Wizard101 is normally associated with kid-friendly fun, but over the past weekend it got decidedly more adult in terms of its language as someone – either a hacker from the outside or a disgruntled employee from within – managed to bombard the game with several vulgar messages (links are NSFW due to language, if that wasn’t immediately clear).
Several sources across Twitter and Reddit have shared the various in-game alert messages that oscillate between expressing anger at the game and its developer KingsIsle or just general memes. Initially, players also thought the game’s Twitter account had been similarly taken over [Update: That turned out to from an imposter account]. Whoever the perpetrator was, KingsIsle wrested back control shortly after, shutting down the game’s servers for a temporary fix while the team investigates a long-term solution.
This brief stint of employee or hacker shenanigans has seen the game’s community come together to celebrate the person whom it has dubbed Server Dude, with plenty of memes, some commiseration with the alleged employee’s frustration, and even a tier list of the rogue messages. Someone even went so far as to make a fanart rendering of Server Dude.
We’ll likely never get official confirmation about just what happened, but for a few wild and woolly hours, Wizard101 players and devs were taken for a ride.
