The developers behind the popular MMO Guild Wars 2 took an interesting approach to punishing a known hacker in the game by publicly shaming and executing his character.

The hacker, whose main character name was J T DarkSide, had been using a combination of exploits and cheats to ruin other players’ fun by teleporting across the maps, dealing ridiculous amounts of damage, and escaping death.

After multiple players took their frustrations with J T DarkSide to the forums (along with some video evidence), an ArenaNet Inc employee decided that some unusual retribution was in order.

Game Security Lead Chris Cleary logged in to J T DarkSide’s character, stripped off all of his clothes, and forced him to jump off a bridge. He then permanently deleted the character, effectively “executing” the hacker.

“We don’t need to see [the cheating] in-game, sometimes good video evidence is enough for me to track down who it was,” Cleary said in a forum thread that had been complaining about the hacker. “In this case, the video was enough for me to find out who it was and take action. Thanks for the video, and to accompany your video, I give you this video of his account’s last moments. Oh yah, he’s also banned.”

Cleary later added that other accounts belonging to the user were also banned. Forum members applauded his actions, saying they wished more games dealt as harshly with cheaters.

“Finally a dev who gets what needs to be done about hackers!” one user wrote. “Also, I have a suggestion… make this weekly, I will anticipate your videos with a lot of joy.”

Cheating is a serious problem in online games, and many publishers have systems in place to deal with problem players.

For example, the Valve Anti-Cheat System (VAC), which is used by many games on Steam, is used to permanently ban cheaters, and there have even been well known esports players who received VAC bans, ending their careers as quickly as a failed drug test would for a professional athlete.

If you want to see more of J T DarkSide’s shaming, you can watch the full video posted by Cleary here.

Screenshot via YouTube