Dual Universe market picked up by players.

anemo

So the game Dual Universe messed up permissions on some of their dev objects, and gave the players Voxel Build permissions to the markets.

Players of course hit B at some point or another and found out they could enter build mode, so they obviously heisted everything.

Turns out market orders weren't part of a "database", but instead part of the market object's meta data tag somehow so all data for a regional market is now just gone

https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/21113-%E2%80%9Cmarketplace-heist

https://www.reddit.com/r/DualUniverse/comments/jdwdsl/so_this_happened_the_ultimate_heist/

Sovrath

Xodic said:

Hello Noveans, 

 

By now, some of you may be aware that unlucky number Market 15 has been stripped bare and left to create ugly memes for generations to come. We’re trying to look at this in good humour as, from the front, it appears to be an issue that was created when we moved the markets, making it editable by players. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (though we know there are a few of you out there) to understand that the markets are not a community construction, and as such not intended to be handled by players on this level. The destruction of the build isn’t a quick fix, and was clearly done knowing it shouldn't be. 

 

An important aspect we are considering in all cases and investigations is intention. The intention behind this destruction is very clear to us. The players involved did not report this bug to us, but instead simply filled their pockets. Had this stopped with a single voxel removed it would be a different story.  This is, at its core, a violation of the EULA and against the intentions of beta. We have been as understanding as we can until this point, but there must be a line.

 

Let us be clear, we will not tolerate this kind of behaviour during any phase of the development of Dual Universe.

 

The players responsible for the destruction of the market have been permanently banned from Dual Universe, and all salvaged materials and assets gained will be removed without compensation.

 

Sincerely,
The Novaquark Team

It sounds like they learned of a critical flaw in their development process.
Permanently banning people who paid to test the game isn't something I agree with. They should want people to find and abuse everything they possibly can. It should be their mission to try and break the game.

But I assume they didn't "test" the game so much as just take stuff. Had they reported it then they would have been testing the game.

It seems they were hoping to just get away with it. At least from what I'm reading above.

Kyleran

Xodic said:

Hello Noveans, 

 

By now, some of you may be aware that unlucky number Market 15 has been stripped bare and left to create ugly memes for generations to come. We’re trying to look at this in good humour as, from the front, it appears to be an issue that was created when we moved the markets, making it editable by players. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (though we know there are a few of you out there) to understand that the markets are not a community construction, and as such not intended to be handled by players on this level. The destruction of the build isn’t a quick fix, and was clearly done knowing it shouldn't be. 

 

An important aspect we are considering in all cases and investigations is intention. The intention behind this destruction is very clear to us. The players involved did not report this bug to us, but instead simply filled their pockets. Had this stopped with a single voxel removed it would be a different story.  This is, at its core, a violation of the EULA and against the intentions of beta. We have been as understanding as we can until this point, but there must be a line.

 

Let us be clear, we will not tolerate this kind of behaviour during any phase of the development of Dual Universe.

 

The players responsible for the destruction of the market have been permanently banned from Dual Universe, and all salvaged materials and assets gained will be removed without compensation.

 

Sincerely,
The Novaquark Team

It sounds like they learned of a critical flaw in their development process.
Permanently banning people who paid to test the game isn't something I agree with. They should want people to find and abuse everything they possibly can. It should be their mission to try and break the game.

Naw, it exposed what level of douchebaggery many gamers are capable of.

I read the replies on the linked threads and the game is better off without the "help" of such players.

AlBQuirky

Xodic said:

It does appear that the people who took advantage of the permissions reported it @ 2AM on Oct 19.

Sure, many gamers are capable of being assholes, but leaving beta doesn't change that. These things are better off happening during testing than after you've already gone live with faulty systems. 

When a player messes up their own permission settings and other players kick over their sand castle they're told it's their fault and nothing will be done about it. Yet when the developers mess up their permission settings they permanently ban people. I could see removing people from the testing phase, but a permanent ban for being enticed by the developer's broken systems and carelessness is incredibly discouraging, especially considering that every negative action the players take positively reinforces the final state of the game, regardless of intent on the player's part.

Owner vs Guest.

Dibdabs

anemo said:

So the game Dual Universe messed up permissions on some of their dev objects, and gave the players Voxel Build permissions to the markets.

Players of course hit B at some point or another and found out they could enter build mode, so they obviously heisted everything.

Turns out market orders weren't part of a "database", but instead part of the market object's meta data tag somehow so all data for a regional market is now just gone

Wow, that's ineptitude on a near-Galactic scale! 

KnightFalz

Xodic said:

It sounds like they learned of a critical flaw in their development process.
Permanently banning people who paid to test the game isn't something I agree with. They should want people to find and abuse everything they possibly can. It should be their mission to try and break the game.

Exposing critical flaws is helpful during development. Exploiting critical flaws once discovered is not.

Sandmanjw

Anything that you have to pay to participate in you have zero obligation to report anything.

Using exploits at any time invites a ban. And players take their chances if using exploits.

Looks like the game dev's found an issue and fixed it and took the proper actions.

anemo

KnightFalz said:

Xodic said:

It sounds like they learned of a critical flaw in their development process.
Permanently banning people who paid to test the game isn't something I agree with. They should want people to find and abuse everything they possibly can. It should be their mission to try and break the game.

Exposing critical flaws is helpful during development. Exploiting critical flaws once discovered is not.

The bug was shown to the devs the within hours of them moving the markets (that Friday and Saturday early).  There are pictures of people with tickets, DMs, and attempting to let the GMs know.  It was not until Monday that a player actually stole the market, which is an amazing level of restraint from a Sandbox game community (and a community that the devs are encouraging to be like EVE players).

The devs are actually utterly incompetent at responding to exploit bugs and players trying to report them.  For instance I've been sitting on a item teleportation bug for 27 days (in a game where travel times are 6 hours, or an Hour/two in warp fuel grind that is a major exploit).  GMs literally just tell you to write a ticket (27 days old), when you give the ticket number just get told "thanks".   Leaving the exploit ticket to rot in their ticket system.

MMOExposed

I dont play this game but a Voxel base MMO sounds so cool 

MMOExposed

Can somebody explain the problem so I can understand. What happened and have any examples?

Gdemami

Torval said:
They stored critical game data in object metadata instead of a database.

...what a gibberish.

Iselin

Torval said:

Gdemami said:

Torval said:
They stored critical game data in object metadata instead of a database.

...what a gibberish.

If you were an actual developer instead of pretending to be one on a gaming forum...

Also pretending he knows more about virus morbidity than virologists, more about epidemics than epidemiologists, more about climate change than climatologists...

It's kind of hilarious watching him display his NPD daily and so proudly, 

Gdemami

Torval said:
If you were an actual developer instead of pretending to be one on a gaming forum...

Yep, as expected you cannot backup anything you say...just retort to usual personal invections.

lahnmir

Gdemami said:

Torval said:
If you were an actual developer instead of pretending to be one on a gaming forum...

Yep, as expected you cannot backup anything you say...just retort to usual personal invections.

You called it gibberish, so the one needing to back it up is actually you. Ohh, wait...

Stick to LoLs.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Gdemami

lahnmir said:

You called it gibberish, so the one needing to back it up is actually you. Ohh, wait...

...I claim that there is a flying teapot somewhere between Mercury and Venus.

Now, prove me wrong!

I will keep waiting...

While you guys give me a good laugh, such lack of elementary critical thinking you manifest is frightening...

Scot

If you haven't got Gdemami on your staff this sort of stuff is just gonna happen.

lahnmir

Gdemami said:

lahnmir said:

You called it gibberish, so the one needing to back it up is actually you. Ohh, wait...

...I claim that there is a flying teapot somewhere between Mercury and Venus.

Now, prove me wrong!

I will keep waiting...

While you guys give me a good laugh, such lack of elementary critical thinking you manifest is frightening...

Let me quote you here for funs, your response to Torval:

 Yep, as expected you cannot backup anything you say...just retort to usual personal invections.

Looks like something you are doing yourself, doesn’t it? Stick to LoLs, its what you understand.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Gdemami

Torval said:

Persistent data has to be stored somewhere. Storing it in a database means performance hits accessing and saving it, but could offer other design conveniences. Storing it in a software object still means it must be stored on disk or memory (which I doubt would be the case for this type of data), but could offer more performant access, but also means when the object is destroyed the data goes poof.

...so hilarious - storing data in "software object".

Gdemami

Torval said:

Didn't you just on and on and on a bit ago about facts? 

...only fact there is, is that you have absolutely no idea what you talk about.

Software object..."when the object is destroyed"...hahaha

lahnmir

Gdemami said:

Torval said:

Didn't you just on and on and on a bit ago about facts? 

...only fact there is, is that you have absolutely no idea what you talk about.

Software object...hahaha

Your entire post history on this website consists of you correcting people, telling them they are wrong and dumb. Not by countering their arguments with facts but with a simple "you are too dumb to understand you are wrong." No one here is as dismissive of others' their intelligence as you are. No one here talks with such a misguided sense of intellectual superiority.

Let me just quote myself from last time I called you out and said you were a one trick pony. Time for a new trick G.

Stick to LoLs.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Gdemami

...it's more than half an hour and I can't stop laughing, omg.

MMOExposed

can somebody ELI5 what happened?

Gdemami

MMOExposed said:

can somebody ELI5 what happened?

NQ-Naerais said:

Hello Noveans,

At this stage it’s hard to ignore that the “Market Heist” has definitely caused a stir of dialogue and reactions both in our community and on the internet.

We have taken some time to look at the situation in more detail: the actions of these players are not ok, not condoned, and will not be tolerated. We stand by our decision, and we’d like to better explain it.

Most of what Novaquark builds within the game world, such as markets, institutes or the Arkship is not a player-owned construct. It is a part of the game play designed to serve all players. There are exceptions, like shipwrecks, which are designed for salvaging, and clearly communicated as such.

We did, indeed, state to players that if RDMS is not properly set on a construct, and it results in theft, it’s part of the game and we won’t act upon it. This is to acknowledge that treason can happen in an organization, for instance, and is part of the emergent gameplay we’re trying to promote.

Now, this does obviously not apply to NQ-built constructs, which are designed to serve a specific purpose in the game. It is obvious that these constructs, owned by NQ accounts or Aphelia, are not meant to be interacted with in the same manner as player constructs. Besides, they may contain some highly overpowered and unbalanced elements which were never meant to fall in the hands of players. So the situation with the market is clearly covered by section 5.2 of the EULA: “You must refrain from engaging in any behaviour that could harm NOVAQUARK’s image and/or reputation, that could harm one or more other Users or have a negative impact on their gaming experience, or that is detrimental to the proper functioning of the Game.”

Finally, and for the record, the issue with the market did not result in a wrongly-set RDMS, but rather in a duplication bug. Part of what we use is the same tools as players to build constructs. We create one district, then duplicate it. Something went wrong in the duplication process of one of the markets, which resulted in players being able to edit it.

Were we harsh? Yes. But we had previously communicated that we would no longer tolerate abuses of bugs and issues. We do realize that perhaps this started innocently enough in that someone pressed “B” while standing on a market. But it went beyond this, and that shows intention. The players involved indicated that they reported the issue, and after further investigation, one did, though not by following the proper feedback channel: they pinged a staff account on Discord in the middle of the night. We’ve clearly stated that staff do not respond to pings on Discord, and that the reporting method for exploits and bugs of this nature is either via our ticket system, or via a community manager on the forums.

Even a proper attempt to inform us about an exploit doesn’t mean that it’s OK to go on and abuse it. Communicating an exploit to the NQ staff doesn’t serve as a way to absolve the players, it’s only meant to ensure that we fix the issue - it’s not a free pass to use an exploit. The banned players destroyed a player market by dismantling it, and the fact that they communicated with us via Reddit with a request not to be banned shows that they knew what they were doing was wrong. They posted on Reddit, proud of their ‘achievement’ and of the destruction.

In the end, repairing the damage cost us hours of manpower across multiple departments, which could have been invested into further progressing the game.

That is why we take this seriously.

Here are a couple of things that we’d like to reiterate:

We are in beta. Things aren’t always going to work as intended. But we have a persistent, single-shard universe, and altering its foundations impacts all players.
Bug Fixes aren’t instant. They take manpower time to find, investigate, fix, test and roll out. We try to make sure that fixing a bug doesn’t introduce a dozen more.
As beta players, we count on you to help us and report bugs, not abuse them. We believe that this is fairly standard for most games.

We genuinely hope this brings some clarity to the situation, and ask you all to remember this is a communal effort. We’re in this together.

Sincerely,
The Novaquark Team

https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/21113-“marketplace-heist”-response/page/18/&tab=comments#comment-146490


...alternative explanation is the devs are incompetent, clueless clowns building a game with a shitty code and some real architectural issues , storing "critical game data in object metadata instead of a database" (trololololol).

Make your pick ;-P

Vrika

NQ-Naerais said:....
Finally, and for the record, the issue with the market did not result in a wrongly-set RDMS, but rather in a duplication bug. Part of what we use is the same tools as players to build constructs. We create one district, then duplicate it. Something went wrong in the duplication process of one of the markets, which resulted in players being able to edit it.

What are they thinking defining a duplication bug like that?

If a mistake with RDMS during legit copying means RDMS thieves are abusing a duplication bug, that means RDMS thieves have no way of knowing if player stuff is suffering from a similar duplication bug or not.

Regardless of whether Novaquard was justified in their ban, their attempts to dig themselves out of PR hole just created a future PR mineshaft for them to fall into.


EDIT: I think they should just update their rules after an argument like this and make them better. Clarifying how they're already good enough is not going to improve their game nor make them more popular.

Gdemami

tzervo said:

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/destructor

...yeah, pity you don't comprehend the content of the link nor context of the post you reply to.

Don't make yourself look like (another) stupid...

Gdemami

Vrika said:

If a mistake with RDMS during legit copying means RDMS thieves are abusing a duplication bug, that means RDMS thieves have no way of knowing if player stuff is suffering from a similar duplication bug or not.

Regardless of whether Novaquard was justified in their ban, their attempts to dig themselves out of PR hole just created a future PR mineshaft for them to fall into.


EDIT: I think they should just update their rules after an argument like this and make them better. Clarifying how they're already good enough is not going to improve their game nor make them more popular.

...oh, dear. Can you even read or you just hit reply button and post some shit?


The duping was mentioned to clarify how the elevated rights to structure were granted. The abuse has NOTHING to do with duping.

Whether you understand the mechanics of the bug is irrelevant, the exploitation comes from abusing those elevated rights - you are not supposed to interact with NPC(NQ) structures same way as you are with other entities.

One must be truly a moron to think or even somehow attempting to justify manipulations with structures you are not supposed to interact with same way as player made contructs in the first place, not to say taking it even further and entirely remove them from the game and/or taking their parts for themselves.


ffs...