Update: This post initially included a video showing the item duplication glitch in action: it’s subsequently been removed from Youtube.
Over the weekend New World players discovered a glitch in Amazon Games’ recently launched MMO, and not for the first time. This one allowed players to duplicate furniture among many other items, though the duping of trophies (furniture that buffs you in the world, rare and expensive) is what’s got some folk extremely hot under the collar. Players could use this glitch to duplicate a particularly expensive item and sell it for free money.
There was something of a conflagration on the game’s official forums about this exploit, with players who posted the methodology explaining they’d tried to report it through back-channels before going public after Amazon Games took no action. “I saw the other post on a potential trophy duplication and thought I’d throw a few minutes at replication,” writes a player named Poverty. “Turned out to be very easy to do. I was on the fence about posting the details like this but previous attempts from my Company mates on reporting item duplication fell on deaf ears. Out in the open seems to be the only way to go.”
Needless to say this sparked a reaction alright, and some rather spicy back-and-forth between angry players and community reps. The following text was soon posted by community manager Tosch.
“Hi all, We are aware of a possible duplication exploit that has been circulating the forums and social media. We are disabling all forms of wealth transfer between players (ie. sending currency, guild treasury, trading post, player to player trading) while we investigate. Any player that has engaged in the use of this exploit will be actioned against.
“Once the duplication exploit has been investigated and we are ready to turn on wealth transfer again, we will update this post.
“Thank you for your understanding.”
Which is all to say: New World has turned off its entire economy. Again.
As you’d expect players are responding to the news in a very calm and rational manner. Some say they’ll never play New World again, others vow that they’re going back to WoW, there’s general agreement that any exploiters should be perma-banned, and so on. To be fair to the developer, however, it doesn’t get much worse for an MMO than something like this which could potentially upset the entire resource ecosystem, so Amazon Games had little choice other than to do what it’s done.
We’ve contacted Amazon games for comment on the exploit and when a fix can be expected, and will update with any response.