An Update On The Rewards Exploit
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[Deleted User]
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Hey Summoners, we’re happy to now have a detailed update for you all surrounding the recent rewards exploit and how we are resolving it!
The Contest is a highly competitive game, and this exploit allowed a portion of the player population to earn an unfair advantage over others within The Contest. This has far reaching implications across a variety of game modes, and in some truly egregious cases the exploit was used over 200 times to obtain in-game rewards that would have taken honest Summoners years to earn. In the past, we’ve discussed the fact that not all exploits are created equally and are therefore handled on a case by case basis. In this instance, the exploit was both avoidable and something that players have exhibited detailed knowledge of. It’s not unreasonable to state that those taking advantage of this over and over again in an excessive manner knew exactly what they were doing and did not stumble upon it by mistake.
Exploits like this devalue the efforts of both players that have spent countless hours (by circumventing the amount of time exploiters would have otherwise had to put into The Contest) and also devalues the efforts of those that have invested money into The Contest (by obtaining large amount of in-game rewards for no effort AND no investment). There is no world where the use of this exploit was a valid achievement in any capacity.
Further, these rewards are then used against fellow Summoners in game modes such as Alliance Wars, Alliance Quests and Arenas - potentially to win, potentially still not winning but making a fight that much more difficult for others. It changes the landscape of The Contest and has the potential to provide those that used this exploit to establish a significant unfair advantage. This is not acceptable, so we have taken action to address it accordingly.
Thank you to everyone for reporting this exploit, and to those that have also spent time educating their fellow Summoners on terms of service violations as well as industry standards surrounding how exploits like this are handled! We hope that our actions in addressing this matter help to re-emphasize confidence that existing players have in our dedication to fairness within The Contest!
- The exploit was resolved last week, and is no longer active in the game
- We have identified which accounts took advantage of this exploit, and how many times they took advantage of it
- We have started the process of removing items unfairly obtained through this exploit. It will take some time, but we are committed to reverting this exploit
- In addition to having rewards removed, players that abused this exploit in an egregious manner will receive a ban in the game.
The duration of this ban will depend on whether or not they have received prior warnings for violating our terms of service in the past. For players that have no history of prior violations this action will result in a 7 day ban. For some players that have received previous warnings, this action may result in a permanent ban. We have not yet started this ban process as it will also take some time, but we will be soon. As a reminder, this ban is only for those that illustrated excessive and repetitive abuse of this exploit - we will not be banning players that were playing as normal and happened to accidentally benefit from this exploit. We will however still be removing those extra rewards.
The Contest is a highly competitive game, and this exploit allowed a portion of the player population to earn an unfair advantage over others within The Contest. This has far reaching implications across a variety of game modes, and in some truly egregious cases the exploit was used over 200 times to obtain in-game rewards that would have taken honest Summoners years to earn. In the past, we’ve discussed the fact that not all exploits are created equally and are therefore handled on a case by case basis. In this instance, the exploit was both avoidable and something that players have exhibited detailed knowledge of. It’s not unreasonable to state that those taking advantage of this over and over again in an excessive manner knew exactly what they were doing and did not stumble upon it by mistake.
Exploits like this devalue the efforts of both players that have spent countless hours (by circumventing the amount of time exploiters would have otherwise had to put into The Contest) and also devalues the efforts of those that have invested money into The Contest (by obtaining large amount of in-game rewards for no effort AND no investment). There is no world where the use of this exploit was a valid achievement in any capacity.
Further, these rewards are then used against fellow Summoners in game modes such as Alliance Wars, Alliance Quests and Arenas - potentially to win, potentially still not winning but making a fight that much more difficult for others. It changes the landscape of The Contest and has the potential to provide those that used this exploit to establish a significant unfair advantage. This is not acceptable, so we have taken action to address it accordingly.
Thank you to everyone for reporting this exploit, and to those that have also spent time educating their fellow Summoners on terms of service violations as well as industry standards surrounding how exploits like this are handled! We hope that our actions in addressing this matter help to re-emphasize confidence that existing players have in our dedication to fairness within The Contest!
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