by JR Cook - 11 years ago     show comments

With each and every new patch there are bound to be bugs that happen – some are big, some are small. Then there are some that are show stoppers and the Diablo 3 team was met with one such bug when they released Patch 1.0.8.

Players were able to dupe trillions of gold yesterday after the patch was released. The D3 team acted quickly and was able to fix the bug – however no roll back is going to be performed. It looks as though the solution moving forward is letting the current auctions expire by taking down the auction house and then taking action against the players that abused the bug.

There has been some pretty good speculation on what has caused the bug on both r/diablo and r/programming on Reddit. The most popular theory being that the D3 team included the increase in max gold in a sale and put it out there quickly with either little testing or just bad testing, which is why it was never discovered on the PTR. The problem was probably an unsigned integer that was being overloaded so that when a player would start an auction for XX amount of gold and then cancel it they would be refunded with even more back. Pretty disastrous bug when it’s all said and done and something to worry about with the future economy of Diablo 3 and especially with the Real Money Auction House.

Blizzard has been updating this thread on the forums to keep everyone up to date on what’s happening:

UPDATES:

5/8/13 4:15 p.m. PDT: In order to allow auctions posted yesterday to expire naturally, we’ve decided to keep the gold and real-money Auction House in maintenance mode until tomorrow morning. We’re currently targeting 10:00 a.m. PDT, but will provide an update for everyone at 9:00 a.m. PDT. At that point, we’ll be able to give a much more solid ETA as to when the service will be up and running.

Gold trades are still disabled for the time being. Once we have an ETA for those being re-activated, we’ll provide another update in this thread, as well.

5/8/13 11:30 a.m. PDT: We’re still in the process of auditing Auction House and gold trade transactions. We realize this is an inconvenience for many of our players, and we sincerely apologize for the interruption of the service. We hope to have everything back up as soon as possible. We don’t currently have an ETA for when the Auction House will be brought out of maintenance or gold trades will be reactivated, but we’ll continue to provide updates in this thread as they become available.

5/8/13 12:30 a.m. PDT: We’ve confirmed that we’ve fixed the bug which allowed players to duplicate gold; however, we will be keeping the gold and real-money Auction Houses offline in the Americas until further notice (gold trades will also remain suspended). We’ll be using this downtime to perform audits on all transactions conducted through the Auction House as well as trades in which gold was exchanged since 1.0.8 launched. We anticipate this process will take multiple hours to complete and will provide another update by 12:00 p.m. PDT.

12:00 a.m. PDT: At this time (and after careful consideration), we’ve decided to not move forward with rolling back the servers. We feel that this is the best course of action given the nature of the dupe, how relatively few players used it, and the fact that its effects were fairly limited within the region. 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. While this is a time-consuming and very detailed process, we feel it’s the most appropriate choice for us to make, and really what’s in the best interest of the community. We know that some of you may disagree, and we respect that, 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.

10:40 p.m. PDT: Maintenance has concluded, and the fix has been implemented. Once we’ve been able to test this fix and verify that it works correctly, we’ll then mark the gold and real-money auction house live.

10:35 p.m. PDT: To assist our teams with their review process, we have disabled all gold trades in the Americas region until further notice. Players can still trade items, but trades that involve any sum of gold currency cannot be completed.

10:15 p.m. PDT: We believe we’ve found a fix for the gold duplication bug and will be deploying it shortly to all regions. In order to implement this fix, we’ll be bringing Diablo III into maintenance. We anticipate this maintenance will last for approximately 1 hour, lasting until approximately 11:30 p.m. PDT.

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Hey everyone,

As you may have already seen in the Breaking News window (or discovered while trying to load up the Auction House once logged in), we’ve brought both the gold and real-money Auction Houses offline for maintenance. 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. 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.

Q. When will the Auction House be available?
We don’t have an ETA just yet. Our priority at the moment is (of course) to fix the bug and make sure it can’t happen again. We know this is an inconvenience for some of our players, so we’ll be providing updates in this thread as soon as we have any details to share.

Q. Will there be a rollback?
Our priority is to fix any issues with the game client first—that’s what we’re working on right now. After we’ve addressed the situation, we’ll need to determine whether or not a rollback is appropriate. We know this is an important issue for all of our players, so we’ll be sure keep you informed of what’s happening and will provide any updates in this thread, as well.

Q. Will players be banned for using this dupe?
We’re currently in the process of reviewing the accounts involved and taking appropriate actions, including temporary locks, suspensions, and/or bans. Our exploitation policy for Diablo III can be found here, which should give you an overview of the kinds of activities that are and aren’t cool within the game.

Thank you for all of your reports, and for your patience. In the meantime, to help streamline communication, we’re going to be locking and redirecting posts to this location.