Bungie Clamps Down on Credit Exploit

Bungie has slammed the ban hammer and carried out credit resets on some 15,000 gamers they have identified as exploiting a challenge for extra credits.

The exploit allowed gamers to complete a challenge 20+ times through intentional network manipulation (disconnecting) earning them more credits than they should have rightly received. These gamers will find, by now, that their credits have been reset and that they have been banned for a 24 hour period. The one day ban is less of a punishment and more of a means of letting them know they've been caught cheating.

Bungie had this to say on their weekly update:

While we understand the compulsion to race to the top and earn all the good gear before any of your friends do, network manipulation and other easily detectable workarounds that fall well outside of standard gameplay will result in a credit reset and several other punitive measures designed to knock you back down to a level playing field with all the rest of us who are playing the game without having to resort to exploits.Bungie has also stated that this is not directed at those who are simply playing the game grinding out credits on the Gruntpocalypse Firefight mode in Score Attack or abusing the Target Locator in the ONI: Sword Base mission. Keep in mind though, that the effectiveness of both of these will be greatly reduced by Reach's first playlist update coming this Tuesday.

A full list of these updates can be found at the Bungie Weekly Update page, see external link.

So, is this an appropriate punishment or merely the least that Bungie could do? Should Bungie have been more harsh in this matter?