Over the weekend, we covered the bizarre news that someone was filling up Wizard101’s in-game alert system with malicious text and vulgar messages attacking developer KingsIsle, prompting the company to pull the game servers offline for a fix and investigation. We thought we might never find out whether it was an inside job or an external hacker, but now KingsIsle has addressed the issue and clarified that it was indeed an external exploit, though the company says no other systems were breached.
“This past Friday the Broadcast System of Wizard101 was illegally accessed to post inappropriate messages in-game as if they were written by a KingsIsle employee,” the company writes.
“We sincerely apologize for the unacceptable statements making their way into the game and causing disruption of your gameplay. We take great care in ensuring Wizard101 is a family-friendly game and feel disheartened when someone finds a way to disrupt that experience. The incident was quickly identified, and steps were immediately taken to halt the behavior. We turned off the Broadcast System and have added additional security measures to ensure this won’t happen again. At this time, we believe that an external party initiated the messages through a non-traditional method of accessing the Broadcast System. No other systems were accessed.”
The studio says that it will compensate all players with sub benefits from now to the end of the month.
