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Battlefield 3 sells 11 million, new DLC announcement expected next week

EA had an earnings call earlier this week, which gave their executives a chance to shout about what a good year they’ve had. During the course of the call, chief financial officer Frank Gibeau mentions that Battlefield 3 has sold more than 11 million copies, boosting EA’s market share in the “Western FPS market” by 11 points to 24%. The rest of that share probably still belongs to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Battlefield 3 devs hiring “anti-cheat” admin

Last week we took a look at Battlefield 3′s escalating problem with hackers and cheaters after one hacker group claimed to be able to use a Punkbuster exploit to get innocent players banned. EA told us that “we are actively looking into the specifics of this issue and we are confident that we will have a permanent solution in place shortly.”

While we await that fix, it looks like DICE are already taking further steps to tackle hackers. Eurogamer have spotted a job ad looking for an “anti-cheat administrator” who will perform “an absolutely vital function to secure the online experience our games represent.” Will this be enough to push back the aimbots?

Battlefield 3 hackers use exploit to ban innocent players

Like every competitive shooter, Battlefield 3 has a problem with hackers and cheats who use exploits and aimbots to boost their stats. Recently the problem seems to have become more serious. The unofficial BF3 blog mentions an instance in which one of DICE’s own moderators was uncovered as a hacker. Now a group of hackers are advertising an exploit that allows them to get innocent players banned.

The author of this Reddit post got in touch yesterday with links to hacker forum discussions revealing exploits that would trick Punkbuster into ejecting honest players. A number of threads on the Battlelog forums have been started by players claiming to have been banned from Battlefield 3 games without cause. There are plenty of reports of servers and leaderboards dominated by bots racking up hundreds of kills.

DICE have recently said that they’re ramping up anti-cheat measures and have been issuing bans en-masse to cheaters they’ve been catching, but among Battlefield 3 players there’s increasing scepticism over the levels of security offered by anti-cheat program, Punkbuster.

PC Gamer Digital Episode 7 – The Battlefield 3 Special – now available on Steam!

You’re captivated by the elegant figure of an F/A 18 Super Hornet as it roars over the desert and—BRAP B-BRAP!—syncopated machine gun bursts ripple past your head and cut your gawking short. You sprint to cover in time to watch a tank shell devour your last entrenchment and spit out its dusty remains. Alone you’re dead, but above you a UH-1Y Super Huey chops through bursting sun rays and scatters reinforcements like dandelion seeds (if dandelion seeds carried rocket launchers, of course).

I do love hyperbole, but this really (virtually) happened to me. The emergent drama of Battlefield 3′s large-scale multiplayer battles is hard to overstate, which is why we’ve dedicated the latest episode of PC Gamer Digital, which is available now on Steam, entirely to Battlefield 3 and the renowned Battlefield series at large. More details below!

Battlefield 3 devs ask for feedback on future tweaks

Battlefield 3′s core gameplay designer, Alan Kertz has opened up DICE’s Battlefield 3 patch ideas for feedback on Reddit. The discussion, spotted by Games.on.net, has been going for a few days, but includes frank assessments of many of Battlefield 3′s unlocks along with a suggestion from Kertz that “the player is limited in choice due to a few accessories being the clear winners in almost all categories.”

The list of suggested balance changes haven’t been decided on yet. DICE have decided to go to the community for some feedback first.

Crysis 2 most pirated PC game of 2011

Crysis 2 was the most pirated game last year, with nearly four million illegal downloads according to a report on Torrent Freak. The numbers were collated from stats put out by public BitTorrent trackers, and suggest a slight decrease in overall piracy numbers compared to 2010.

DICE hint at Battlefield 2143 with another Wake Island Easter egg

Battlefield 3’s Wake Island might as well be called “Easter Egg Island” due to the amount of content tucked away in obscure corners of the map. What is this hint? A futuristic warrior hiding up a tree? A gunship hidden at the bottom of the ocean? Neither, according to bf3blog.com – who also posted the above image. It’s the numbers “2143” painted on a wall. It could be a hint that the eagerly-awaited sequel to future manshoot Battlefield 2142 is in the pipeline, or it could be that one of the developers wanted to make a note of his PIN number.

In addition, a Reddit user found a toy dinosaur tucked in a cave on one of the maps. Apparently there are six scattered across the map, with this YouTube user on a mission to find them all. To be honest, they’re the most rubbish in-game toy dinosaurs I’ve ever seen. If I was a child and I got one of these for Christmas I would be bitterly disappointed. They make Barney look like the monster from Cloverfield.

Battlefield 3 tops list of games searches for 2011

What were you most interested in this year? According to Google, it was Battlefield 3 that topped the list of games-related search terms on the internet for 2011, making it into the company’s annual top ten of fastest rising queries for the year.