Last Epoch’s developers, Eleventh Hour, recently announced that they were cracking down on players who are taking part in Real Money Trading (RMT), as well as those who took advantage of a gold exploit in the game.

In their post on both their official blog and on Steam, Eleventh Hour talked about the recent gold exploit in their game, Last Epoch, as well as other exploits that happened in recent times. They first assured everyone that they had already deployed a fix for said exploit (which they deployed less than 24 hours after being made aware of the exploit). That means that players will no longer be able to duplicate gold in the game. They also brought up that they had patched out another exploit, which allowed players to duplicate their items.

Eleventh Hour’s actions did not stop at patching out the exploits, however, They continued the post by stating that following the exploit being patched out, they have also banned accounts that took advantage of the exploit. They said that they “reviewed gold activity on an account level, identifying, and banning those accounts which have been participating in illegitimate gold generation”. Understandably, they did not explain how they tracked said accounts so that the “bad actors” would remain in the dark about how to avoid detection. Additionally, they have also banned accounts that took part in illegal item duplication, as well as those that took part in RMT, be it buying or selling.

Eleventh Hour stated that they were “quite confident in [their] tracking not falsely flagging accounts.” However, should a player find themselves wrongfully banned, they said that they are free to “appeal any moderation action” through the game’s support page.

Moving forward, Eleventh Hour said they they are making sure to not just be reacting to the exploits, but also taking measures to prevent them from happening in the first place. Of course, they assured players that they would not be ignoring exploits that are happening in the game as a result of this. but are taking active measures to combat them. Additionally, they have added some quality-of-life updates to the game to make sure that players can differentiate legal and illegal item duplicates from each other (legitimately duplicated items will have mirrored 2D art), as item duplication is an actual feature in the game (but entails some cost for the player).

They ended their statement by saying that “abusing an exploit, [and] ruining the game for all players is not acceptable, and that doing so should result in a ban”, and that they are doing their best to make sure that no exploits go through.

Why Are Gold And Item Duplication Exploits Bad?

Other than the fact that it is cheating and goes against Last Epoch’s Terms of Use, the biggest problem with gold and item duplication is that it can cause inflation. One of Last Epoch’s factions is the Merchant’s Guild, which allows players who are allied to it to buy and sell items from other players. Normally, supply and demand will stabilize the prices of items. However, if a lot of players suddenly receive a lot of gold, they are likely going to spend it. This will increase the demand for items, which in turn will increase said item’s prices (thanks to players wanting to make money out of the increased demand). Players who duplicate said items can then take advantage of the situation to start selling said items at an increased price.

This all leads to a vicious cycle where the prices will just keep going up, thanks to gold duplicators getting more and more gold to buy out the increasingly expensive items, leaving non-gold duplicators behind as they can no longer afford items on the market. If you think inflation is bad in real life, it’s just as bad in the game.

RMT also causes similar problems as gold and item exploits, as it unfairly increases the amount of gold and items circulating in Last Epoch. When players buy Last Epoch gold or items via RMT, it removes the equivalent exchange that keeps things balanced in-game. Although the player spent real money on it, in-game it is as if the player got the item and gold for free. This can then lead to the same situation I described above with the gold and item exploiters.

Thankfully, Eleventh Hour is doing everything it can to make sure that inflation in-game does not get bad. Other than cracking down on exploiters and RMT, they also brought up that they might introduce some new systems in the game to counter inflation, such as Taxes, which will act as a currency sink. More information for these countermeasures should become available as the game gets closer to 1.0.

That’s all the information we have about the Last Epoch developer’s crackdown on players who take part in gold exploits and RMT in the game. Last Epoch is available on PC. Check out our gaming news articles for the latest in gaming news.