Update (11/01/2021, 1:52 PM Eastern Time) - Amazon has announced that it has enabled a fix for the latest New World exploit on Friday afternoon, although some players are reporting that it doesn't appear to be totally fixed.
"Earlier today, we discovered an issue where players were able to post images and other links in the chat that resulted in unsavory behaviour," read a news post from the game's developers. "We have enabled a fix that should resolve this issue and prevent players from abusing and exploiting this feature. This should already be enabled in each region."
However, one bug report claims that the issue remains, as does a submission on the game's subreddit. Another player reports that the devs appear to have closed the exploit by using a regex (Regular Expression) which has stopped some -- but apparently not all -- methods of using the exploit by blocking specific strings of text rather than addressing the root cause of the problem.
Based on player reporting, it appears that Amazon's fix for this bug is a band-aid on a pretty big hole. Hopefully, a more robust and substantial fix is coming down the pipeline.
Our original story continues below.
Another game-breaking New World exploit has been discovered by players and it's pretty bad -- this time, players have discovered how to inject HTML code into the game, allowing them to dupe gold and crash player clients.
New World is notable for being Amazon Games' first commercial success, but this new MMORPG has had way more than its fair share of problems. For example, server transfers were indefinitely delayed; the server transfer feature only arrived a few weeks after launch. Missing features aside, there have also been some pretty severe exploits in the game -- and now players have discovered another major problem.
HTML New World Exploit Might Threaten the Game's Economy
The latest New World exploit effectively allows players to inject HTML code through chat as reported on Reddit. Typing out code on its own isn't necessarily the problem -- the real issue here, however, is that the code is actually being executed by the game.
Players report some innocuous examples such as the ability to make an image appear through use of the exploit. However, there are more sinister uses as well; one example is modified text in chat that will kick players from the game if they hover over it. One of the more severe issues, however, is the ability to effectively spawn gold out of thin air.
"Theoretically -- and provably true -- every single time you hover over [a modified] item, you get given 50 gold for repeatedly completing a quest... that you haven't completed," YouTuber Callum Upton said in a video on the subject.
As any first-year economics student can tell you, endlessly printing money is kind of a bad thing. A limitless faucet of gold would throw the game's balance off entirely and could potentially crash its economy altogether. It would especially impact the legitimate players who don't use the exploit -- they simply wouldn't be able to keep up with the ill-gotten gains of people using the latest New World exploit.
This isn't the only issue relating to the game's market, either -- yesterday, a new bug was discovered that prevented players from being paid properly for auction sales while offline, although Amazon has since promised that players will get all their money once they have fixed the bug. You can buy New World for PC via its official website starting at $39.99 or your regional equivalent -- but you might want to wait until these problems are solved before playing.
Have you seen the HTML New World exploit used firsthand? How stable has the game been for you since launch? Let us know in the comments below!
