SUPPORT NETWORK > FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS FOR: PUNKBUSTER

1.   I READ PB WILL BE INTEGRATED INTO THE GAME?
Answer:
Correct. Integration means that PB will operate directly with the game engine, so that PB has access to whatever it needs.
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2.   DOES THIS MEAN I HAVE TO USE PB?
Answer:
No. You will still have the choice of using it or not, it will remain optional. If you don't trust us that's OK, or if you just don't like PB no problem - you don't need to use it. But in order to play on Official servers, you must have PB enabled.
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3.   I READ THAT PB IS NOT VERY EFFECTIVE AGAINST CHEATS?
Answer:
We are very well aware of the fact that there is no way to guarantee a completely cheater-free play. There are always punks who find it funny to produce their own cheats and hurt the fun other players have when playing the game - I feel sorry for people who see a need to do that, it's beyond me why this is cool.

The usual cheaters downloads his cheats from cheater websites on the Internet, and just runs it. These are more than 90% of all cheaters. PB detects these publicly available cheats, and therefore detects and "eliminates" these cheaters. While this is not 100%, I really think 90% is far better than nothing. Many of the remaining 10% can be detected by using the PB Screenshot Facility Feature: The admin of the server will see exactly what the player sees. So any "visual changes" to the screen will appear in the screenshot.
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4.   DOES PB CAUSE LAG?
Answer:
In general, no. Unless you are on a very low bandwidth connection like 56k you should not have any lag. If you are on 56k PB may indeed influence your game play, especially if your PB software is being updated or a screenshot is being requested.
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5.   DO I HAVE TO UPDATE MY HARDWARE TO BE COMPATIBLE TO PB?
Answer:
In general, no. However, PB does push your operating system far more than other programs. In case your PC is running close to the minimum specs of the game there could possibly be some issues, yes. But there is no reason to assume that this will be the case for everyone. And if you do have issues you are welcome to contact us and we'll see if it's possible to fix this in some way.
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6.   WHY DON'T CHEATERS JUST HACK PB AND MAKE IT USELESS?
Answer:
PB is software like every other, and can be hacked, naturally. We have one main advantage though: PB can be updated within minutes and new versions are distributed. The PB System is designed so that PB Servers request and download new PB versions from PB Master Servers, and distribute these new versions to every client that is connected and running an old version. This auto-update process can not be deactivated and works in the background. As I said before, you will usually not notice that this is happening.
So even if some cheaters spend their time hacking PB... we can put out a new version very quickly, and detect these attempted PB hacks. Cheaters caught for attempted PB hacks will also be globally banned by us so they will not be able to play again (in AAO I guess they'd need to sign up again).
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7.   WHAT IF I'M INCORRECTLY DETECTED BY PB AND FLAGGED AS A CHEATER?
Answer:
While we do our best to prevent this from happening, it can happen and has happened as well in the past. Players are welcome to contact us as soon as such a thing happens. We will then conduct direct testing with them, and if we find that there is a false violation we will fix this and make a news announcement about it as well stating that admins should give players the benefit of doubt and assume they were not (caught) cheating.
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8.   DOES PB SCAN MY HARD DISK?
Answer:
PB does not scan your hard disk. PB scans your memory, and if it finds a working cheat there you will be busted.
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9.   DOES PB SEND ANY PRIVATE DATA SOMEWHERE?
Answer:
PB will not send any private data from your PC to any server. The only things it will send is:

a) screenshots if requested by the server
b) pb violations (something like "hey, this punk is using a cheat, bust him") which will result in you being kicked from the server
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10.   I STILL DON'T TRUST YOU... HOW CAN I BE SURE THAT YOU ARE NOT SENDING OUT PRIVATE DATA?
Answer:
PB is not open-source, so you will not get a chance to look at our source-code in anyway. However, look at it from this point of view. PB is being integrated into games, and this is not done for free. It does cost the producer money. What do you think will happen if information is published that PB does indeed send out private data on purpose? I think you'll agree that companies will no longer request PB support, and we'd be out of business in no time.
Also, we have a privacy statement on our website. Unlike most other programmers who offer software for download, we tell people in public that we take their privacy very serious - I doubt most of the freeware programs you run on your PC do that.
If you still don't trust us look at it this way: PB has been around for several years now. I doubt we would be where we are now if there are concerns about it. And you still have the choice to not use PB.
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11.   I STILL HAVE MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT PB, CAN I READ MORE ABOUT IT?
Answer:
Sure. We have documentation available for both clients and admins on our website at http://www.evenbalance.com - note that these are currently only for Q3 engine based games and that there may/will be changes in AA:O due to the Unreal Engine being quite a bit different.
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12.   I WOULD LIKE TO REPORT A POTENTIAL CHEAT OR HACK, CAN I?
Answer:
Sure.

Mail us at research@evenbalance.com and we will look into it.
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13.   HOW DO I KNOW IF I MUST UPDATE PUNKBUSTER MANUALLY?
Answer:
Most time Punkbuster updates automatically. If you can't connect to a server it might be a Punkbuster related issue. Contact the support staff to get more information.
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14.   HOW DO I MANUALLY UPDATE PUNKBUSTER?
Answer:
Visit http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=dl-aa.php and follow the instructions on this page.
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15.   PUNKBUSTER KICKED ME FOR "UNDEFINED REASON", WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
Answer:
Whole kick notification is this: "KICK NOTIFICATION: 'User Name' has been kicked for an undefined reason: YOU HAVE BEEN PERMANENTLY BANNED FROM THIS GAME SERVER VIA PUNKBUSTER ... GLOBAL PUNKBUSTER GUID BAN 'kick code' ". To see the reason why you were kicked, visit this link:
http://www.evenbalance.com/publications/aa-pl/index.htm#violations.
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