Newsflash: People still play Final Fantasy XI! Amazing! In fact, enough people play the MMORPG that Square Enix, the game's maker, recently cracked down on exploiters. The company temporarily banned around 400 players and perma-banned another 550.

The offenders are accused of using a bug that allowed  "players to create multiple items for certain treasures and rewards in areas such as Salvage and Assault by exploiting the game system."

Perhaps there's a bright side to the bannings. Final Fantasy XI players banned from the game may have a lot more time to ride their bikes, bake some pie, and otherwise do stuff that's not about staring at a computer..or they can switch over to World of Warcraft.

Ever been banned from a game? What did you do? And be honest.

Update:  An anonymous G4tv.com reader sent in a tip that some Final Fantasy players are pretty disgruntled over the bannings, and are seriously questioning the fairness of the punishment. Here's a link to a banned player who points out that, given the difficulty in FF XI and the rarity of some drops, it could be that players thought the exploit was part of the plot!

Source