Yesterday’s Path of Exile patch didn’t quite go to plan. The 3.7.4 update was intended to add the promised stackable Fossils feature as well as multiple bug fixes and tweaks. But it didn’t take long for Grinding Gear Games to bring it all to a screeching halt to roll back the database.
In its message to players overnight, GGG quashes the initial rumors that the downtime and subsequent rollback had anything to do with an exploit. In fact, it had to do with a database migration problem that wound up wiping Korean details from the database – very much not intended. At first, GGG rolled back just the account database, but then it became clear that caused problems with folks who were already busily stashing stacked fossils, so downtime and a full database became necessary.
“In total this incident led to 123 minutes of effective downtime including the 29 minutes of gameplay that was lost,” writes GGG, whose lead programmer Jonathan Rogers took responsibility for the original database error, failure of QA processes to catch it, and his own error in misjudging the impact on fossils.
“In the future, we will make sure to understand all of the repercussions of a rollback before making this call. We would still have had some downtime, but we would have prevented any player gameplay loss. This incident is not up to the standard of service that we want to provide to you, and I want to personally apologise for how it was handled. You should expect better from Grinding Gear Games and we will be doing everything we can to avoid this type of thing in the future.”
And this is why GGG keeps winning awards.
