJD, GMA News

Tags: virus, computervirus, borderlands, microsoft, microsoftxbox