Battlefield 2 Security Holes Exploited, Login Problems Reported

Electronic Arts' new PC multiplayer shooter title Battlefield 2 has shown a number of technical problems in its short shelf-life, despite extremely impressive sales: the game's initial demo was hacked to enable extra operability, the initial release of the game contained teething issues, and EA's initial attempts to address the problem just made things worse. The latest issue is a security hole exploited by disgruntled players to unlock all weapons in the game for a random set of 5 million accounts. As explained by a forum poster and alleged game modifier in the Total Battlefield 2 boards, "Since EA didn't take the time to respond (or maybe even read) our emails about various stats-server security holes, it clearly showed us how much they care. Therefore, we came to the conclusion that modifying 5 million accounts wouldn't be that big of a deal. That being said, accounts with ids from 40,000,000 to 45,000,000 now have all of their weapons unlocked. What will be next week? Perhaps we'll give everyone their Distinguished Service Medal, or maybe we'll elevate everyone to the rank of Sergeant Major." EA was quick to reply, posting an official update that claims to have addressed the security issue, though not specifically announcing that the problems were due to hacking, and the company has begun restoring the affected players to their proper ranks. However, no sooner was one problem resolved than another cropped up: users were unable to connect to EA and GameSpy's account servers, rendering the game unplayable. In response to this latest issue, Electronic Arts has posted another update on its official Battlefield 2 website today, promising a fix for the problem within the hour.