Heroes of Arkesia,
A bug was identified with Ignite reward chests, which some players were able to repeatedly exploit. Our team has been investigating the extent of the issue, and wanted to communicate our decision on the penalty for those who abused the exploit. As a reminder, a key tenet of the Amazon Games Code of Conduct is to “Play Fair”. We reserve the right to determine what constitutes unfair play and to take corrective action we deem appropriate, and the abuse of this exploit will have corrective action taken, with suspensions and bans already sent out.
General Policy
Around 2,300 players received rewards chests from the Ignite Stronghold reward issue. Within this group, over 1,200 did not open any of the reward chests. The group that did not open any reward chests will not have any action taken against their accounts apart from removing the unopened chests from their inventory. For the remaining 1,000 players who opened the reward chests, the severity of the penalty will directly correspond to the level of bug exploitation. At a base level, all items will be removed and skill tree levels will be rolled back. For items that were used and cannot be removed, players may have gold (or the gold value of the used items) deducted from their balance, or be sent into the negatives corresponding to the severity of the abuse. This policy will apply to all materials, including processed chaos stones and combined honing materials. Along with the item withdrawals, players will be receiving suspensions and bans matching their level of exploit.
The first group are players who may have mistakenly encountered the issue and did not repeatedly abuse the bug. Players who opened 1 or 2 chests will have any items withdrawn and have not been suspended/banned at this time. Our team is investigating if we can remove the items for this group during maintenance. If the item removal process is gauged to take longer than the maintenance period, this group of players will receive a short suspension to give our team the time needed to remove the items. Spending these items in the meantime will result in further action, such as gold removal.
Players who continually exploited the issue and opened multiple reward chests will have more severe action taken, corresponding to their level of exploit.
Players that opened 3 - 7 chests will receive a two-week suspension.
Players that opened 8 - 14 chests will receive a 1-month suspension.
Players that opened 15+ chests will receive a notice that they have received a 30-day suspension and are pending further review. This group will have various levels of action taken, up to permanent bans from the game.
Issue Resolution
To stop exploitation of the main reward issue and other bugs, access to strongholds was disabled. For players who have a character stuck in a stronghold, and need access to that character immediately, please submit a customer support ticket. Otherwise, the issue will be resolved during maintenance for the October 23 update. We will also re-enable the use of the Ignite reward chests at this time for players on Ignite Servers.
Based on our policies and investigation, we believe this is the best course of action. We know many players were concerned about the outcome, and we wanted to be clear with our approach. In the future, if you encounter an issue you believe is an exploit or unintended issue, do not engage with the issue (no matter how tempting it may seem) and report it to our teams. We appreciate those who reported the issue, along with your patience while members our team investigated and blocked access to certain in-game systems. While this issue gained high visibility in the community, we hope this policy is clear and allows us to move forward together. We are always open to community feedback, and welcome you to engage in the conversation on our official channels.
There are still key moments coming to Arkesia this week, with Aegir’s arrival and Ignite Server transfers arriving. Those aren’t the only things arriving in the update— stay tuned for the full release notes on Tuesday. In the meantime, we’ll see you in Arkesia.
