The Sandpark MMO ArcheAge is currently alarming some users with charges of 150 dollars or 135 euros, which they did not authorize. Does ArcheAge have a hacker problem?
As the site ign.com cites a forum post in the official forum, numerous users complained that their accounts were charged 150$ or 135€. This corresponds to the price of one of the starter packages. The users state that they did not give their consent for this. Some even say they have never heard of ArcheAge and that their account information was previously held by Trion Worlds because of other games like Defiance or Rift.
Already in the ArcheAge Alpha, Trion Worlds permanently banned 16,000 botters. They allegedly paid for their founder’s packages with stolen credit cards, it was reported. Whether this is the case here again or if there is another reason behind it is currently unknown.
Ign.com advises all users whose credit card or PayPal data is with Trion Worlds to withdraw them. There has been no official statement from Trion Worlds yet.
Update 23:00: Trion Worlds has now spoken out through Community Manager Dave Berman. According to his statements, security at Trion Worlds has not been compromised. It is merely the case that hackers and bots have cracked pages somewhere in the world. This unfortunately happens every day.
There lies information from users, which is then tested on numerous sites in hopes that a user has reused the same passwords and email addresses or slight variations of them. Among other things, this information is now being tested at Trion Worlds as there has been such a hype around ArcheAge lately. Hundreds of millions of such attempts have occurred in recent weeks, of which only a fraction has been successful today.
The team is currently working on refunding the amounts. This will happen automatically in the next hours. Trion Worlds urges players to change their passwords. A new authentication method will be introduced via the client Glyph on Thursday. Here is the link to Berman’s statement.
