Infinity Ward
Call of Duty: Infinite WarfareThe multiplayer mode has an extensive array of weapons and skins that you can acquire by purchasing Supply Drops. As is typical for these types of games, you can grind these items by playing the game – a rare Supply Drop costs 30 keys, which you can usually earn in about two hours of gameplay – or you can earn some money and buy the Supply Drops directly . A rare Drop costs approximately $2 when purchased with the real money currency known as ‘COD Points’.
A breakdown during the holiday period allowed Infinite Warfare players to earn tens of thousands of keys in minutes. Developer Infinity Ward had an in-game event giving away free Supply Drops with various goodies. One of those Supply Drops was a crate of 30 keys. Players soon discovered that this chest could be opened repeatedly by, er, pressing the X button, for 30 keys per press. Players can collect another in-game currency, Salvage, in a similar way.
With these thousands or tens of thousands of keys, players could then purchase items that would take thousands of hours or grinding, or hundreds of real dollars, to purchase. Widespread use of the flaw caused Activision, Infinity Ward’s parent, to temporarily shut down the game servers until something could be done.
In response, Infinity Ward issued: 48 hour ban for anyone who used the exploit and reset their key and the Salvage counts to zero. But all those unlocked items? Players can keep them.
The community’s response has been short-lived, but has already largely blown over, with anger at the exploits and bans now supplanted by anger at the new 1.07 gameplay patch. The exploiters are amused for the most part, because being locked out of the game for a few days in exchange for all the goodies they bought is a small price to pay – there’s no way they could get that many items in the game in 48 hours could have earned, so they are still way ahead. The non-exploitors are furious saying they would rather not inflict punishment than such a pointless punishment and now they think they should have used the exploit too.
People who have bought COD points are particularly saddened, because they have spent real money to buy items that others got for free. A player may feel that $2 in COD points is a fair trade for avoiding two hours of grind, but that trade-off is quite different when considering this exploit, and few would likely think $2 is worth paying to avoid mashing X. a few times.
It’s hard to disagree. The kind of gravel-based economy the game offers relies on cash payments which are a useful time saver. In this case, they clearly aren’t, and it wouldn’t be surprising if players decided to keep their money in their pockets and just wait for the next inevitable exploitable mistake to unlock all of the game’s goodies.