Furious chatter suggests DICE has had to drop the Battlefield 3 ban hammer on a player once so valued he was promoted to moderator.

Fansite Battlefield Blog reports the player, whose preferred platform was PlayStation 3, had been given extra privileges as a trusted community member, like the ability to delete Battlelog forum posts.

Apparently those privileges were removed, and the player’s statistics wiped, after he was believed to have been caught hacking.

The case has become something of a rallying point online for Battlefield 3 players who feel DICE and EA have not done enough to keep hackers and cheaters out of the game and its leaderboards, but some players have defended the alleged hacker, claiming those at the top of the ranks earned their place with skill.

The Battlelog forums are rife with threads on the matter, many of which have been locked and deleted, with some users claiming even mentioning the accused hacker’s username is enough to earn a temporary ban from other admins.

DICE banned and wiped hundreds of exploiters, cheaters and hackers in December, and introduced new anti-cheat measures earlier this month.

Thanks, games.on.net.