The New World community manager announced that the studio had to ban over 1200 players who used an exploit to duplicate in-game resources!
Today Luxendra, community manager for New World at Amazon Games Studios, posted on the game forums a resume of the recent actions the dev team was forced to take against players, who consistently used a popular exploit to duplicate in-game items and coin.
According to the official statement recently the same type of exploit, that was used to duplicate armor and coin, was also used to get the same results with housing items.
In the beginning of the month the team took initial action against the exploiters, Luxendra explains, which resulted in many account bans. They successfully eliminated around 80% of the duped Coin and Item value from the in-game economy.
Yesterday, on November 15th, AGS was able to identify where the items landed and banned 460 more player accounts. This number includes players, who used the exploit the first time and the most recent attempt to apply the exploit method into the housing system of the game.
This, according to Luxendra’s post, resulted in over 98% of the remaining duped items and in-game money being removed from the game’s economy completely.
There was a small amount of players that accidentally used that exploit, but did not take advantage of it. These accounts will not suffer a ban or any other punishment.
According to AGS research and investigation, the duplication exploits did not impact the endgame progression too deep. “Our investigation has not shown a significant uptick of max level gear”, Luxendra explained.
This graph represent the official results from the investigation AGS did. It means that less than ten percent of the level 60 population used the exploit. Ten percent of the level cap players is very small amount, however it could have still impacted the game much more seriously and it’s surely good news to hear AGS managed to get on top of it, even if it was a bit slow.
SIde-note: Luxendra’s bio on the forums could use a bit of a colorful touch-up to be more heart-warming when we check it out.
Here is the full message as it was posted on the forums:
Bad actors discovered through packet manipulation, a bug that allowed players to duplicate in-game coin and resources – a similar attack against a different game system was also recently used in housing. Together for these exploits we have permanently banned over 1200 players, removing their items from the economy, and cancelling their trade post listings. We took decisive action against obvious bad actors with a first pass on November 2nd, permanently banning accounts of the most egregious offenders which eliminated over 80% of duped Coin and item value from the economy.
The remaining duped items have continued to hurt many player’s experience. It didn’t affect all players or worlds equally, and also more significantly impacted players who were pursuing end game goals and gear. We apologize for the impact this has had on some of our most dedicated players. It’s disheartening to see others cheat to obtain what you have worked so hard to achieve, while also hurting the economy in the process. It has taken us time to unravel and identify where the items and coin landed, but as of November 15th, we are glad to report we have permanently banned 460 additional players from either the original trade or newer housing exploits. By doing so we were able to remove 98% of remaining duped items and Coin in the game. The small amount of duped items that remain were a result of players who stumbled upon the duping issue but did not take exploitive action, and will not be banned.
We’ve also investigated how these duped items have impacted the end game progression. Our investigation has not shown a significant uptick of max level gear. The below chart shows that the number of players with even a single piece of max level gear is still quite low. We did a specific deep dive into Voidbent Armor, and while some of the armor was duped, much of it was removed from the game through bans and it is still a very rare item. We are still examining the narrower list of items involved in the housing exploit and there will be further permanent bans there as appropriate.
We are working to improve our response time and will remain vigilant against players who violate our ToS. Exploits will not be tolerated, and penalties can and will include permanent bans for those players using them. Our team is working tirelessly to continue our investigations, and preventing future dupes from happening by correcting or replacing game systems that can be attacked. Please continue to report any issues you see and we will continue to take immediate action.
A big THANK YOU goes out to our community members for bringing this to our attention as well; we appreciate all of the information you provide to help keep Aeternum safe and fun! While it took some time to investigate and track down where the duped items were funneled, our telemetry tracks all these transactions, so rest assured we can and will find all the bad actors.
Source: New World Forums
This act is a good sign. The exploit put so many players away from the game for good and large numbers of players decided to put their adventures in Aeternum on a pause until this is resolved.
AGS opened up the New World Public Test Realm and you can take a look at what is coming in the November update already. This will be the biggest patch for the game to date and will bring a lot of new stuff and changes to existing system and gameplay mechanics.
As usual, we will keep you updated with all things New World. All existing guides will be updated to reflect on the changes this patch will introduce. New guides continue to be worked on, as usual!
P.S.
As a regular visitor, you may have noticed this bridge in a number of Featured images on namely Weapons Guides. We are now calling this bridge Ruby’s Bridge! It is known.
