Exploitation of Afuaru’s Guild Event – Resolution

Greetings Adventurers,

Exploitation in any form is not accepted in Black Desert Online! Those that we verify with indisputable evidence will face extremely tough account sanctions.

The Afuaru Map case is more complex than many people were aware as it was not just the notorious cases that are wider known, but also ensuring that all players received the same level of scrutiny to ensure our actions were fair. We hope that today we can shed some light on the investigation we’ve been conducting, the stance that we are taking and the final closure of the case.

These are some of the considerations that we’ve taken into account.

• This was intended for new and returning players, and for guilds to become more actively involved with welcoming them to the game. Creating a high number of dummy accounts for the sole purpose of making gains from this event is indisputably against the spirit of the event and therefore considered as exploitation.
• The cumulative silver gains during the event were higher than anticipated during the event which had a significant impact on the game economy.
• We introduced the event into the game without thorough consideration to the potential for exploitation.
• We did not have sufficient evidence that the majority of the players attending the summoning and looting were aware of the exploitative method used to obtain maps.

Considering the above and not believing it fair or proportionate to take permanent account action on every player that looted x times, we have specifically targeted the organisers behind the exploit that created accounts and levelled them for the purpose of increasing gains from the event. This investigation required considerable manual investigation work as there was no single data point that could determine guilt or innocence.

The 23 players that we identified will be permanently banned from Black Desert Online.

In addition, we determined thresholds beyond the highest amount of maps that anyone managed to obtain without resorting to exploits. Any player that looted more than that will receive a silver balance reduction equal to the silver value of the items received. Collectively this will sink 3,939,767,100,000 from the game economy.

We also accept our own errors and responsibility for the implementation of this event and are adjusting our own procedures to catch things like this before they make it live. We deeply regret our own failures here and this was considered when determining our response to the exploit. Although our focus was on accuracy and diligence and our priority was to ensure only those abusing the event were punished, we are also unsatisfied with the speed in which we responded and understand that many people felt frustrated with our actions.

Finally, this event was held with the hope and intention of bringing people together within Black Desert Online. Whilst we are extremely disappointed that a minority chose to take advantage of this for personal gains, we are proud of those that helped our new and returning players find a home in this amazing community.

Look after each other and stay safe.

-BDO Team

***Update to answer some of the FAQs***

1. The 23 banned accounts were all very active main accounts. We didn’t ban the hundreds of alt accounts used to level up as they were extremely low value accounts and had played legitimately.
2. The negative silver balance was added to a total of 405 accounts
3. All potential rewards were given a silver value that was agreed with the developers.
4. We took a lighter stance on people who only attended the use of the scrolls as the boundaries were unclear on looting and we must accept responsibility for our own mistakes during this incident.