After the hacker attack on Path of Exile 2, users initially experienced unauthorized withdrawals and then their accounts were locked as well, but support seemed inactive.
What kind of hacker attack was this? An admin account of Path of Exile 2 was hacked in December 2024. The attacker managed to convince Steam support that the account belonged to the hacker and gained access to many players’ data. This included:
- Email address: If an email address is associated with the account.
- Steam ID: If a Steam ID is associated with the account.
- IP addresses: A list of IP addresses that were previously used with the account.
- Shipping address: If physical goods were delivered to the account, the corresponding shipping address.
- Current unlock code: The code needed to unlock an account that was locked due to logins from another region.
Although the hacker could not view passwords, using the gathered data allowed the attackers to compromise some accounts before the developers could warn their player base.
Here you can see the cinematic intro of Path of Exile 2:
Players feel abandoned
How are the players doing? For many players, like DenseCrumpM on Reddit, the hack unfolded like this:
- One morning, players find an unauthorized withdrawal of about €115 on their PayPal account
- They notice the withdrawal and suspect a hack
- Many contact PayPal directly and report the payment as unauthorized
- Others notice that it wasn’t their PayPal account but their Path of Exile 2 account that was hacked and contact support
- Support requests some information via email – but then nothing happens for a long time
- After waiting for a long time, even the last players decide to report the payments to PayPal as unauthorized
PayPal seems to be handling users’ concerns well and refunds the money to the accounts. However, in Path of Exile, failed payments can lead to an account ban.
Even though the hackers took over the players’ accounts and often spent €115 for 4 product keys of Path of Exile 2 without their knowledge, in the end, it was the players’ accounts that were banned because they didn’t want to pay for the hackers’ keys.
The affected individuals reached out to support again, after all, they were not responsible for the misuse of their accounts. But they must wait a long time for a response from support.
How does support respond? In several posts in the official Path of Exile forum (via PathofExile.com), users who were victims of the hacker attack complain that they still haven’t heard anything from support about 7 weeks later. Their accounts are still banned.
Players continuously commented under their posts (via PathofExile.com) in the hope of receiving a quicker response from the developers. But Path of Exile support is overwhelmed with more than half a million requests and is progressing slowly.
But for DenseCrumpM, enough is enough. He and some others feel abandoned by support. DenseCrumpM wants to get back his account, which he created in 2018 and equipped with various in-game purchases. He posted on Reddit in hopes of drawing attention to his issue.
What happened next? DenseCrumpM finds like-minded individuals on Reddit and gains attention for his problem, even from the developers. They have apparently worked through all the requests and have restored the first accounts of affected individuals.
Even though not all affected individuals have regained their accounts, it seems that the waiting will soon come to an end, allowing all players to access their characters again. If you want to read more about what happened with the hacker attack, you can do so here: Path of Exile 2 was hacked, now the attackers know where their victims live – This is what the developers say about it
