devtrackers.gg
Hey all, wanted to give you a run down of where we're at with GIM storage issues.
Firstly, we are returning the fang to Faux's group.
We realise this looks like streamer favouritism - we'd absolutely be lying if we didn't say an issue this public has drawn additional focus to the problem which is why we have to do better going forward - though stream clips can really help with investigations in the meantime! That said, we know the pain felt in losing such a valuable item is the same no matter who you are, whether you have recorded clips or not so they cannot be what we depend on.
We realise we have to do better and we apologise to anyone who's lost items as a result of this bug since Group ironman released.
So why does this happen? As many have discussed in the thread, This it is to do with the fact the clan server (which is where group ironman data is held) is distinct from the game server. It is non-trivial to avoid any possible issues here if for some reason the game server or clan server falls over. It is difficult to avoid both item loss & item duplication and currently we prioritise avoiding item duplication since that could potentially lead to bad actors trying to abuse this.
We do have some awareness of when issues occur - we attempt to detect this and have errors come through on our systems. We saw this with Faux's issue and together with the stream evidence it was very easy to confirm what happened. We also see it wasn't just Faux who had an issue at around the same time last night. We have the RSNs from this and are looking at a manual review to identify any items that may have been lost as a result. We'll also return items if possible there too. We will contact those players through the messaging centre when we have more information. This will take at least a few days.
What can we do going forwards? Well it's hard for me to outline an exact solution here immediately as we need to investigate more deeply and assess what options may look like. Some initial thoughts:
- Can we improve error detection & automatically log what the transaction with GIM storage was that failed?
- With the above, is it feasible to manually process item returns?
- Ideally, Can we better mitigate the problem in the first place with a better handshake process?
- If any of these are possible, how long would the work actually take to implement?
I don't know the answer to these questions currently. So what I can commit to currently is the team will do that assessment and we'll hopefully have more information soon.
We will say that the overwhelming majority of uses of GIM storage go through without a hitch. For what it is worth, I personally have played GIM since release and will continue using the storage, though we recognise it has harmed confidence in the system.
Lastly, I know the time commitment this game takes, specially on a GIM and how long it could take to feasibly obtain certain items. Imbued hearts, twisted bows, fangs... it's devastating to lose something and doubly so when it's clearly not your fault. Whilst we almost certainly cannot fix all past cases, this is the start of doing better going forwards!
