In the sandbox MMO ArcheAge, the publisher Trion Worlds claims to do everything possible to counter the hacker surge.
The author Wolf Haas begins his novels featuring the gruff protagonist Brenner with the same sentence: “Something has happened again.” In the last few weeks, almost every news about ArcheAge could start this way: Reports of hacks and cheats are overwhelming. In the game forums, there has been a state of emergency for weeks, and now there are so many different attacks on the integrity of the game from the outside, that it has reached a top 10 list of the “most popular” hacks.
Hartsman tweets against negative sentiment
Especially because the integrity and health of the in-game economy in ArcheAge is so important, this is a sensitive topic. It has spread to the point where even players who achieve success in ArcheAge completely “legally” are accused of being frauds and that they only achieved it through cheating.
The CEO of Trion Worlds has now addressed this in a series of tweets. He referred to a thread on reddit discussing the hacks as only partially true. Hartsman does not specify which one he means. It is likely regarding a thread where a user copied conversations from “hacker forums” discussing how they gained an advantage in ArcheAge. This post is currently getting the most attention in the ArcheAge subreddit and has received more than 500 comments.
Some hacks really exist, much is just boasting
According to Hartsman, some of it is actually “legit”, meaning it corresponds to the facts and is problematic. However, much of it is just forum bragging. Meanwhile, Trion is working around the clock, 24/7, on the issues. They track down cheaters, ban players, and restore hacked accounts. This is extremely important for Trion Worlds. Every day, the technicians improve the tools that help them. According to another tweet, Trion Worlds bans about 5000 players every day. Dozens of employees deal with the issues every day.
2/ Yep, some of that is legit and on XL’s plate for fixing. Much of it is false forum bragging. (We’ve checked. We read those forums too.)
— Scott Hartsman (@hartsman) October 21, 2014
3/ In the meanwhile, we detect/ban/retake gains 24/7. We’re banning about 5k a day, and our own eng improves detection/action daily.
— Scott Hartsman (@hartsman) October 21, 2014
