Molyneux: Fable 2 Pub Game exploit was intentional

by Dustin Burg { Sep 16th 2008 at 12:30PM }

Fable 2 Pub Games cheaters, exploiters and evil doers, we have a special announcement for you. You've been tricked! Yup, tricked and by Lionhead themselves.

How so? Well, according to IGN and their discussion with Peter Molyneux during a recent Fable 2 hands on event, Molyneux made it clear that the Pub Games exploit was intentionally added. GASP! Molyneux goes on to warn those who cheated that they'll be in for a surprise when launching Fable 2. What sort of surprise? We dunno, but we're thinking it may have to do with that whole "good vs. evil" thing. Maybe cheaters will be jailed, lashed with a leather whip and forced to eat cabbage for seven days and seven nights. Oh we can't WAIT to see what's in store for cheaters!

[Via Joystiq, Thanks Jonah F.]

Tags: fable-2, lionhead, lionhead-studios, pub-games, xbla

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Mister D Barton @ Sep 16th 2008 12:38PM

Glad i canceled my pre-order...i want to enjoy the game, not be punished for stupid shit like this.

mike k. @ Sep 16th 2008 12:49PM

nobody cares about your purchasing habits or whether you're pre-ordered or canceled a pre-order for a game.

Loban @ Sep 17th 2008 12:27PM

Umm, I don't think you will be punished. It's only a game and if you believe your character is a representation of your own personality, then if you cheat, your character should also be consider a cheater by the other characters and NPCs in the game. I think it's kind of cool actually. If you truly did cheat on the PUB games, then you probably would have played your character as evil anyway.

MyGirlHatesBox @ Sep 16th 2008 12:41PM

Well I cheated so I'll let you know... andI figured thats what they were doing.

L4MB @ Sep 16th 2008 11:21PM

Yeah, right. most people who saw this were like "OMG, this is awesome! think of all the 1337 gear i can get!" it's pretty far fetched to think that lionhead would be tracking this kind of thing.

guidedbyvoip @ Sep 22nd 2008 5:55AM

If you read comments from almost exactly month ago (suspicious), you would see a *lot* of people guessed it was part of the game. "Unintentional" button sequence? K.

Scott @ Sep 16th 2008 12:45PM

This is fantastic! What a great idea. You know what they say...Cheaters never prosper.

Mr.Ironic @ Sep 22nd 2008 4:28AM

Yes but isn't it only the cheaters who say that? So there's more people to cheat...

joeybeast @ Sep 16th 2008 12:52PM

My bet is the people in the pubs are going to find out you cheated and turn on you.

iFester @ Sep 16th 2008 12:55PM

I would assume it would only fault you if you link your created Fable II character to your pub games one.

Besides, who wouldn't want to grow up Silver Spoons style? All you younglings, look that up on IMDB.

sambob117 @ Sep 16th 2008 12:56PM

Darn you Molyneux! Better get a backup gambler going. This'll take forever...

BL4CK @ Sep 16th 2008 1:07PM

I will admit that I cheated. And I for one am glad that they did this lol. I can't wait to see what happens to my character once the game comes out. :D

cosmic @ Sep 16th 2008 1:06PM

lol that's awesome

Bravo6 @ Sep 16th 2008 1:07PM

Yeah right, I think they're just covering their asses now.

guidedbyvoip @ Sep 22nd 2008 6:01AM

Here's the test: Since the game went gold in early August, they would have to patch the game immediately, probably day of the game release. If pn first boot there is an update, I think you would be correct. If there is no update and cheaters are "surprised"...well they'd planned it. IMO

Shloonk @ Sep 16th 2008 1:11PM

Oh I hope they try to jail me! I was going the "evil" route anyways, so this could be cool. Cant wait to see what happens.

Tim @ Sep 16th 2008 1:21PM

How about those that just did the "exploit" a couple times. I always played the game conservatively with max bid and tended to exit at 16 or higher and a couple times when I started the game I forgot to increase the bid and then hit the left trigger while they dealt the hand.

So if this is in fact true, that they planned this, one would hope that if the system is able to detect it that it will also know that it was only done once or twice.

Radicoon @ Sep 16th 2008 9:44PM

So cheating once or twice isn't the same thing as cheating?

Neil @ Sep 16th 2008 1:22PM

Sounds pretty cool, can't wait to see what this turns out to be.

john paul @ Sep 16th 2008 1:24PM

How do they figure out how you know if they cheated, because i legitimately won a metric shitload of gold on the spinnerbox and keystone, i hope its no the "its obvious you cheated cause you got a crapload of money"

Trogdor @ Sep 16th 2008 1:30PM

I really hope it only applies to characters linked to the cheating gambler profile...if it screws over every character that would be messed up.

John @ Sep 16th 2008 1:33PM

Heh, I did it once to check it could be done then went back to racking up huge debt. Does this mean I could be both slammed as a cheater and have loan sharks after me?

Awesome! Love it when games do stuff like this. :)

Premo @ Sep 16th 2008 1:37PM

Cool idea.
For Fable, this is a new level of interactive gameplay.

mikelhend @ Sep 16th 2008 1:43PM

According to the interview posted yesterday on 1up, it will manifest itself as your character getting black teeth that "scares people when they look at you." But also in that interview, Molyneux said the exploit was "unfortunate". Uhhh... that doesn't sound "intentional". The "intentional" part was them adding the black teeth thing at the end of the dev cycle to "punish" cheaters.

Ron @ Sep 16th 2008 1:47PM

I think this is pretty funny, those people that cheated are probably going to cheat regardless, I think the worse that can happen is they'll loose all of the gold they made once they launch the Fable 2 game.

silentshadowxp @ Sep 16th 2008 1:46PM

i doubt they put it in there intentionally... but i do believe that once they realized people were doing it they decided to find a way to get back at people for it instead of simply patching the game... that's pretty creative... i hope the pub owner pummels you and takes back all the cash that you cheated to get haha

SirPoonga @ Sep 16th 2008 1:48PM

It's not an exploit then so therefore it isn't cheating. The game was designed to do that. If you are playing the game the way it was designed how can that be considered cheating?

SadisticHam @ Sep 16th 2008 2:04PM

Fable is about choice. They gave you the choice to cheat, if you wanted.

But like everything in Fable, your actions will have affects.

Doll @ Sep 16th 2008 2:06PM

I'm glad i didn't cheat, I wouldn't be able to play the game if i wasn't good.

James @ Sep 16th 2008 2:16PM

Hmm, I smell something fishy here....

Vcize @ Sep 16th 2008 2:26PM

Wait, so the exploit is patched and no longer there, right?

Dang it, I want to do it now specifically to see what happens. I was going to go the evil route anyway..

Jack Tretton @ Sep 16th 2008 2:37PM

It'd be one thing if the cheat/exploit was 'viral' in nature, i.e. Molyneux & Co. orchestrated it, making it appear like Joe Gamer stumbled onto the exploit by accident, complete with YouTube demonstration and such. But to simply say, "Yeah, we put it in there on purpose! LOLZ! Good jorb finding it!!!!1!!" seems a bit suspect to me.

Dracula Jones @ Sep 16th 2008 2:37PM

I got voted down at Joystiq for saying so, but this is definitely Lionhead pulling the old "glitch as feature" scam. It's the equivalent of a chef burning your dinner and calling it caramelized. It has nothing to do with immersion or creativity on their part, it's an easy out.

chad @ Sep 16th 2008 3:06PM

No wonder it was voted down. You have absolutely zero proof, which makes your claim absurd. All we have to go by is Molyneux's statement, and there's no reason why he'd lie about it.

Dracula Jones @ Sep 16th 2008 3:12PM

How soon we forget.

"If you are wondering about a 'much talked about' exploit, just ignore it (and know that a patch is on the way)"

Direct from the Fable II development blog.
http://community.lionhead.com/blogs/fable_2_development/archive/2008/08/19/3021565.aspx

Reported in this post on this site:
http://xbox.joystiq.com/2008/08/21/lionhead-working-on-patch-for-pub-games-exploit/

If they were working on a patch, then that's pretty clear proof that this was unintended. They probably just decided to scrap it and send the dev team over to work on content for Fable II (patches or DLC).