Marvel Comics' Punisher #1, courtesy of Comic Collector Live 

After we got our answers back from Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten regarding its newly announced punishment for people determine to be cheating its Gamerscore and Achievement Point systems (but before we saw your comments on the previous post), we saw a couple of areas that still hadn't been clarified to our satisfaction. So we whipped up a couple of additional questions and shot them over to Whitten via Microsoft's PR agency. Here's what Whitten told us in response to our follow-ups.

How long is the period of time during which Microsoft will affix the label of "cheater" to offending Xbox Live members?

We intend to remove the label over time, although the original achievements will remain reset. We don’t have a specific time frame that we are detailing right now. In the end, it is up to the individual player to prove that they won’t do it again.

Is the rescindment of Achievement Points done on a per-achievement basis or a per-game basis? In other words, if someone cheated their way through half of the campaign of Halo 3, but never finished the game before your punishment was handed down, can he or she complete the rest of the game fairly and still receive the corresponding Achievement Points for the second half of the game? If not, why not?

Per achievement. If a gamer is found to be cheating, we will erase their entire gamerscore and they will be unable to regain all previously earned achievements. Those members will still be allowed to legitimately gain future achievements they had not previously unlocked, including from games where they were found to be cheating.

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