An Games programmer delivered a warning to potential cheats in Unreal Tournament 2004, via Atari's official forums yesterday, revealing that any gamer caught abusing the title will be banned permanently - which is good to see.

The Epic spokesman also revealed a new cheat monitoring system, updated from UT2003, which allows the monitoring of players at a master server level, the 'tracking and response system' resulting in the banning of one cheat already, 'Zellius'.

The forum entry also highlighted the under-hand tactics some people are willing to use to steal other gamers legitimate CD keys. "Don't send anyone screenshots or dumps of the registry entries showing your key. Don't download "hacks" because they may contain a CD key stealer, or worse" warned the post.

It was also confirmed that no staff at Epic, Atari, et al will ever ask for a user's CD key. You have been warned.

By Luke Guttridge