Be careful of the mods you create for Ubisoft's The Division, as it might get you banned from the game forever. That's what happened to Matti Hietanen, who brought his Cinematic Tools mod to The Division, giving players the ability to take stunning screenshots by adjusting various in-game elements like the weather, camera angle and UI. Unfortunately, Ubisoft saw this as cheating, so he's now been permabanned from the game.
As PCGamesN reports, Matti Hietanen has been making this mod for a couple of years now, releasing it for games like Battlefield 1, Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and most recently, The Division. It's designed to make it easier to take beautiful snapshots of the in-game worlds. Such screengrabs can be truly beautiful and showcase that there are more to these games than simply the next quest to complete, or the next enemy to shoot. The worlds are gorgeous.
Lovely day in New York // The Division pic.twitter.com/8FGwMsicob
— Petri Levälahti (@Berduu) February 4, 2018
With games with no official photo mode, or no chance to sit back and look around without fear of getting shot at, it's not easy to appreciate that. Cinematic Tools makes it possible.
Ubisoft didn't see it that way though and has handed Hietanen his walking papers.The statement it sent him said:
"We have detected recurring actions on your account which are in direct breach of our code of conduct. Please be aware that we have taken the necessary steps to preserve the play experience for others and this has resulted in you receiving a permanent ban. You will therefore be unable to play Tom Clancy’s The Division."
At least he seemed quite chipper about the whole thing, stating on his official Twitter announcement that the whole thing was worth it.
Whoops.
Worth it tho. pic.twitter.com/TbRT7aepFd— Matti Hietanen (@Hattiwatt1) February 6, 2018
Image source: Petri Levälahti/Twitter
