Seriously, is PB (Punkbuster, a form of Anti cheat software) the worst piece of software ever made? Every time i have used it in the last decade, it refuses to update itself. In fact its such a common problem that I suspect it doesn't auto update at all and instead just waits for the ideal moment to boot you from your game.  I wish it were my fire wall but it isn't that easy, for whatever reason even if I let it through my firewall it continues to fuck up.
 
Battlefield Vietnam had better things to do than work with PB, but I only play it for a little while and never bother  to fix it.
 
Call of Duty 2 never would work until I went to their site and figured out how to update it. That was 5 hours in, and after fixing it there still seemed to be hella autoaimers.... ( I got really good at sneaking up on them at least, i could kill one once every 12 lives!)
 
Battlefield 2 never would work until I went to their site and manually Updated it. That was from install.
 
Battlefield Heroes didn't work about 3 hours in because it stopped updating.
 
Call of Duty 4, it has PB but now I use a different firewall, maybe when I unblock it it will actually work? Fuck no....  Im 40 hours in and it keeps booting me from games.
 
America's Army 3, the only thing that can defeat a force of Highly trained US soldiers, is a PB timeout.
 
Modern Warfare 2 works great! Oh wait it uses VAC.
 
Battlefield Bad Company 2, a truly modern game, im really excited to play on the new maps, too bad my game decides after 90 hours of play that it's PB can no longer update itself 
 
So now, as I reinstall PB setup (The manual file operation doesn't seem to work.) all I can say is.
 
Fuck PB....

Yeah, it's pretty gay. Kicks you from all servers on BF2 if you have overlay UI on and since alt-tabbing in BF2 is slower than shit it's gonna be a hassle if someone's messaging you on Steam. I think DICE should just make a deal with Valve to use VAC or something, because PB is seriously impairing their games.

It's useful, in threads when using an acronym to at least use the full word once, for the sake of clarity.

Is this still a problem?
I remember having trouble with this when playing BF2.. Awesome.

" It's useful, in threads when using an acronym to at least use the full word once, for the sake of clarity. "

Yeah, it's pretty shitty, PBsetup usually would fix most of my troubles though. 
 
At least it's not as bad as trying to get a Red Alert 3 game going with GameSpy, hol - E - shit.

Yeah the updating mechanism is pretty stupid. Games are supposed to do it automatically, but there always seems to be cases of conflicts every time somebody patches anything that uses it. EA should either develop their own anti-cheat software to run on their servers, or stop trying to compete with valve in the PC market and adopt Steamworks.
 
The one thing worse than PB is the authentication software BF2142 used: PACE. Nothing broke my game more consistently. I would have to quit playing it for months at a time before the reset method would suddenly start working again so I could launch the damn game. Then upon getting in, there was the occasional unexplained PB kick. But At least the game would launch.

I'm surprised people still use PunkBuster after all this time. It seems like everyone prefers VAC over PunkBuster.

" I'm surprised people still use PunkBuster after all this time. It seems like everyone prefers VAC over PunkBuster. "

i'm beyond done with multiplayer EA games on the PC. Once I found out there was no conceivable way in which I could play battlefield 2142 ever again, I had HAD it. Apparently you have to install, then patch it with an earlier patch (which they don't provide) and THEN upgrade with the expansion, then patch with the new patch, THEN you might be able to play. and since that xp i had no interest in cost 30 bucks, I was out. I haven't had any beef with PB, but I think thats because I don't play any games that use it. Doesn't seem like I'm missing much.

Every game that I've played that has used PB has caused issues for me. Hate that piece of software.

" @Mikemcn: I think you've just come up with the best idea for a Giant Bomb thread ever. "

PB is balls, and always has been. I wish this game used Steam's VAC instead.

I never had a single problem with PB in BC2. BLOPS PC ran flawlessly (except for what /demo_enabled 0 fixed) from day one. I'd like to know what's wrong with my computer.
 
(PC behind DMZ in the router and no anti-virus software installed, no firewall, etc)

Bad Company was made to be played on a console (PunkBuster isn't required on PS3).