Bug abuse and consequences

Hello everyone.

This announcement is intended to clear up any confusion regarding the recently reported bug abuses linked to the Dirty Bomb deployed last week. I want to start by reminding everyone that everything in Torn is logged. We are easily able to identify instances where bugs are abused after just a few simple checks.

Bug abuse is obviously something we take extremely seriously; from time to time, bugs will inevitably appear within the game, and we fully accept and apologise for these unforeseen errors - they are entirely are our fault. Nevertheless, our culpability does not give players an excuse to abuse these errors. We trust the vast majority of players to report such instances, and we rely on these reports to track things we may have otherwise missed. Those who bring bugs to our attention are generously rewarded.

Therefore, when an abusable bug comes up, we expect this to be reported immediately without the details being shared with friends or the general public. I appreciate that people will “test” certain erroneous mechanics to confirm the existence of a bug, but having an entire faction “test” it for their benefit is not the same thing as confirming a bug exists.

Due to my own personal circumstances, I was unable to swiftly address the recent abuse of a bug by the Relentless faction, whose members bypassed the radiation poisoning effects of a Dirty Bomb en masse. If I could have attended to it sooner, I may well have been able to resolve many of the issues which followed. However, after further scrutiny, I have discovered this situation is not as straightforward as it seems.

It has come to our attention that a bug involving item duplication existed within the game, a bug which had gone unnoticed on our part and unreported for over two years. Fortunately, in this time it was barely noticed, and there appear to have been several “accidental” duplication instances which will soon be reversed. These particular users will not be punished as it appears the results were so minor they went unnoticed by the users in question.

However, we were definitively able to identify several users who had very clearly abused this bug to gain tens or hundreds of billions of dollars meticulously since 2016. Their attempts at abusing the aforementioned bug were cautious and calculated, with their behaviour consistent with the actions of someone who wanted to avoid detection. Unfortunately, said users succeeded for a while, which is why they eluded us for so long. These users were deleted immediately without recourse upon detection, though, and we are in the process of recovering funds which were freely sent to innocent users from these players.

This is not an easy operation, especially as we must take into account situations where users had fairly traded assets with these now-deleted players. Innocent users will be unaffected by the actions of the guilty parties, as it would be unfair for us to punish them for someone else’s abuse. However, circumstances where this money was freely sent and transferred out are another matter.

Transparency is important for me, and I have no intention of keeping people in the dark when it comes to bug abuse and the names of those responsible. Reformer [1955074] was one of the worst abusers. This account has been deleted - he cannot restart - and we are presently attempting to recover funds sent out from this account, while also investigating some potential instances of RMT.

Another severe abuser of this bug was Kapten_Klitoris [1873683], who we discovered had been clearly using the exploit to duplicate donator packs, which were then sold and used to fund stat enhancers and the creation of a Dirty Bomb. His account will also be deleted, and he will not be permitted to restart - ever.

Now you can understand why I mentioned Relentless earlier in this announcement. The amount illegally created by Kapten_Klitoris was more than enough to cover the creation of the bomb he used against them, which in turn makes its use illegitimate. This puts us in a tricky position, because it should never have existed in the first place, so we were forced to reverse the effects it had on Relentless.

I now hope you will understand why putting Relentless members back into hospital was not an option for us at the time. I do not consider Relentless to be completely innocent in this matter, however, given that the bomb itself should not have existed, those who did use SED’s to get out of hospital will receive an official warning for not having reported this sooner. I recognise that many of you will consider this a mere slap on the wrist, but given the extent of this error on our end, and the mitigating circumstances concerning Kapten_Klitoris, I believe this course of action to be the right one.

All bugs mentioned in this announcement have since been fixed, and severe cases of bug abuse will always result in the immediate deletion of a player’s account and a permanent ban from Torn. Minor situations are dealt with on a case by case basis.

I want to make a point to thank Madevo [2193795] and Sid [2081212] who were key in helping us identify and replicate this bug, which in turn allowed us to find those who had abused it. Both Madevo and Sid will be receiving the bug swatter item and 50,000 points for their help.

Once again, I want to apologise for our oversight in allowing these situations to occur. Errors do come up from time to time, and we are grateful to the Torn community for helping us to identify them. Thanks to our extensive logs, we are always able to bring bug abusers to justice. When we catch users profiting from a serious bug - and we will - their time in Torn City is permanently over.

-Joshua