The Premium exclusive strategy guide for Aftermath is now available for all Premium members. This 107 page guide from the strategy experts at Prima will teach you everything there is to know about the all-new crossbow, the four new maps, Scavenger mode, and the new vehicles in Aftermath. Download it from the Strategy Guide section here on Battlelog.

Available to download now for all of our Premium members.

The December Premium exclusive competition has come and gone – and we are happy to announce the list of the winners.

As a special Christmas bonus, we decided to up the winners from 5 to 10 per platform. Expect an email from DICE shortly where we give you instructions on how to claim your prize from the DICE Store.

Congratulations to all of our winners, and thanks to everyone for playing! See you again in 2013.

December Premium Competition winners per platform
PC WINNERS
BlueHawk47
Inomooski
D4N_2k
Dr_tabascoTea
Pavkut
0_PhD_0
IRageQuitHard
DieWreckedKill
thurst0n
Xsari

PS3 WINNERS
BADNOISEINYOHEAD
noritchipa
mortalkombtmastr
HooLiGaN_Marmic
mozart-S
four20am
thieves055
DeeMuS-42O
huckleberr-e
Evil-G-Ferret

X360 WINNERS
HiTecRdNek
ELIMINATOR 1177
PerinealAbscess
AreS l Scorpio
StonedYankee
Noble Insolence
TVPH4L420
Kazo64
Okizz666
OneLeggedYankee

NOTE: If you believe you should have been contacted as a winner for an earlier competition, please check your email. We are sending winner notifications to your Origin ID email address.

We have started deployment of  a new server update on all formats. This update has three bug fixes (and nothing else):

Fixes immortality bug
We have identified and eliminated a bug where players in specific cases would be rendered invulnerable.

Fixes broken spawn points in TDM mode on Strike at Karkand
We have identified and eliminated a bug where players would only spawn in a few places on the east side of the map.

Fixes a crash in Gun Master mode
We have identified and eliminated a crash issue in Gun Master mode. To definitively eliminate this crash issue, we have had to implement a change so that players can no longer move in preround in Gun Master mode.

It usually takes ~15 minutes on consoles for these updates to be rolled out. On PC you should see these updates in about 24 hours on a majority of the servers. Note that during the console server update window (for 15 minutes) you will not be able to play multiplayer.

Battlefield 3: Aftermath is available for sale today for all players. You can purchase Aftermath for PC right now in the Battlelog Store.

For Xbox 360, Aftermath will appear throughout the day world-wide. As always, Premium members get all expansion packs with early access at no extra charge.

You can see the all-new crossbow and Scavenger game mode in action in the Aftermath launch trailer below.

Our efforts to keep Battlefield 3 a fair game continue. Here’s an update on how we are staffing up our anti-cheat department and decreasing turnaround times. Also: How you can help.

Fact: We receive literally hundreds of reports each day from our players on suspicious-behaving opponents. Our first call of action is usually to manually verify whether these reports are valid or not.

Fact: In the large majority of cases, cheat reports are not valid. By far the most common outcome of a report is that we can conclude that the player is simply awesome at playing Battlefield 3. We know it can sometimes feel like you’ve been the victim of a cheater – but the stark reality in most of these cases is you’ve simply met a great adversary.

Keeping the Battlefield fair is one of our top priorities. But making sure we don’t erroneously ban a non-cheating player is of course of utmost importance. That’s why we carefully investigate before banning anyone from playing the game.

More staff, quicker turnarounds
At the same time, we want to make sure we take swift action on proven cheaters. That’s why we have staffed up and decreased the turnaround time from report to action. Going forward, you will see quicker action taken on cheaters — specifically when it comes to stats wiping and/or banning them.

Finally, here’s a reminder how you can help us by reporting suspected cheaters. If you believe you have been the victim of outright cheating, the best way to report your concerns is to enter the profile page here on Battlelog of the person you suspect and click the triangle in the top right corner of his name.

This will open up a window where you can describe to us at DICE what happened. Please enter as much detail as possible, describing what specifically makes you believe this player has used unfair methods, and preferably include a link to the Battle Report for the match in question.

How to tell if someone’s been banned
One question that we get a lot is why person X is not banned when he is obviously proven to be a cheater. The problem is, there is no good way for normal Battlelog visitors to verify whether a player has actually been banned from play or not, since a cheater’s profile normally will stay visible but with reset stats.

This means that a player who has had his stats reset (but can still play) and a player who is banned from playing will look very similar on Battlelog. One way for you to get a better idea whether someone is banned or not is to look at the date of when he last played the game. But in most cases when you think someone should have been banned, he has. There’s just not any way for us to signal that on Battlelog at the moment.

We hope this small update has provided some insight into our anti-cheat work. Have a great gaming weekend, and thanks to our community for helping us in our ongoing anti-cheat efforts.