Hello, my fellow mice. I am here today to talk to you about a problem that has plagued us throughout known history, and continues to plague us to this very day. Many have encountered this nefarious menace, and have cursed their ill fortune at losing a first to the crow-winged rats, particularly so for the past week. I am talking of course, about hackers.

"But How," you may say, "we already have the perfect solution! We'll just have our awesome mods ban them!" and indeed, this has long proved satisfactory in keeping these unseemly pests from bothering us. Since November of 2010, our moderators have banned an average of 1,834 people per day, 1,425 permanently (the majority of which were hacking), and 409 lesser bans for things like racism, and vote ban abuse. However, in the (not so) recent past, our mods have been dealt a grievous blow in their ability to fight this teleporting menace. They've had their ability to permanently ban anyone removed, and changed to a maximum ban of 15 days. This attack came right at our dear Transformices' moment of glory, when we were finally able to purchase the long-vaunted strawberries. The rulers of our glorious kingdom did this to protect their paying customers from a possibly misguided and mistaken banishment.

However, most of the people being protected by this action have never purchased a single strawberry. This great game began the sale of fraises on the 14th of June, 2012^. After that date, we see a change in the trend of bans. Instead of a few days of intense hacking, followed by several days of peace, until the cycle repeats itself, (due to the IP bans being cleared by an update), We instead see a constant, steady stream of hackers, whose 15 day bans have worn off. This creates a much more stressful environment for the keepers of the peace, and nearly all of their time is being devoted to banning hackers.

On the 3rd of March, 2013, 14,358 people were permanently banned*. Since then, excepting a short week-long period near the end of may, there have been hundreds, if not thousands, banned daily for hacking. Clearly, recently, hacking has become either much more popular, or the software required to do it has become much more available. As a result of this, our mods have been overworked nearly constantly, and are being yelled at by hundreds of mice, whose anger is greatly misdirected.

Recent events have resulted in a nearly perfect storm of immense proportions, unseen since the early days of Transformice. The combination of increased hack availability, increased player interest in hacking, and decreased moderation powers, have resulted in most hackers believing that they can do whatever they want with no consequences. Thus, my proposal is this.

1: Add a Permanent IP ban list, that is not reset every time the game updates.

2:: Add a native ban log, with both username and IP, that is easily accessible on either a webpage or an ingame menu. Ideally, it would have several sorting options, such as grouping by IP, and a search feature.

3: Either restore the mods' powers to their former glory, or implement a 3-strike policy. (Anyone IP banned for 360 hours 3 times is added to the permanent ban list)

4: Add a clause to your ToS stating that modifying the game for personal advantage can and will be punished by a permanent ban, and could possibly cause you to lose access to anything you've bought with fraises.

Something must be done. If things continue as they are, I would not be surprised if the mods' frustration with their inability to make a lasting difference causes them to resign from the position, leaving things in an even worse state than they are now.

Sources:
*http://tfm.holzed.com/bans/
^Ediz, and his IRC trivia bot.

tl;dr: skip to the numbered list at the end for my suggestions to kill the hackers