Diablo’s 1.0.8 patch went live yesterday, implementing some of the changes Blizzard have mused aloud about in recent weeks – magic and gold find bonuses when playing co-op, for instance, and notifications in multiplayer for Elite monster encounters. But it also introduced something entirely unexpected – a gold duping bug that saw some players acquire billions in a matter of hours. Blizzard promptly shut down the Diablo auction house in response, and have already plugged the leak – but refused player calls for a global rollback.
“After the release of Patch 1.0.8 this morning, we found that some players were exploiting a bug that enabled them to duplicate gold through the Auction House,” said Blizzard yesterday. “We’re working on fixing the bug right now, and bringing the Auction Houses offline helps us troubleshoot in a more stable environment while preventing further exploiting.”
Players reported that personal fortunes in the billions had been amassed since the exploit was discovered, and one player was rumoured to have raked in 371 trillion gold over the course of the day.
Others cited a separate issue in which players were buying gems for real money and transmuting them into gold, to take advantage of a gold floor which had decreased from .25 cents a million to .25 cents per 10m after the patch.
Blizzard said today that they had decided against a rollback, as “relatively few” players have used the exploit and its ripples had been fairly small.
“We’ve been able to successfully identify players who duplicated gold by using this specific bug, and are focusing on these accounts to make corrections,” wrote the developers. “While this is a time-consuming and very detailed process, we believe it’s the most appropriate choice given the circumstances.
“We know that some of you may disagree, but we feel that performing a full roll back would impact the community in an even greater way, as it would require significant downtime as well as revert the progress legitimate players have made since patch 1.0.8 was released this morning.”
Do you think they’ve made the right call?
Thanks, Polygon.