Bioware suspend players who took advantage of Star Wars: The Old Republic’s ravager exploit

star wars the old republic ravagers operation exploit bioware EA

Bioware have started handing out suspensions to the players who took advantage of Star Wars: The Old Republic’s ravager exploit.

Players are receiving everything from a warning up to a permanent suspension, depending on how much they profited from the exploit.

Back in January Bioware found players were exploiting a bug in the Ravagers operation. Players found they could teleport groups to the treasure room at the end of the operation without needing to fight through the instance, meaning they could repeatedly ransack the loot chests and make an easy profit.

At the time Bioware said that they’d patched out the exploit and they would go through the data to work out how to punish those that had taken advantage of the bug: “We know who used it, who they invited, how many times they exploited, when they participated, credits gained, and whether they gained a crafting pattern from reverse-engineering.”

Two weeks on Bioware have decided how to act. Guilty players will be emailed with a warning “along with anywhere between 1-7 days of in-game suspension time.” In that time they lose forum privileges, too. Bioware say the most egregious offenders “have received a suspension up to a permanent suspension.”

Those players will also find high-end gear and crafting materials obtained through the exploit will be deleted from their account. Also stripped from those accounts are the credits and commendations gained through the exploit. “Any player who exploited (regardless of severity) and gained a crafting pattern is likely to see that pattern removed.”

“We didn’t take these actions lightly and reviewed every account to determine where we could be lenient,” Bioware say. “From our end, this was a no win situation. We feel responsible for allowing the exploit to occur and remain in the game for an unreasonable length of time, but we also cannot and will not condone cheating. Thankfully, a large majority of our players didn’t exploit at all, but unfortunately, some of those who did have been with us for a long time, even all the way back to launch. It breaks our hearts to see a few of those loyal players partake in the exploit. Still, it would be unfair to not punish those players, and so we had to take action.”