Delays

Yet another week has passed since Knights Reforged was released, so it’s time for another update! The fix list isn’t as long this week as our last, though we have been tackling a large issue that has hopefully demonstrated that we’re serious on cracking down against cheaters. As a small note: we are aware of reported content in the game, and thank the users who have done this- we will be attending to these reports once the backlog of support emails have been worked through!

UPDATES:

  • Server host conducted updates- login errors should be resolved
  • Land no longer sells at their inflation rates
  • Any active cheaters & banned accounts have been wiped from the game, or reverted of glitched goods

The most recent issue in the game, related to cheaters being removed, has raised a point we didn’t think we needed to be clarified but going on the feedback received, it seems we do. The old titles/games had a lot of issues with them, the majority of which were left unattended, and resulted in glitchers or cheaters being able to dominate the game and ruin them for those who wanted to play as intended. It’s a subject we’ve touched on often in the past as it was something the majority of the community wanted us to address- to say that we would not allow the same on our games. Glitchers or cheaters are individuals that purposefully take advantage of exploits or issues within the game to the point that it gives them an unfair advantage over others, and as a result obstructs the service we can provide to the rest of the user base. This is different to hackers or the use of 3rd party tools for example, that go out of their way to create issues themselves to then use in the game. Both of these are not allowed to remain in the game- the reason they are not elaborated in the game rules is because it is a part of our Terms of Service. If you ruin the game for everyone, your account will be removed- easy as that.

For those thinking that we indiscriminately “pick and choose” which accounts are removed for cheating are very misinformed. All actions taken on accounts related to cheating is done on 100% empirical data collected from the game. This is subsequently also why it make take us a while to remove a particular account, as we conduct investigations on it. When it comes to disciplinary actions, obviously not everyone will be in the same boat- the person who accidentally stumbled on to it but then never engaged in the exploit anymore should not be punished in the same way as a user who went out of their way to ruin the entire game for every player there. Thanks to this data, we can see what accounts have been doing exactly, and what kind of disciplinary action they merit as a result of their choices.

Because of the arguable nature regarding the consequences the cheaters imposed on the rest of the userbase, no action was taken on those who won any amount of gold from accounts who were intentionally exploiting this latest game error. If this makes any users in particular uncomfortable is some way, please know that it has the same effect on us; we will not take action against a user where there is no solid 100% evidence of cheating, as this is usually where bias becomes an issue, and we do not want to open up ourselves to the implications of this kind of management style. Regular users do not have access to the evidence we do to know 100% that a particular user is cheating, and so not to attack them. Those who attacked cheaters in the game were playing the game as intended, as there were no game errors related to attacking or winning gold from battles; this is instead an issue of cheaters finding an exploit and abusing it to the point that it affects the entire rest of the game- these are the types of accounts that have been removed from the game so they are no longer causing these problems. We cannot enact disciplinary action on an account that has been affected by a cheater as opposed to cheating themselves.

Building further on this, we have received a fair amount of criticism regarding our “issue detection rates” or email reply times, with most assuming still that we are intentionally not fixing game issues and allowing glitchers to ruin the game. This is also incorrect. The truth is we are a team of 2 people, who work on this part time; despite us making very clear that making money from this was not our goal, that the purchases were put there to help us with start up costs and maintenance fees, people seem to have this idea that we are a large corporation bent on making money at the expense of gamers. We’re not. We’re gamers too, and just wanted our games back so that we could play with the community like we used to. We are regular people, and do not have the time or manpower to be combing through the hundreds of accounts every day for possible issues. With this in mind, we hope it can be understood now that if people don’t report issues to us, they will go unattended in the game to some extent. This is also why the community has been given more than one platform with which to report issues to us, and we keep ourselves open to communications 7 days a week.

With this context, we elaborate exactly on glitchers & cheaters in our games because this is apparently not commonly understood- anyone found to be purposefully taking advantage of, exploiting and abusing game problems, issues or defects will have disciplinary action(s) applied to their account; these will vary depending on the issue and level of abuse, and is at our sole discretion. This includes but is not limited to any forms of glitching, cheating and hacking, particularly those that interfere with our ability to provide our services to other users. To make sure this is very clear to users, it will be an added elaboration in the game’s rules itself.

A special note regarding multiple accounts as we have received a lot of questions about this lately: yes, our Terms of Service (ToS) does specify that 2 accounts per device is allowed- no, that does not mean it’s currently possible to have 2 accounts per device. We added this to our ToS before a comprehensive accounts system because it was a major concern in the community during development, and we wanted to make our stance on the issue very clear. But until we can upgrade the accounts system, this won’t be possible through us just yet. Some players have found ways to keep 2 accounts per device via 3rd party software- be warned that we can’t guarantee our game will work 100% if you are doing this, so please do so at your own risk, and we highly recommend waiting until we upgrade the accounts system (particularly if you have made any purchases through us).