800+ Account Suspended
/As its been widely known, this past Friday December 17th, Dimensional Ink Games has suspended over 800 accounts due to an exploit regarding the Fortify Menu introduced in Game Update 119. Below is the Official Post from the Senior Community Manager, Mepps.
“Account Actions Taken Today
Today we indefinitely suspended over 800 accounts for egregiously exploiting a bug introduced in Game Update 119. Pending further investigation, we expect to convert most or all of these suspensions to permanent bans in January.
This action is not comprehensive. Also in January, and again pending further investigation, we expect additional accounts to be suspended or permanently banned. We also expect to address at least some of the ill-gotten or even accidental gains for everyone, regardless of suspension or banned status.
We will provide updates as we have them in the new year. No suspension appeals will be entertained.
The Exploit
The launch of Game Update 119 came with a significant bug and exploit impacting all systems in the game that utilize fortification. This bug and exploit are now fixed. We do not expect to need to disable the fortification system going forward.
Many players reported this issue. Many players discovered it and refrained from using it. Many players helped us real-time track down the problem. Thank you!
This was one of the most obscure and challenging bugs / exploits I have personally seen in these past (nearly) 12 years. The team worked all hours and vigorously to find the problem and get a fix out. Even so, the issues still took nearly a full week to resolve and that was too long. I apologize for this delay - we apologize for this situation - and we will work to prevent similar events in the future.
On that note, we have a development update scheduled for January with our anniversary, and I expect we will at that time provide greater insight and transparency into what happened.
Account Issues
Resulting from or related to the primary bug and exploit, a few other bugs appeared that could have put characters into a bad state - missing feats, missing Origin Augments, and the like. These characters will be fixed up in the new year.
For situations that prevent you from playing the game, please open a ticket with our support team at http://help.dcuniverseonline.com. For lesser issues, please refrain from opening tickets and know that we will correct the problems.
Thank you again for your patience. Please accept our apologies. And please, let’s get back to saving the world.”
As Mepps explained it, there was a bug that effected the Fortify menu. To elaborate a bit further, this bug allowed other items to be used as “food” in order to level items that weren’t designed to use them such as using Exobytes to level up Artifacts. Since the release of GU119, the Fortify menu has been turned off and on in order to track the bug and to get it fixed. During this time, the bug would appear and players either ignored it, used it by accident, or abused it. How this bug occurred we do not know and we on the Sourcewall suggest not sharing it with other users in order to replicate it, but to always report it to the Developers using the Exploit Forum Section. Be sure to always report and and all Bugs as well.
Since the announcement of the Suspension, players found themselves with a 21 Day Ban. The Developers will return from the Holiday in January and will further dive into the suspensions to make the determination of those that will be Banned or have their suspension lifted via the tracking method tools they have on hand. Mepps has been vocal and engaging with players on the forums this past weekend.
As with any Bug/Exploit, there are those that may have been Suspended by accident and Mepps address that here:
“For the folks worried about the innocent, I did it by accident, I only did it a few times crowd getting suspended - they were not. The accounts suspended right now are a fraction of the people who used the exploit. The total number of people who used the exploit is a miniscule fraction of the players that logged in over the last week.
Most people did not exploit the bug. Most people who came across it used it a couple times, likely with curiosity or mistake, and then stopped. Some people used it quite a bit. Some people used it quite A LOT.
We can see everything you did - in regard to what happened in the fortification systems and also surrounding behaviors about getting the bug to show up for you. In this first pass, we erred on the side of caution and only banned the most. egregious. offenders.
There is no accurate narrative where johnny-day-one stumbled into the exploit and got suspended. Now, that said, there will be further investigation next year before these suspensions get converted into permanent bans.”
Obviously this brought up existing exploits such as Speed Hacking in this post:
“Also, we take speed hacking very seriously and encourage anyone who sees a cheater to email cheater@dcuniverseonline.com. We ban dozens of accounts every week.
The PROBLEM with speed hacking is that it is a constant arms race to prevent, and we are a free to play game where people can create a new account to continue their idiocy without much friction.
The PROBLEM with economy exploits is that the cash moves around and there isn’t a way to get it back without hurting everyone.
The good part about this exploit is that it is specific to your account, stays on your account, and is obvious to see.”
During the testing of GU119 and Episode 42, a similar bug was reported:
“A similar bug was reported once on the test server. The exploit was not. It also happened twice internally in the past 6 months.
We attempted to track it down. We couldn’t. It was super rare not on a live server (with people trying to make it happen). This rationale isn’t going to fly.”
Many believe the Ban isn’t the way to go and Mepps is reassuring players how they handle problems when they occur like this:
“We could do whatever we want. We’re going to do what we think it appropriate, and we’re going to try to waste as little CS, platform, db, engineering, and design as we possibly can. Because this kind of thing can eat up weeks, and we don’t have weeks to spare.”
This isn’t the first time Dimensional Ink Games has done bans as punishment. Back in December 2019 there were Bans given due to the Economy Exploit which resulted in not only Bans but also a Tax due to the amount of In-Game cash was flushed into the game. This also brought about the disabling of trading and mailing Cash to characters.
Dimensional Ink Games will be going through those suspended accounts in January to determine if those accounts will be banned or not. They will also be detailing a bit more about what went down with the bug and how it was fixed to allow a more transparent look into what they did. Currently there are no said plans for any compensation but if there are any, we’ll find out in January when they return from the holiday break.