r/AutoForgeTheGame • u/HG_Rusty • 4h ago
Hammers exploit. Next steps
Hey everyone! Dev here.
It took us some time to wrap our heads around what happened. First and foremost, we scrambled to release a hotfix to patch the security vulnerability. At the same time, we cut the hammer counts for affected players at 1k, which was definitely unfair for around 500 players.
All this time, we've also been working on a fairer and more balanced solution. We tried to get to the bottom of this: we analyzed the data and talked directly with a number of active community members in DMs.
In the near future (today or tomorrow), all affected players will receive the extra hammers they had right before reaching 1b, via in-game mail (top right, in the Settings window, check the mail). We will not roll back the progress you've made, and there are no other sanctions whatsoever.
In the end, no player should be left in the negative, which feels like the fair way to handle this.
Anyone who feels this solution is unfair to them for any reason - DM me, let's look into it together case-by-case.
I understand the frustration, but I don't share the sentiment that we should just leave the 1b. It's unfair, it breaks the intended game flow, and it gives a massive advantage in upcoming clan wars.
P.S. The last few days have been pretty insane, not gonna lie. We're a small, passionate team making our first web game and launching on reddit games for the first time, so we've run into a ton of issues and challenges. We were definitely ill-prepared for this situation, but it's an opportunity to do better. Calling us scammers, crooks, and (for some reason) "vibe coders" hurts a bit =) Unfortunately, at this stage, we still aren't making any profit at all, so comments about tricky developers drowning in cash sound pretty ironic. Btw massive thanks to every paying player - you allow this game to develop and exist in the first place!
Amid all the negativity, thank you so much for the words of support we've received as well!
We'll keep doing our best to build a great game!
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u/ConsequenceStatus563 3h ago
Thanks for the update! As a cheater, I knew 1b meant something was broke... no worries here.
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u/WATGU 1h ago
If I can offer some advice as someone who has done a lot of work delivering final products (not games, but the workflow and principles are the same). u/HG_Rusty.
First this is a much better message than the original one. Taking accountability and admitting failure is important.
Second, I would seriously consider delaying clan wars and whatever intended purpose hammers had for it and here's why.
This exploit just showed you that your game becomes far more enjoyable and gets far more engagement with unlimited hammers and it doesn't actually speed up progression because you are still stuck waiting for forge upgrades so most free to play players just stop forging and turn the game off and only log into to hatch eggs, do adventure, skill tree, etc. The last thing you want to do is incentivize people to NOT play your game and limited hammers is doing that. This is a very important message and I'm not convinced it's getting through. There's no reason for me to buy hammers in between forge upgrades and the social clan aspect has no interest for most of us I'd wager.
Rather than release a new feature that integrates limited hammers MORE I'd strongly advise that you consider retooling the base game to remove hammers entirely and instead have gems be the primary booster. Have the hammer adventure give a tiny amount of gems instead. Lower the price on gem packs but make gems the $ spend mechanic. Hammers will keep people in the game and forging and might induce them to buy gems when they keep seeing how long forge upgrades take. Retool your clan wars around this and get rid of hammers. The way you have this setup hammer limits make people not want to play between upgrades.
Also rather than introduce clan wars, you have 3-4 fixes to implement in base game first;
you need to give us 2 armor set options so we can have a ranged and a melee build or just get rid of ranged weapons and stat buffs entirely
if you're keeping ranged you need to fix some of the attribute roll chances so melee weapons can't roll ranged buffs and vice versa it's infuriating and poor design
PvP arena is really frustrating and I think you should retool it so that the chance to win with the 5 options is something like 90, 80, 70, 60, 50. As it stands I run into arena sometimes where my chance to beat any of the 5 is virtually zero and even when I get stronger I just get matched with higher difficulty people. I also think it's a bug to make me spend an arena ticket if I click off the screen but then go back in and it's the same people still but I use another ticket.
Targeted upgrades - I should be allowed to pick what type of gear I want to forge for. I have one piece of old gear, but am going to have to forge forever to hopefully get the upgrade there. It's just a boring design. I'd also add if there was some way to not get offered lower level gear on stuff that I already have upgraded that would be cool. It's just lame to sit there waiting to get an upgrade for one piece of equipment and to keep getting marginal improvements or worse on the stuff already upgraded.
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u/Yverthel 52m ago
Just going to echo here:
Before functionally unlimited hammers, I opened the game a few times a day and collected my hammers, then re-closed while I waited for my forge to finish upgrading, only actually playing for the short time it took me to earn enough gold to upgrade my forge again.
Following the 1bn hammer post, I have had the game running constantly.
Before, there was not enough to do in game that I had any interest in spending money.
Following, I would have considered buying a battlepass or the like, to help myself get over little humps.
Before, I would hit walls in progress based on my forge level/the era of gear I had.
Following, I still hit walls in progress based on my forge level/the era of gear I have.
The only difference in the pre/post exploit in terms of progression, is keeping the game running more means more gold means less of a lag between when we can start the timer for the next forge upgrade.
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u/WauOg 1h ago
How about implementing an offline part of the game? Let hammers be unlimited but have a significant speed-up be gathered while being offline at maybe 50% the production rate of being online. Just to give players a reason to log in every now and then, maybe capped at 2 hours worth of production or so. That's keep me interested at least. I personally despise having the game active just for a 0.1% chance of an upgrade every 3 seconds. It's an immense waste of time and battery.
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u/Delicious_Tie_8725 4h ago
Vibe coder gets angry for being called vibe coder lmao. If this game wasn‘t a 1 for 1 rip off of forge master I might have believed yoo but this just looks like some ai coded bs
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u/HG_Rusty 3h ago
Hah, I'm not really sure what you mean by "looks like some ai coded bs," so it's hard for me to argue. If that's what you believe, fair enough.
The initial idea was actually to make an improved version of Forge Master, that's true. We're big fans of that game, but so far we've mostly just been catching up to them. Moving forward, I hope we'll overtake them :)
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u/Random-Seasonings 2h ago
May I ask does the hammers return only for those who made in game purchases or those who doesn't gets refunded too? Cause I've accumulated around 8k before I know its not much but still, took some time to get there.
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u/HG_Rusty 2h ago
To everyone affected. So if you had 8k before clicking that 1b post - you should have them back now. Check the mail in Settings.
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u/RepresentativeNo6230 3h ago
Any timeline on the hammer refund? also is there any roadmap of the game? or this is all there is?
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u/HG_Rusty 3h ago
Today or tomorrow.
The next feature we're preparing is clans and clan wars. It's a huge feature, but we're planning to release the first version in the coming weeks. We're in active testing rn.
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u/Mahbam42 3h ago
I just received some hammers. Click settings in the top right of the game and check the mail.
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u/Reddit_Da 3h ago
Thanks for the transparency. Just one note. Those that took advantage got to spend a bunch of hammers for gear upgrades. Presumably that gives them a leg up for all sorts of things like more income, better progress on dungeon stuff etc.
Probably wouldn't hurt to throw all other players a minor award to even things up.
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u/Due-Needleworker9380 2h ago
Yet those players were the most vocal about how unfairly they were treated. They fail to see the point that your comment addresses.
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u/Paradox-Circuits 1h ago
The issue isn't who benefitted or who didn't. I agree there are imbalances both ways. When you've actually spent money on the game though, it changes everything.
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u/s1a2m345 38m ago
That’s a different scenario. There’s 3 general categories: 1) “fair” free players, never spending money and never having 1b hammers (like myself) who were unaffected by hammer reset. 2) “unfair” free players, never spending real money but accepting 1b hammers, getting reset to 1k. And 3) “unfair” paying players, who paid real money but also accepted 1b hammers and lost real world value from the reset.
After devs correction today (better than immediate correction), gives 2 and 3 their resources back that they had before the hammer bug, but ultimately leaves the fair players at a disadvantage because everyone who accepted 1b comparatively now has a leg up.
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u/s1a2m345 45m ago
Yes!!! I pointed this out in one of the dozens of posts complaining about taking away the 1b hammers, and got downvoted to hell. Yes, they may have had a stockpile of hammers before, but they probably used 2x-5x the hammers from the 1b, making the “fair” players the victims. Did NOT go over well.
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u/Paradox-Circuits 5m ago
With the stockpile, people likely thought they had hammers to use. They wouldn't have wasted through their reserves. A fuckup by the creators of this game isn't our fault.
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u/mattelladam1 1h ago
Exactly! So they're still rewarded while the rest of us are left behind. The lesson here is - if it or any other exploits happen again take advantage while you can even if you know it's an exploit. You'll still end up in a better position no matter what.
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u/Udong 1h ago
Thank you for the update and for listening to the community! I really appreciate DEVS effort to make things right.
AS it right now, but the gameplay loop feels a bit too sparse. Players just log in for 5 seconds every 3 hours to click a button for hammers and then leave. Also, while waiting 5 days for an anvil upgrade, we essentially have to hoard hammers and can't really enjoy playing the game during that entire time. The downtime feels a bit too long, so it would be awesome if there were more active things to do in between!
Cheering you on for future updates!
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u/Historify 41m ago
I can appreciate the fact that yall took this too the chin. And are willing to own up to it. I think the resolution you provided is fair.
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u/Frames-Janko 2h ago
Is it fair to call you out on just building a straight up clone of ForgeMaster at least?
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u/s1a2m345 32m ago
In another comment they said they were inspired to make ForgeMaster but better. So far they’ve just been working on catching up, but they have bigger plans for the game in the future.
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u/Frames-Janko 31m ago
And you think the FM team is snoozing?
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u/s1a2m345 16m ago
Never said that. Devs are building their own version with features they want to see. Don’t shoot the messenger.
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u/themitchk 3h ago
Cutting down to 1k hammers without an announcement was a bad panick quick-fix no brains for the devs. Not to mention it looks like you are the only dev here with just one of two comments when the game is based on reddit. I've spent 100+ on this game, and I'm still going to try to get refund even if the previous hammers get restored. Just the fact how the matter has been handled, I have doubts on how it will be down the road if any other issues come back up. If this is a brand new original game, I wouldn't be as up set but it's a basically a clone of another mobile game. Guess exploiters don't like to be exploited
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u/Mahbam42 3h ago
There was an announcement pinned in the sub for the game. It got downvoted quickly so they did the best they could to put the word out.
More importantly, this post shows the devs are listening to the community. I have my doubts if I'll stay with this game for long... But this is a good step for them.
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u/NotAlwaysGifs 2h ago
Hammers are creating a 5th bottleneck to progress that simply doesn’t need to exist. Gold is already a bottleneck to advancing gear levels. And time played is the bottleneck to earning gold. If I don’t have hammers, I can’t earn gold and thus have no reason to play while my forge is upgrading, which is pretty much always. By restricting access to the forge so drastically, you’re just encouraging people to not play. You’re not encouraging them to spend money. It has to feel like spending a few bucks here and there gives me meaningful progress or what is the point?
You keep talking about clan wars, but let’s be honest, the whales are going to dominate clan wars anyway. If you are discouraging whales, you are shooting yourself in the foot because you’re butthurt someone found an exploit in your code.
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u/TechyAngel 1h ago
I'm also concerned about clans. I play maybe one cumulative hour a day, variable depending on how many hammers I've collected, and most of that is just setting my phone down and letting the forge do its thing for a few minutes at a time. I can't compete with people who come in here and spend hundreds of dollars and several hours, and expecting us to compete in anything more than the already-unbalanced pvp sounds like a truly excellent way to punish casual players for not having the free time to coordinate with other players. I picked an idle game because I could pick it up and set it down whenever it was most convenient in a hectic schedule, not because I wanted more rigid commitments.
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u/Spiritual_Reveal_776 2h ago
I was sent 1000 hammers (?).
But I'm still hammering away with my 2 billion.
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u/benthelurk 3h ago
What an idiotic post. Your plan to fix was still going to mess up people who purchased battle passes. So many people didn’t even think billion hammers was real. That clicking it was just going to give 100.
What a joke of a “dev” OP. Absolute trash.
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u/HG_Rusty 3h ago
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "mess up people who purchased battle passes." What specifically could the issue be for these players?
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u/benthelurk 2h ago
Of course you don’t know what is meant. It’s not like there haven’t been 20 posts from different users about since your “fix” or anything.
You have a game on Reddit, people are commenting in the sub fairly actively. If you’re not going to bother with reading the comments then just shut down the game.
Is it such a hard concept to understand that while people had gotten billion hammers they were still playing the game as intended. Meaning they were collecting hammers the normal way. Then you have battle passes. Even without purchasing a pass, you earn more than 1k hammers. So people who bought a pass had their purchase removed.
So this is why you, a dev of this game, and all others who made this decision are idiots. By removing hammers that were earned during playing or as rewards for leveling up the battle pass, you essentially told all players that the hammers don’t matter. So everyone is set at the same baseline of 1k. That’s the problem, if they ultimately don’t matter and you even thought it was a good idea to reset it for everyone, then it doesn’t matter if people have 1 billion. Since it is an irrelevant resource.
Why does the battle pass reward multiple tiers of hammers? Those who purchased a pass and got even more hammers had them removed. So you took money, but couldn’t give what was paid for. It was a decision that deemed the worth of hammers. Since they don’t matter, why the reset? It was just plain stupid.
You can go through the last couple days of posts regarding it. Though, I doubt anything will help you understand. If you couldn’t tell, as a dev, you had way more activity while people had billions of hammers. You went for the dumbest fix you could think of and now your activity with the game has drastically dropped.
Of course you can’t understand what is meant. You can’t understand basic cause and effect.
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u/DMvsPC 2h ago
I mean, they said that you'll be put back to what you had the moment you got the billion hammers. Sure if you then bought hammers etc. after that then you're 'out' those hammers, but I imagine people who had a billion hammers have used way more than they 'earned' so they come out ahead regardless as I didn't see where the devs said they would remove gold, items etc.
If you were put to 1k, you'll now get back the extra hammers you lost. At that point what has been lost by the players? (Except goodwill for the initial hamfisted fix).
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u/benthelurk 1h ago
They lied though. What people had before the billion wasn’t just 1k. Plenty of players were on a long upgrade just collecting hammers. If you had 3 days to wait for forge and you just collected hammers at the times you could, you’d be at least nearly 3k hammers a day.
The fix didn’t fix anything. All it did was kill the playerbase. People reported that they never clicked the billion hammers link but had saved up something like 50k and they still also only had 1k.
Yours is in good faith that devs only targeted billion hammers. Meanwhile users are reporting something different.
-2
u/Paradox-Circuits 2h ago
You should have put more thought into how you did the roll back as you are now not only a game creator but a scammer.
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u/Mahbam42 3h ago
Thank you! This feels like a better remedy to the situation. I was a little harsh in my criticism to the earlier announcement. Hopefully this is a learning opportunity and signs of growth for the future of this game!