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Hello all! In this message, I would like to address the situation with claiming resources through codes that happened yesterday. We only intended the original package with Fayne to be a gift for new and existing players in The Game Awards ongoing sale campaign https://plarium.com/en/resource/tga/ . However, the links embedded in the QR-codes were compromised from the outside. We fixed this very promptly, but the whole thing resulted in unstable server performance and some players claiming additional resources that were never meant to become available this way. We are now working actively on making sure that the liabilities in the system that allowed the exploit to take place don't resurface.
We would like to stress that, according to our Terms of Use, we have the right to apply various sanctions against the accounts of the players that take advantage of exploits. We do want to believe, however, that everyone relies on their integrity when deciding whether or not to engage in something that is the very essence of unfair game-play. 

That's a very murky line for them to be taking. I do think there is a difference between taking advantage of information provided to us versus actively trying to look for exploits, but I don't see any way of actually being able to "punish" those who are most "guilty". This just feels like one of those situations where Plarium should just accept that they messed up, and move on.

No good deed goes unpunished.

That's pretty vague, I gotta say.

It should be more like: "X is prohibited.  If you do X, the consequence will be Y."

Not to sound too cynical, but I think the reason for the lack of specificity here is that they don't want to punish whales, and clear rules would probably force them to do it.  They'd rather have the discretion to say "well, this guy cheated, but he's also third in line to the Throne of Brunei, so... I guess we'll have to go easy on him."

Isn't it normal for some players to take advantage and others not? I know it sounds apologetic on your part, it was a bug that it wasn't, a player who took out 5 sacred twice has 10 and I don't take out 10 in a year, and when I bought shards I hoped to I catch a hero to help me but most of the time nothing, and you blamed the mercy system, now no money for Raid, increase 

Remove the extra resources that was given out in error. I hope you have logs. If not, you know what your next project should be. Punishing is dicey, as there's no way of telling how many actively exploited something knowing what they were doing, and how many just got a link from a friend or clan mate or a forum post or whatever and clicked it. One could maybe argue that people should've known Plarium would never be that generous, but aside from that there's nothing suspicious in clicking a link and being given the option to accept it in-game if you don't know how the link came about.

Ultimately, the screwup is on Plarium; if you don't want something to be available, then don't make it available. Security through obfuscation is no security at all, and a cleartext ID in an URL is barely even obfuscation to begin with. At least hash it first.

So,, Does this mean that the Promo Code ,, 

THAT WORKED IN GAME BY THE WAY was an Exploited Bug ?

If it was, you can say good Bye to more then 3/4 of the player base because the Code was flooded onto all Chat Channels

and a Working Promo Code should not be a BUG should it ............................

Maybe the Guy who Programed the Exploit into the Code in the First place should be FIRED

Really?

As far as I know no promocode was bugged or hacked.

QR code was hacked.

The promocode that I put out yesterday was not an exploit. The sacred shard link is what this post is concerned with. 

Bit confused here, i saw a game promo code in clan chat- i typed it in assuming it has come from a creator vid or something and got another fayne (got 3 already) and some minor stuff

Is this suggesting i should not have entered it?

No, you are good.  There was another code (hacked i guess) that gave sacreds and more. 

Wish I would have got that one :)

ready to forget that some players received 5, 10 -20 sacred shards and the rest were disadvantaged? Is this what Plarium wants us to forget that some have benefited from certain advantages for free and most have not? It can't be normal, if that's the case, I hope that most of them will stop playing, it's not the fault of the players who exploited a weakness of the system, we would all have done it 

 Hmmm weird 😌

When it comes to losing a substantial amount of money plarium seems rather quick on the ball to fix things, that's really convenient for them.

So if this "hacked code" was spitting out like 5 sarceds and a leggo tome guessing that's roughly 150-200 bucks free of charge

Thanks :) i never bother to check the ..provenance of codes i see on clan chat :)

No, this was fine.

There was an exploit that gave away Sacreds to a small handful of accounts before they shut this down, and this it what Cirilla is referring to.

There is, what they give for some players 

5 sacred shard, 1 lego skill book, 1000 energy and 5M silver

Nothing was given. Additional resources were taken though, through links compromised in the QR codes for a different free gift.

What I see as the major problem with this explotation is that Plarium could be much less likely to give such nice gifts in the future. There was a point in my Raid time where Fayne and an epic book would have been absolutely amazing for my account, and frankly I believe the Fayne package is the best thing Plarium has ever given away.

"Nothing was given " but you write "QR codes for a different free gift."

So ..... gave free gifts just for some peoples 

I never saw this gift pack before, maybe they create for the privileged peoples

You had to be around the forums during the giveaway. We had the code for the Fayne packaged pinned right to the top of the forums. All you had to do was visit. Limited time offers are just that, limited.

As has been written all over the place, including in this thread: 

The links/QR codes that resulted in players getting the sacreds, lego book, energy and silver were manipulated and were not codes that were used as intended. These were not gifts, more akin to stealing than something freely given.