A couple of days ago, an item duping bug spread like wildfire through Elder Scrolls Online. Players found out that they were essentially able to easily make hundreds of millions of gold, crippling the game's economy.
Bethesda quickly took actionm disabling guild banks/storage (which allowed duplication to occur) before bringing servers down yesterday (Friday) morning to upload a fix. In addition, they released the following statement:
Yesterday, we identified an item duping bug in ESO that some players chose to exploit. We acted quickly, and have since fixed the issue. We have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to abusing exploitable bugs, and those who were found doign so have has their game account permanently banned.
We want to thank everyone who reported this issue to us. In the future, should yo idenitfy what you think could be an exploitable bug, please send it to us in-game via /help or in our help center:
https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/app/ask
Some players reported that they were mistakingly banned, but it looks like they have had their in-game access restored without notice, per r/ElderScrollsOnline. Guild bank access has not yet been re-instanted in-game, however, so things don't appear to be 100% clear just yet.
For what it's worth, I've yet to receive/see any gold seller spam today, so I guess some bans have been put into place on that front. Regarding the game's economy, it may not be completely damaged, as there's no centralized auction house. Sure, some people that weren't banned may be able to buy everything they see in zone chat, but for the most part, I've done my shopping in the guild store. One of my guilds immediately took down the guild bank when news of the bug first spread, so I'd like to think I'm playing with a lot of nice, non-exploitive people and that my overall experience won't be too damaged.
I sure hope I am, anyway.
[Reddit]
