Item Duplication Exploit – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

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Dear rangers,


We have had better weeks.

The item duplication exploit in our September 28 game update could be fixed quickly once we knew about it. But: In the six to seven hours that the bug was live, it had already dealt so much damage to the game's economy that we had to react -- not just in our own interest, but in that of you players as well. Otherwise, the balance of power between players would have been completely corrupted from that point. No maker of competitive games would accept such a fate for their own game easily.

Of course we have ourselves to blame for bringing the bug into the game, but we would like to point out that if we had learned about the exploit sooner, we could maybe have avoided a rollback, because the damage would have been far less dramatic at an earlier stage. Bugs like these require swift action.

We totally understand that the rollback we performed feels bad for all of you who lost progress due to the procedure ("rollback" means that the whole game is reverted to an earlier state). To make matters worse, we needed to roll back a full two days of in-game progress instead of just one! However, a rollback was without a doubt the best option to restore the game as it was before the bug -- keeping a broken and highly unfair item economy was not an option.

When we were issuing our Gold Coins bonus to make up for the lost progress, we knew that it would make some of you very happy, but others would feel like they got handed the short hand of the stick because Gold Coins would be of little use in regaining e.g. upgrade items and equipment levels.
Also, the time spent in the game that was lost, which we used to calculate the Gold Coins bonus, might also not feel adequate for reflecting the actual work that you did in the game.
However, it is just not possible for us to find a type of compensation that meets all your individual concrete and perceived losses. The best we can do here is to offer something that feels alright for most of you.

We then made a mistake when we took away that Gold Coins bonus not just from players who had knowingly exploited the bug, but also from those who had stumbled upon it just by picking up random loot. This should not have happened, and we will address the issue by recompensating those players who should not have lost their bonus.
We stand by our decision to penalize players that have knowingly exploited the bug, since this kind of behavior is clearly named a punishable offense in our game rules. Whoever chose to actively duplicate hundreds and thousands of items in our game was well aware that they were doing something that they should not be doing, and they should not be surprised if we now hold them responsible for doing it.

As we had promised, there will be an additional global bonus for all of you because you were unable to play our game for almost a full day, and for bearing with us during this time. Also, players who had 30-Day Violent Damage Boosters or long-running Power Gels active when we performed the rollback did not get two days of usage restored -- we are aware of this issue and would like to address this with the global bonus. We will let you know once we have decided on what the bonus will be.

We hope that we have been able to show you more clearly which decisions we have made and for what reasons. We thank you for your serious, but always civil discussions on this topic in our forum.

Your Dino Storm Team


Item Duplication Exploit · What Will Happen Next?

1. All Gold Coins bonuses that were taken away will be restored done
2. Gold Coins bonuses will be taken away again from players who intentionally and without a doubt tried to take advantage of the exploit done
3. Further penalization will take place for accounts who exploited the bug to a particularly high degree done
4. A global bonus will be given to all of you (bonus code is available) done