Important Community Update Regarding Recent Events
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Dear Screeps Community,
Today we want to share with you an open and transparent account of the recent challenges we've faced in Screeps. We believe that "transparency builds trust," and it's with this spirit that we approach this communication. Here is the story of what happened and how we're moving forward.
1. Uncovering the Exploit: The Genesis of the Issue
Our journey through this challenge began with a noticeable slowdown in our seasonal server, impacting the gameplay experience. Investigation revealed an exploit (known as "CPU stealing") used by some players to gain excessive computational power, leaving others at a disadvantage. This issue was not confined to the seasonal server but was also prevalent in the persistent world.
2. Enforcement and Reaction: Addressing the Violations
In response to these discoveries, we had to make tough decisions, including banning players who used this exploit. This led to an understandable outcry from those affected, pointing out other instances of ToS violations. This feedback prompted us to conduct a thorough investigation, revealing a shocking level of multi-accounting, with some players operating up to 10-15 accounts each! Our commitment to fairness necessitated a comprehensive cleanup operation.
3. The Fallout: Dealing with the Aftermath
The banned players' reaction escalated quickly. We faced review bombing, hacking of other players’ accounts, DoS attacks on our infrastructure, and the leaking of stolen game code. We understand the frustration that can come with our actions, but we must emphasize the importance of respecting our game's rules and the community's well-being.
4. Moving Forward with Determination and Openness
We are committed to ensuring a healthy, fair, and enjoyable environment for all our players. To this end, we are taking the following steps:
- Ensuring Fair Play: Vigilantly identifying and addressing rule violations is our ongoing commitment.
- Updating our Terms of Service: We will revise our Terms to include clear prohibitions against using leaked code.
- Drafting Fair Play Expectations: We are drafting a document to define the standards of conduct, emphasizing the importance of respect and fairness in our community.
5. A Commitment to Transparency and Unity
We stand before you in a spirit of openness, ready to face these challenges together. We regret that these violations went unnoticed for too long, partly due to our focus on developing Screeps: Arena, health condition of our team's lead, and a lack of community reporting. Your support and understanding are invaluable as we navigate these turbulent times. We are dedicated to fostering an environment where creativity, fairness, and enjoyment are paramount.
In light of the recent review bombing, we gently ask those who have enjoyed Screeps and haven't left a review yet to consider doing so. Your honest feedback is not just appreciated, but crucial in helping us counterbalance the recent wave of negative reviews. This is a way to support the game you love and ensure its rightful representation.
Thank you for being a part of the Screeps community and for your trust in us during these challenging times. Together, we can overcome these challenges and continue to build a Screeps community that we all can be proud of.
With heartfelt gratitude,
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@o4kapuk Is there a way to know how many players got banned? Knowing the number alone should be fine, right? Or do you want to be on the safe side, and not reveal the impact on the game economy and or gameplay, which could anger some players? I assume it has to be less than 20 players. I would find it interesting since this is the first-ever ban wave I know of. Can you go into details of the exploit in another post or something, or is it still not patched? The technical aspects of why it was possible and how you fixed it would be a nice read.
You imply it has been used in the last Season(s). Do you think it would be fair to disqualify the players in that case? Would you bother fixing ranks by shifting everyone affected by one place in that case? This would be important if we are talking about serious rewards, like a one-time chance custom controller skin.
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@DefaultO Just look at the "active players" numbers for each shard, those numbers are quite significantly lower on just about every shard from what they were 10 days ago...
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@joeduncan Is there historical data for that anywhere?