Adventurers,

This incident has been a critical point that has impacted both staff and players. We have stressed that there will be zero tolerance for this and as such we have performed an intensive search for every ounce of impact into the game. 

We will not be going into too much detail on how exactly the bug was able to happen, as we don't want to give out any ideas. The core issue was that through a certain set of steps, players were able to log into the same account/character twice. That's as far into this as we're going to go. Multiple changes and fixes have taken place to ensure this cannot happen again, and even if it does happen - it does not result in anything being duplicated.

Impact

Bans

24 Permanent account bans have been processed. None of these are eligible for appeal and will remain banned forever.

16 accounts have been banned "for investigation" - While we did not find direct evidence of utilizing this bug, theres too much evidence to ignore. We assume most of these will be permanently banned, but in order to bring the game up as soon as possible, we initiated it early while we continue the investigation.

At this time - we are confident that no other bans will take place. All abusers have been dealt with or are in that "investigation" group.

Daric / Segel

We've removed over 24 billion daric and segel from the banned accounts, various mule accounts (most got banned too), and quite a few players that indirectly benefitted.

We are still investigating here, and theres a chance that more money could be removed from the game.

Items

We've removed 94,773 consumable items (Buffs / Scrolls of Destruction / Scrolls of Protection mostly). Any stack of items that were affected by any duplicated consumables were flagged and removed.

Through this, any items affected by these consumables were also removed from the game. Any items blessed from a duplicated SoD. Any items that received a meta from a duplicated source item. Any items that received a shift from a duplicated source item. The list goes on, every single association was flagged.

As such - we removed over 200 equipment items as well.

Questions / Answers

This will be updated over time as more questions come in.

Question: I'm banned but I did nothing wrong! Can you unban me?
Answer: No. If you're banned, there was more than enough evidence for it. The ban isn't being lifted.

Question: I logged in and my item is missing but it wasn't duplicated! Can you restore it?
Answer: It was definitely affected by a duplicated item. As we did a wide sweep, there could be a small case for the item to be restored (or partially restored or purchase refunded if bought from vendor). Please reach out to support with as much information as you can provide and we'll either provide you with more information or a resolution. (Note - as this is a lengthy investigation process, we are not going to commit to a resolution timeframe.)

Closing

The entire team is deeply saddened by the choices of a few players and the impact that they had on the game, both directly and indirectly (our time investigating). We're now confident in saying that the game is more than 95% clean from impact (possibly only some money left) and as such we've restored the ability to trade.

Separately, thank you to all of the honest players who had to deal with this as well. You have our deepest respect and sympathy. We hope you enjoy the event and we're eager to get back to working on new and exciting releases for all of you to enjoy!

- The Ares Team