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Yog Pet Buff Issue
In this announcement we’d like to provide a further update on the pet buff issue that was addressed last week.
Understandably, there has been intense community interest in this issue since the bug was corrected last week, in the form of forum discussions and support cases. We have had time to dig deeper into how the buff issue happened, why it was not caught by our normal testing procedures, and how it was able to persist for so long without being corrected.
The initial bug that allowed all tools and weapons to benefit from the reduced delay buff (rather than just excavators, as intended) arose in September 2018, approximately 6 months after the Yog pet was introduced. Subsequently over the next few months, several support cases were submitted describing the issue with varying degrees of detail.
Unfortunately, these support cases were not escalated to the testing and development teams and/or flagged with a sufficient level of urgency that reflected the seriousness of the issue. We will be taking steps to improve our internal processes to prevent such situations in the future.
As soon as the issue became more widely known late last week, we moved very quickly to correct the issue via a server hotfix. Note that for approximately 30 hours after the server hotfix, the Entropia Universe client still showed that the buff was affecting tools other than excavators, even though the server was not actually providing any buff for those items. This has led to some participants reporting that the issue has not been resolved, despite it having been resolved.
Along with the server hotfix which corrected the pet buff issue, Summer Mayhem scores for 12 participants were removed, due to the possibility that the incorrect pet buff may have been active during those sessions. Please note that those removed scores do not necessarily constitute clear evidence of cheating or abuse on the part of the affected participants. For that reason, those participants were not disqualified from the event, as some participants have called for. However, out of an abundance of caution to ensure the integrity of the Summer Mayhem event, it was decided to remove those scores, even if it was not absolutely certain that there was an intention to gain an unfair advantage in the event.
Additionally, some participants have demanded a review of the results from previous Mayhem events where the unintended Yog pet buff may have provided an advantage, inadvertently or intentionally. We will be conducting this investigation over the next few weeks, with the intention of increasing the prize rewards for any participants who were pushed down in the final standings due to another higher-placing participant benefitting from the unintended pet buff.
Due to the unintended Yog pet buff being available for such an extended period of time, despite support cases that should have resulted in the issue being addressed, and considering that it is not possible to definitively conclude that use of the pet was in every case intended to exploit the buff to gain an advantage, MindArk has decided it would be unfair and impractical to punish participants who directly or indirectly benefited from the unintended buff, for example stripping prizes awarded in previous Mayhem events.
Once again, we want to extend our apologies for the confusion and inconvenience this issue has caused. We are continually improving our processes to hopefully prevent and minimize such incidents in the future.