Hey Everyone,
In late August, a player discovered an item duplication bug and began to duplicate rare items like u70 Upgrade Kits, Anniversary 2021 Dogis/Capsules, Wagu Coins, Event Coins, and rare CCBD items. We were made aware of this bug a little over a week ago, and have since identified and fixed the bug. The reason it took us that long was mostly putting the final touches on the CCBD Rework, and building the new logging system. I wanted to test our new logging system against the new CCBD items, which he would be sure to attempt to duplicate. In lieu of just rolling back the server to late August, we are likely going to put a plan together to snip out all of the items we can be sure that this player and his friends duplicated.
I have banned every account ever accessed by the more than 70 IP addresses this player used to attempt to circumvent detection, in total 822 accounts. There are likely players in this list who never traded duped items with this player, never duped items themselves, and were never aware of the bug. With that said, item duping is one of the worst offenses that can be committed in DBOG, and account sharing has long been against the rules. Our policy for the account sharing rule is that as long as no other rules are broken, we will not enforce punishments against people sharing accounts, but you accept the risk that if someone you share accounts with does something bad enough, you will be banned.
We have also been made aware of a lack of location validation that this player and others have been using to skip straight to the CCBD bosses, among other exploits. We have fixed this bug as well, and locked down/logged any other potential exploits in location validation these players might try to abuse to gain unfair advantages. I have built very robust tools for the staff to monitor these things, and will continue to build newer and better tools to detect and ban players attempting something similar in future. We take these things extremely seriously, and if you try to break the game, we will find you and ban you.
If you are attempting to break this game, or you know someone who is, it is best for you to report it to us. Making a little zeni in the short term is not worth attempting to destroy the health of the server. Not only are you ruining the game for thousands of people, but you are also potentially removing donations that we could have used to help hungry or sick players afford food and medicine. We will not allow anyone to attempt to damage the server in that way, and I will use every tool at my disposal to find and permanently ban anyone who tries. The more people attempt this, the more time I will dedicate to it, and the more time it will take away from active development of new features for everyone to enjoy.
If you want DBOG to continue to improve, and if you want us to continue to make new features for you to enjoy, then it is your responsibility to report these kinds of exploits as early as possible, just as much as it is our responsibility to prevent them, and detect and punish the players attempting them. Let these bans be a lesson that you shouldn't just look the other way and share your accounts with the people who use these exploits because it benefits you, or because you just don't care. The community has just as much power and obligation to drive out these cheaters as the staff does. If you are one of the players caught in this ban wave, and you are truly innocent, I'm sorry, I cannot run the risk of unbanning you. If you are one of the dozen or so players that reported these bugs to me, please message me for your rewards, and to make sure your accounts stay unbanned.
As always, thank you for playing and supporting us.