The beginning of the end of eRep?

Day 954, 01:42 • Published in USA USA • by ligtreb

Yes, a lot of the events of Day 953 were entertaining. In case you missed it:

admin was banned.
As were many other prominent citizens.
Multiple prominent newspapers were hacked as well, check the eUS forums for more info.

While I laughed at first, I was disturbed later on. This should never happen.

This all started when one community moderator leaked his password in a fit of rage. People then used it to to ban citizens and hack newspapers. While the bans have been rolled back, friend lists have been lost, as have congressional seats, party president spots and presidential endorsements.

One moderator giving up his password should not be able to lead to the banning of dozens of prominent citizens, the takeover of prominent newspapers and the loss of elected positions. No citizen should have that much unchecked power.

That's not even the worst part.

The password was leaked around 17:15 game time. The admins did not put the servers under maintenance until 23:30, and no visible action was taken to stop the chaos before then.

There is no excuse for letting the chaos continue for over six hours. I understand that this was nighttime in Europe, where the admins are located. Is there not one night owl on the eRepublik staff? Not one person up early in the morning? (23:30 is 9:30 a.m. in Romania).

A lot of people pay real money for this game. This game has real investors. And there are several country populations in this game who are active during nighttime in Europe: USA, Brazil, Indonesia, China, Canada, Japan to name a few.

I lost a lot of trust in this game, and I'm sure many eRepublik players did as well. I'm not quitting this game, I have made tons of friends here. I may be the exception. Without swift action to make sure this never happens again, many people may quit.

I've defended this game and the admins in the past. This is a great game, it really is. But they need to make sure this game is safe from something like this happening again -- no player should have this much unchecked power. I wrote this article in hopes that the incident of Day 953 will inspire the admins to reform their moderator system. I'm hoping they succeed.