A post on Reddit reveals that a "game breaking" bug has hit The Elder Scrolls Online MMORPG. ZeniMax and Bethesda have responded by temporarily shutting down the guild banks on the North American and European megaservers. They also released a patch (v1.04) that addresses the issue to some degree, forcing players to stack items in their inventory first before placing them in the guild bank.
But that may not be enough to solve the issue.
According to various reports, a dupe bug was found in the online RPG, allowing players to duplicate in-game items and sell those items to vendors for money. Players have thus taken that falsely-earned money and purchased equipment and other items they previously couldn't afford. That throws the in-game economy completely off the tracks.
"It is so simple, in fact, that it is possible to do it by pure accident," reads the Reddit post. "Players in full legendary gear, billions of gold (From duping mats and selling them to vendors over and over), and so much more. Money, items, etc is completely worthless."
"Unfortunately this bug has been well known for over a week now (Actually, since launch!) and its ramifications are so bad that there may be no way to really recover without something drastic," the post continues. "I believe simply banning people isn't enough."
Just last week, ZeniMax revealed that it has already banned "thousands" of players determined to cheat.
"This is only the beginning of our ongoing efforts to keep the game free from botters, speed hackers, and gold spammers," wrote community manager Jessica Folsom. "We want to thank everyone who has sent in-game reports about these individuals in ESO—your reports helped us identify many of the accounts we banned today. Please continue to report any botters, gold spammers, and speed hackers you see in-game, and we'll continue our efforts to keep them out of Tamriel."
The question that all ESO gamers probably face is: what now? What will ZeniMax and Bethesda do to deal with all that money and ill-gained armor and other possessions? Perhaps we'll find out over the next several days.
