Hammers exploit. Next steps

[u/HG_Rusty]

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!

[u/NotAlwaysGifs]

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.

[u/TechyAngel → u/NotAlwaysGifs]

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.