Blizzard Discusses the Aftermath of the Blood Thief Exploit
by Whitney "Neinball" Fairchild - 9 years ago show comments
Last night, Lylirra gave the community an update on the actions that Blizzard was taking in the wake of the Blood Thief exploit. The vast majority of the community has been very supportive of Blizzard banning and rolling back known offenders, though some have been calling for leniency for popular streamers who were banned in the aftermath or even going so far as to say no one should be banned because it’s Blizzard fault for allowing such an exploit to exist.
I, for one, am glad to see Blizzard taking a stance against those who would undermine the competitiveness of Seasons and Eras. Many of us here at Blizzpro were annoyed when nothing was done about those who used massive XP exploits during Season 1, so seeing Blizzard take action so quickly this time around is very comforting.
What are your thoughts on this? Are you glad that the exploiters had their accounts actioned? Should Blizzard have been more lenient? More aggressive with permanent bans? Let us know in the comments below.
While this issue is now resolved, we know a lot of players have questions about what happened and how we responded, so we wanted to take some time to discuss a few of the details with you here.
Following the launch of patch 2.2.0, players discovered an exploit that caused Blood Thief goblins to drop a larger number of Blood Shards than intended. The exploit could only occur in Greater Rifts when in a multiplayer group and required a specific sequence of steps to activate.
As soon as we were able to able to verify the exploit and identify its underlying cause, we immediately began working on a hotfix for PC. The hotfix was deployed in all gameplay regions on April 16, which made the following changes to the game:
- In order be eligible for experience or loot from any monster (including Treasure Goblins), you must do damage to it or be in the same area when it is killed
- If you are in a Greater Rift, you are no longer eligible for any experience or loot gained by party members outside of the rift
For console, this particular change cannot be implemented via hotfix, so we’ve temporarily disabled all Blood Thief goblin spawns on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One until further notice (pending a future patch).
From there, taking the complexity and impact of the exploit into consideration, we also elected to action accounts on a case-by-case basis. In general, one of three things occurred:
- Accounts which were found to have both used the exploit excessively and publicly promoted its use were permanently banned.
- Accounts which were found to have used the exploit excessively, but did not publicly promote it, were rolled back and their associated heroes removed from active Leaderboards (both Seasonal and non-Seasonal).
- Accounts which were found to have used the exploit to a limited degree (or quickly stopped once realizing the scope of what was happening) were effectively pardoned. We understand these situations can inspire a certain level of curiosity and that it may not always be immediately clear if you’re undermining intended game mechanics. Mistakes happen, but we hope this leniency won’t be taken for granted in the future.
All in all, this incident has shown us that the vast majority of players, upon encountering an in-game exploit, will not only put sportsmanship and fair play above personal gain, but will also work to bring the matter to our attention quickly via channels like hacks@blizzard.com, our online webform and ticket system, and these very forums. (We even received a few Twitter DMs, Skype messages, and personal emails too!) So, on behalf of the development team, I just want to say thank you to those of you who took the time to notify us, as well as apologize for any inconvenience caused a result.
As noted in our original post, maintaining an enjoyable and equitable play experience is very important to us, and we’re going to continue to monitor the game as well as take steps to prevent exploits like this from happening again.
Great by me 🙂 was bummed they didn’t do anything for the S1 XP exploit, but this is a step in the right direction for sure.
I personally see no reason to cheat anyway on the B Gobos… they drop a noticeable amount of shards on their lonesome and actively exploiting the gobos sounds like a great way to get bored quick with the current content. I play the game to enjoy it, not to cheat my way to the top.
I think Blizz did a fantastic job in responding to an issue as soon as it become on their radar.
The fact that Blizzard is clamping down on people will hopefully make other think twice before exploiting like this should another one ever appear in the future.