In an official statement shared on Spectrum, CIG announced that it had taken action against players who have exploited some of the in-game glitches since the release of Alpha 3.23 to gain in-game currency, resulting in the suspension of over 600 accounts. The suspension period is over 2 months in some cases and will prevent players from connecting to the PU.
According to the statement, all the illicitly gained aUEC through exploits has been wiped from the Star Citizen ecosystem in Alpha 3.23.1a, which went live only a few hours earlier. However, it remains unknown what would happen if someone buys ships using the exploit money. Will we have the illicitly gained ships wiped too?
Many players requested a full wipe for Alpha 3.23.1a or Alpha 3.23.2 in recent weeks, as the number of players using the exploits to get rich has increased gradually.
A bunch of different exploits were reported since Alpha 3.23 and Alpha 3.23.1 through Issue Council, but the most profitable one was the ability to duplicate cargo and sell it twice at the TDD center. Exploiting this glitch reached its peak during the Invictus Launch Week, as players used to simply rent a cargo ship from the expo and then use it to run cargo and earn extra aUEC through the exploit.
CIG makes it clear in the statement that testing a glitch a few times to report it to developers is not something to get in trouble for, but once an exploit has been confirmed and identified by the developers, players will get penalized for using it to get rich or gain any unfair disadvantage in the game.
In fact, some Star Citizen players used this glitch to get rich, and then sell their in-game currency to other lazy players for real money. This has been around in Star Citizen for a while, but when a glitch like cargo duplication appears, more greedy players join this wrong cycle to gain an advantage.
With the release of Alpha 3.23, Star Citizen increased the in-game prices for almost all vehicles, which was probably one more reason for players to get deeply involved in exploiting the glitches to make a significant amount of money quickly.
That being said, Star Citizen still provides some good ways for group players to get rich in a reasonable amount of time, even after the recent price increases, though solo players will have a longer grind ahead going forward.
Hopefully, CIG will rebalance all current quests in Star Citizen Alpha 4.0, based on their profitability and popularity. So, we can remain hopeful that players will have far fewer reasons to be involved in exploits going forward.
Last but not least, if your Star Citizen account has been wrongly affected by the suspensions, you can submit a ticket to the support team at CIG.
