'The Division' news: Player gets permabanned after making a photo mod for online game

Promotional Photo for The Division's Second Global Event "Assault"Ubisoft official website

Players are having divided opinions on "The Division" after one of them gets banned from the online game permanently after he made a photo modification (mod) for the third-person shooter.

Matti Hietanen, the creator of the said mod recently got banned permanently by the moderators of the online shooter game. His mod for the game allowed photos to be taken in-game so players can create picture-perfect screenshots and still of the rather fast-paced action game. Apparently, the mod was quite powerful since it can be used to control the weather, time and other factors in-game so players can set the stage for digital photography.

Hietanen called his mod Cinematic Tool and allowed users to disable "The Divisions'" user-interface (UI) and change the camera angle and position. Unfortunately for him, Ubisoft, the game's developers deemed it an illegal in-game activity and banned Hietanen and his mode two days after he introduced it. The developer stated that Hietanen was breaching the code of conduct for the game and had to be banned.

Apparently, Hietanen used illegal programs like Cheat Engine to make the mod. Still, Hietanen took extra precautions and made efforts to disable any possibility of cheating using his mod by disabling the camera tools in the Dark Zone, the game's player-versus-player (PvP) area. This was not enough, however, since he still got banned.

This is also unfortunate for other players hoping to make use of Hietanen's mod for taking creative photos in-game as "The Division" currently has no tools for such. Hietanen, on the other hand, has been making similar mods for other graphically gorgeous games like "Battlefield 1," "Star Wars Battlefront 2" but only got banned in "The Division."

Right now, Ubisoft creative director Julian Gerighty has contacted Hietenan via Twitter and said to him that they will look into the "permaban" they made against him. This means that it might get lifted, though the same might not be said for Hietenan's mod.