Maplers,
On September 5th, 2014, we initiated a series of account actions following the outbreak of an exploit related to the Bounty Hunter event. This exploit involved player ability to abuse a flaw in the quest system which led to receiving an extreme number of Master Craftsman’s Cubes, Golden Hammers, and other items. This exploit prompted a series of account suspensions and closures, based on severity of the action. Upon further review of this exploit, we feel that we must make changes to the procedures we use for executing account actions following exploits.
First, we want to aim for consistency - we feel that there has been a lack of consistency in how we take action on accounts that are found guilty of participating in exploits. Until we have concrete policies put in place, we believe that handing out permanent bans for abuse of exploits is too extreme. The system has been quite arbitrary in regards to how it is decided on who gets a permanent ban, and who gets a temporary suspension.
Second, we want to remove layers of red tape and make these types of situations and investigations much more transparent going forward. This is something I have aimed for as Community Manager, and this is also something I am trying to drive with the teams that work on MapleStory as a whole. As many of you know, accounts and the actions taken on them are in constant review, and we have been reviewing the bans that were issued following the investigation of the Bounty Hunter exploit. We have seen that many of these players were first time offenders with no past records, and this has prompted a revision of our policies on a consistency basis. As part of this policy revision we will be reversing all permanent account closures from the Bounty Hunter exploit. These reversals will take place on [EDIT] October 12th, 2014.
I understand that many of you may be upset by this, as you have recently seen an increase in actions taken on hacking and botting accounts that breach the Terms of Use. This release does not affect those accounts, and we will continue to take action on these abusers. However, please note that this decision is only being made as a result of changes to policy. Going forward, we will take all necessary steps to protect the health of our game, and the abuse of exploits will have consequences.
Thank you for your understanding as we work to make MapleStory a more clean and fair place for all players,
Artasi
Community Manager
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