Star Sonata
http://forum.starsonata.com/

Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"
http://forum.starsonata.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=63107
Page 1 of 4

Author:  SI [ Mon May 01, 2017 7:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

For anyone not aware, there was a pretty bad exploit in February that resulted in a mass ban wave. At the time I promised people I'd make a post about it later to explain the mess and that has been long overdue, but this is (finally) that post. I'm not going to name and shame anyone, though I know some have been very vocal about the fact that they have been banned.

The exploit
A while back one of our developers enabled wild slaves to go into stasis in the colosseum. Unfortunately, it was overlooked that this would enable them to be towed which ended up bypassing restrictions on docking. This is bad for 2 reasons, first being that many of the AI that can only be capture as wild slaves have gear that is not available to players because it is simply too good. The second, being that it makes it very easy to acquire gear that is normally much more difficult or expensive to gain. We had a few people using some very powerful AI overloaders on the powerful gear side of things, and on the economic side of the exploit we had people mass capturing (literally hundreds) of Bigger Greens to sell their contents (Titan+ gear, mainly). Either side of this is a scary exploit to hear about, but together it made quite the mess.

Due to the obviously unintentional mechanics of how this worked (anyone capping high level wild slaves know that they can't be docked), and that the steps to preform the exploit were relatively obscure we were able to safely assume that anyone who did it more than a few times should have known what they were doing would be a ban-able offense if caught.

10 accounts were instantly banned for review under the credit generation side of the exploit, and 15 accounts were banned for having/using things like Assault Overloader or Impervious protection.

Economic Ramifications
Economic exploits one of the worst kind for a game like Star Sonata. If left unchecked, they can ruin the economy which effects every player in the game. When a bug lets you generate significantly more credits than normal within a time period than is normal, it inflates the currency and makes everything more expensive for all players. Because of this, we take these very seriously and most cases of abuse result in a perma-ban.

In addition, economic exploits are difficult to clean up than many other kinds because credits trickle throughout the economy and even in just a few days the credits will be spread throughout dozens of characters from (otherwise) legitimate transactions. Obviously we don't want to remove credits or ban people just for selling items to someone who exploited, so this makes cleanup tricky. While I can pretty easily generate a tree of where an exploiter has sent credits, it takes a while to determine which recipients are innocent and which are complicit (or conveniently ignoring where these lavish gifts are coming from, as has happened in the past).

In total, we ended up determining that 28 Trillion credits were generated from selling the Titan+ gear from bigger greens to AI bases. This represents hundreds of bigger greens capped.

Punishments

Everyone determined to have knowingly participated in this particular exploit or using AI exclusive items on their own ships (including those who shared their account with someone who knowingly did it) is currently still banned either indefinitely or 1 year. This was only ever meant as temporary though, and after a full review of everything that happened we're reducing the bans to 6-months. We have recently found 6 more cases of abuse of the AI equipment that we didn't catch in the initial ban-wave, and have added them to the ban list.

Where possible, we delete credits from the offending accounts or places where they have been stashed (such as team funds or bases). In a small number of cases however (people that had pumped trillions of credits into the economy), it wasn't possible to fully reverse their gains without digging through dozens of accounts under their control. Too much of the money has been spent and spread into the economy, and their wealth (and items bought with that wealth) was spread among multiple accounts. This is normally where we would perma-ban accounts, but this time we're going to do a little something different. Since the basic exploit is the same (docking wild slaves) their accounts will only be banned for 6 months total as well, but to clean up the economic damage we will be wiping the progress of all characters on their accounts back to the starting game state (in a zebu). Levels, skills, items, ships, etc. Purchased skins will remain on the accounts, but otherwise they'll be starting fresh. We'll also be applying this to an account that we would have otherwise been able to clean up, but was previously involved in an economy effecting exploit but was unbanned years later with a partial account wipe as an added punishment for repeat offenses.

For those individuals with multiple accounts, we'll be applying the account wipes "down the chain" from the exploit to where the wealth was transferred to until enough wealth has been destroyed to cover the gains from the exploit. This will result in 5 accounts being wiped as a punishment for this exploit.

Ban reasons and times will be updated soon to reflect which accounts fall under which categories.


We'll lift the rule about discussing bans for this thread, but if it gets out of hand I'll be locking the thread (so keep it civil).

PS: If anyone is wondering what took me so long to post, it takes a LOT of manhours to investigate and clean this stuff up (which takes away from development on the actual game). I was very busy at the time of the exploit, so I did the bare minimum to contain the situation at the time and it has taken until now to find the time to investigate all the individual cases and determine their fates. GRR exploiters from taking me away from working on the game :(

Author:  maestro3000 [ Mon May 01, 2017 8:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

ayy lmao

Author:  ShawnMcCall [ Mon May 01, 2017 8:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

Wow... "this results in a permaban" unless there's 15, then we'll just forgive you in 6 months... Fucking sad.

Author:  ShawnMcCall [ Mon May 01, 2017 8:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

This is why people continue to exploit in this game, because you guys can't hand out a punishment...

How about delete every possession off those accounts and give no ban? At least then they lose something.

Author:  Evangelion [ Mon May 01, 2017 8:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

Good work devs :D

Author:  Fyuryus [ Mon May 01, 2017 8:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

ShawnMcCall wrote:
This is why people continue to exploit in this game, because you guys can't hand out a punishment...

How about delete every possession off those accounts and give no ban? At least then they lose something.


Quote:
we will be wiping the progress of all characters on their accounts back to the starting game state (in a zebu). Levels, skills, items, ships, etc.

Author:  ShawnMcCall [ Mon May 01, 2017 8:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

Fyuryus wrote:
ShawnMcCall wrote:
This is why people continue to exploit in this game, because you guys can't hand out a punishment...

How about delete every possession off those accounts and give no ban? At least then they lose something.


Quote:
we will be wiping the progress of all characters on their accounts back to the starting game state (in a zebu). Levels, skills, items, ships, etc.


Ah, didn't see that part, I got pretty salty and quit reading at "28tril, we'll ban them for 6 months." my bad =P

Author:  Redwhirlwind [ Mon May 01, 2017 8:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

shawn 6months and they have to start from scratch lol they are completely wipeing their account its like starting a new one but they can keep their names

Author:  shashu [ Tue May 02, 2017 5:58 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

Posted on bob's acc by mistake but. What i said was if my stuff got deleted i'd just post all the screenies of devs who exploited to show to steam how much of a corrupted Alpha game SS really is.
Quote:
Everyone determined to have knowingly participated in this particular exploit or using AI exclusive items on their own ships (including those who shared their account with someone who knowingly did it) is currently still banned either indefinitely or 1 year.


Red isn't banned and he exploited the hell out of the ai only diffusers.

Author:  erman [ Tue May 02, 2017 4:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

Wiping the accounts is so much worse than the ban. Nicely done.

Author:  shashu [ Tue May 02, 2017 5:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

Traders make up 99.9999999% of the Developers and are vastly known for making content to their own liking as well as exploiting various things. Traders have the most exploiters collaborating together than anyone else. It's just one big conspiracy that is waiting to explode on steam release. 2 Scrubs in RE exploited, bad RE nubs and various other teams. Afaik 1 Trader got banned and the majority who have exploited previous bugs and content are getting applauded.

Author:  anilv [ Tue May 02, 2017 5:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

No members on Traders were involved in the exploit and subsequent ban wave.

Author:  shashu [ Tue May 02, 2017 5:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

anilv wrote:
No members on Traders were involved in the exploit and subsequent ban wave.


SI wrote:
Everyone determined to have knowingly participated in this particular exploit or using AI exclusive items on their own ships (including those who shared their account with someone who knowingly did it) is currently still banned either indefinitely or 1 year. This was only ever meant as temporary though, and after a full review of everything that happened we're reducing the bans to 6-months. We have recently found 6 more cases of abuse of the AI equipment that we didn't catch in the initial ban-wave, and have added them to the ban list.


You want to repeat that?

Author:  anilv [ Tue May 02, 2017 5:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

I don't know the details since SI is in charge of this, but my understanding was there was clear evidence in the logs that the owner of that account wasn't responsible. There are presumably other cases as well. I suggest you talk to SI about it instead of spreading rumors.

Author:  shashu [ Tue May 02, 2017 6:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Details on the February bans aka "the banning post"

It's not rumors, the account had stuff on it for a long period of time.

Page 1 of 4 All times are UTC - 5 hours
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group
http://www.phpbb.com/