Amazon Has Banned More Than 1,200 New World Cheaters Following Economy Shutdowns

New World's player-driven economy has been shut down on two separate occasions this past month thanks to in-game duplication exploits throwing a wrench into the system. Now, developer Amazon Game Studios is detailing how it is dealing with both those who abused the exploits and the economic issues those bad-faith actors created in a new developer update.

"The remaining duped items have continued to hurt many player's experience," the post states. "It didn't affect all players or worlds equally, and also more significantly impacted players who were pursuing end game goals and gear. We apologize for the impact this has had on some of our most dedicated players. It's disheartening to see others cheat to obtain what you have worked so hard to achieve, while also hurting the economy in the process."

Amazon states that more than 1,200 players have been banned for abusing various coin/item duplication exploits. A first pass at removing duplicated coins and items from the game on November 2 resulted in more than 80% of the coin and item value from the game's economy being removed. As of November 15, 98% of the remaining duplicated coin and items have been removed from the game. Amazon says the small remaining amount of duplicated items that remain in the game's economy are a result of players who stumbled upon the issue but did not take exploitive action, and as such won't be banned for doing so.

Amazon says it has not seen a significant uptick in the amount of max level gear following the discovery of the item duplication exploits, stating much of it was removed as a result of accounts possessing the armor having been banned for exploiting.

"We are working to improve our response time and will remain vigilant against players who violate our ToS," the developer update states. "Exploits will not be tolerated, and penalties can and will include permanent bans for those players using them. Our team is working tirelessly to continue our investigations, and preventing future dupes from happening by correcting or replacing game systems that can be attacked."

New World servers will go offline for approximately three hours on November 16 to deliver an update addressing the game's most recent item duplication bug, after which the game's economy will be functioning as normal.

Amazon's MMORPG recently received a public test realm, where players can try out upcoming updates to the game. Upcoming updates to the game include combat balance updates and regional server transfers.