Ultima Online Patch Introduces Economy-Wrecking Bug?

Thanks to PlayMoney for its weblog post revealing a recent Ultima Online patch designed to shore up the economy may have introduced new problems, as "the very same game patch... also [seems] to have introduced a gold-gusher of a bug, allowing some people to conjure themselves up a few hundred million gold pieces in the space of a week." The author references a thread on UO Stratics which includes allegations about "one guy that claimed to have made over 700mil to date on [a particular game server] with this bug", a total of $9947 under current dollar exchange rates if successfully auctioned. Although the other new economic rules "seem otherwise to be working out fine", and this exploit was "fixed last Friday [5th]", the author is concerned that "by the time the new money gets fully circulated, gold will be selling for $7 per million", half of the current $14-per-million auction price.

Comments

Re:wait...

[illuvata]

once it gets sold on ebay it is

exploit?

[kisrael]

Just out of curiosity (never played UO, probably never will) does anyone know what the exploit looked like, what you had to do?

I remember Star Control 2, being able to sell more shuttles than you had, so your amount of cash 'wrapped around' to a large positive rather than negative value....frankly, I was just as happy to avoid all the semi-tedious mineral collecting and just go to work on the main story. (Which I used a walkthrough for...sigh, I'm such a wuss gamer. Still, I loved that game.)

Unintended Consequences

[G4from128k]

The reminds me of an Artificial Life example. A scientist was simulating evolution using some little virtual animals. Built into the simulation was an energy cost for moving -- the virtual creatures were supposed to evolve efficient strategies for finding food and mates. The creatures quickly evolved the ability to move backwards becuase this was counted as negative movement which meant negative cost, so that actually gave the creatures more energy.

For every clever policy created by some scientist, game designer, economist, corporate manager, or clever politician, there is an even more clever counterstrategy that someone is bound to discover.

Re:Unintended Consequences

[hattmoward]

I'm surprised that nobody pointed this out, but why would a scientist do something like that? Certainly, energy cost would be calculated by the magnitude of the movement vector, right? I'm not even sure how someone could get it to work in that manner -- it just doesn't occur to me. It'd have to be some pretty bad code, like "Energy Cost" = "Step Cost" * "Steps Forward", but you'd probably have to waste some math on figuring "Steps Forward". Send your scientist a letter, tell him, "a^2 * b^2 = c^2". Don't get me wrong, I'm not debunking your real point, just your example! :) I think that the latter two policymakers are the real problem... isn't "clever politician" an oxymoron?

Re:Unintended Consequences

[Dachannien]

Okay, how about this one: An artificial life project involved virtual agents with a set of linked blocks which had actuators at the joints. The fitness function was for the agent to achieve the highest vertical position possible during the time allowed. Due to a bug in the code, or an anomaly in the physics model, agents evolved that would use their appendages to beat themselves over the "head". Doing so would propel the body upwards for some reason.

Here's another, from my lab: An evolvable agent project involved evolving a controller for a model of a robot based on the cricket insect. The model simulated interactions between the tarsus (foot) and the ground, but not between the ground and the rest of the leg (for the sake of speed - the computations are orders of magnitude more heinous with other contact implemented). So, the GA found that it could obtain a better fitness (faster locomotion) by protruding the femur-tibia joints (think "knee") through the ground, with the feet still resting on top of the ground.

Here's a third example, from my Master's research: A model of a simpler cricket robot was used to evolve a controller for that robot. At one point, there was an issue with the method of integration (Runge-Kutta 4th order) having problems with the high stiffnesses in the equations of motion. The GA exploited this fact, and determined that by inverting the legs (protruding the "knees" through the floor), and holding the feet (modeled as points) firmly against the ground, the numerical inaccuracy would accelerate the robot forward without requiring the robot to move the legs otherwise at all.

If you delve into the guts of genetic algorithm projects, you will find zillions of instances of the GA giving you what you "asked for" instead of what you wanted. (Usually, these anomalies don't get published, as the phenomenon is well known by anyone who has fiddled around in the field.)

er

[truffle]

Origins will probably just track down the exploiters and close their accounts, retrieving 90% of the bad gold in the process. It's not too hard to look for people who have disproportionately high gold reserves. Once you identify those people, you can on an individual basis check out what kind of gold reserves they had a few weeks ago, and compare.

It's possible Origin can't do this kind of detective work, but seems unlikely.

Re:er

[Hedonist123]

This seems to lead me to the question, is it right for Origin to be able to do this? I mean, granted it's not good for the game to have this sort of inflation. But, it's not necessarily true that the player did anything wrong. It's somewhat like someone playing the stock market really, really well in real life. Should the government be able to say, sorry, your system worked too well, we're taking the money back? Granted, this is a private company with holdings in a game... I guess I just think it's fun to think about.

hed.

Re:er

[That's Unpossible!]

It's somewhat like someone playing the stock market really, really well in real life.

No, it's nothing like that, it is wealth created by a bug in the system. If the stock market systems had a similar bug, and you were able to take advantage of it like this, the money would absolutely be returned. What's more, if they could prove you took advantage of this bug to make money, you would likely go to jail.

Imagine going to an ATM, requesting $20 and getting $200. Once the bank finds out for sure, you will find a $180 deduction from your account.

Re:er

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, while it may not be difficult to track down the people exploiting the bug themselves, it's usually quite difficult to find the money. To most of the people doing this sort of thing, accounts are disposable. They'll pick up a pre-paid gaming card, open a new account, dupe gold to their heart's content, then distribute it to their friends or alternate characters on other accounts. The company shuts down the exploiting accuont, they just buy another pre-paid card.

Close all the accounts that traded with the person in question? The exploiters will start giving out free money to get innocent players banned. Go after anyone with over a certain amount of gold? The exploiters will make sure their gold is below some reasonable limit when they spread it around their characters/friends/accounts, plus you'll be punishing some of your most loyal players who might have spent years accumulating those sums.

Maybe a check of total money against the time the account has been active--at least that would limit the usable "drop-boxes" to old accounts, so you'd be making some progress if you could find and ban those. That kind of punishes "twinking" and helping out new players, though (which may not be a bad thing in the case of twinking).

Re:Capitalism making a fool of itsself

[Cerpicio]

Just curious, but how do you spend your money? Ever spend real money on a movie? DVD? VHS? TV? Book? Did any of that help the starving people? How is spendning money on virtual entertainment any different than spending money on other forms of entertainment? -- C.

Wait a Sec...

[DaRat]

Wait a sec... Are you sure that the bug was in Ultima Online and not recently introduced as a new fiscal policy by the government in the real world?

Simple Solution

[BurritoJ]

The solution to this problem is to remove some of that money from circulation. The most straight forward way would be to make available at auction a few unique expendable items. These items may need to be powerful enough to unbalance other parts of the game, but with limited uses (maybe even just one) this should correct itself rather quickly. If the item is powerful enough it may never be used because some enterprising soul will see it as an 'investment' to be sold on EBay when his real-world life needs a capital infusion.

Joe

oh, c'mon

[cheezus]

being a currency trader is a risky business to begin with, but trading in FAKE currencies, where the government (in this case, UO patch team) can cause massive (in|de)flation at any time? There's a lot of money to be made, but the traders shouldn't whine so much when they get burned.

Publish, not patch

[Kethinov]

Ultima Online Patch Introduces Economy-Wrecking Bug?

It was a publish, not a patch. A patch denotes a bug in the client while a publish denotes a bug in the server. This means that this bug can only be exploited on EA servers; the player run UO server community remains unaffected because they use such server emulators as Sphere or RunUO which EA has no control over. FYI, player run communities use EA patched clients, so new client bugs affect the player run community just as badly. But not these publishes. Publishes are the pay to play players' problems.