Sunday, May 18th, 2008
Issue: 74   Editor: NyxxieALWAYSRETURNS


Exploit Causes Rollback! Paratus
It has been a while since we have seen a rollback occur on Bootleggers, but the inevitable finally happened this past week. No matter how hard some players complain about the backup feature (which puts the game offline for 30 minutes each day at 3:00AM Bootleggers time), it has proven to everyone that it is very useful.

It all started happening soon after the backup which took place in the early morning hours of May 13th. And no, it was not a Friday. Money started to rise quickly and everyone was wondering what is going on. The bug was made public by a player going by the name of Pearl. His topic consisted of information on the Bug. The bug, located on the Buy page, gave players a special early Christmas treat. Instead of the desired purchased item, the players received the value of the item in cash. In an example, if a player wanted to upgrade their protection to a Thompson, the player would buy go to purchase it, but instead of getting the item they got the $1,500,000 it costs to buy it.

It wasn't long until the first administrator signed on. Dreamnid was the first of the Administrators to arrive on the scene of the crime and quickly disabled the Buy page, notifying the players of the actions taken. We did not find out until later that the total money which was added to the game in those short two and a half hours came extremely close to $50 billion.

In no more than 30 minutes later, the game was put offline and everyone waited patiently for what was to come: an inevitable rollback. After 45 minutes, the rollback was complete and the game was exploit free; all exploited money was successfully removed from the game, all with the help of a single rollback. Later that day, Sabin informed the record amount of players on Bootleggers official IRC that the bug occurred on a part of the system which is not directly logged and therefore, "we don't know who cheated so there will be no bans made."

The rollback, according to Head Moderator, 5litre, was made to May 13th at 4:00AM. "and people always question as to why we have backups," stated 5litre.

This proves that exploiting on Bootleggers is a quick fix to something that will not last. Rollbacks are an efficient way to counteract what exploiters once attempted to ruin.