If you've ever played an MMO, you would know that half of the game is on the path of gaining strength, abilities, and gear. So what can one say to those that circumvent this via cheating? Banned. New World's economy is coming back online, and Amazon Game Studios is sharing what measures have been taken against cheaters.
New World's player-driven economy has been shut down on two separate occasions this past month thanks to in-game duplication exploits throwing a wrench into the system. Now, developer Amazon Game Studios is detailing how it deals with those who abused the exploits and the economic issues those bad-faith actors created in a new developer update.
Together for these exploits, Amazon has permanently banned over 1200 players, removing their items from the economy and canceling their trade post listings. They permanently banned accounts of the most egregious offenders, eliminating over 98% of duped New World Amazon Coins and item value from the economy. Also, Amazon says the small remaining amount of duplicated items in the game's economy result from players who stumbled upon the issue but did not take exploitive action. As such, they won't be banned for doing so.
"We are working to improve our response time and will remain vigilant against players who violate our ToS," the developer update states. "Exploits will not be tolerated, and penalties can and will include permanent bans for those players using them. Our team is working tirelessly to continue our investigations and preventing future dupes from happening by correcting or replacing game systems that can be attacked." the post states.
With all the speculation going around about whether these players are getting banned or not, it is good to hear some official confirmation finally. The numbers presented seem low, but in actuality should be about right, seeing as the dupers are currently at the end-game due to cheating, and the end-game player pool is quite small. Also, the team is still pushing ahead with new content while they bring New World's economy into balance.