MMO ArcheAge Players Getting Refunds After Bots Make Unauthorized Purchases

Earlier this week, numerous ArcheAge players wrote in the game's forums that their accounts were seeing unauthorized transactions, in some cases totalling as much as $150. Now, publisher Trion Worlds has responded, issuing a statement that explains the situation.

"Let us start by saying this very clearly: Trion Worlds' security has not been compromised in any way," the publisher said. "There has been absolutely no breach in Trion's servers."

The unauthorized transactions were the result of bots obtaining user information from other sites and then gaining access to ArcheAge accounts if the username/password combinations matched up. What happened was, unfortunately, not a new occurrence, a Trion Worlds representative said.

"If players consistently use simple or repeated passwords across different online services, these bots may get access to their accounts," Trion Worlds said. "Because of the current momentum around ArcheAge, hundreds of millions of such attempts were made from well over a million different IP addresses in the last few weeks, only a fraction of which ended up being successful [on August 26]."

Trion Worlds will provide full refunds to affected players, some of whom say they were affected even though they never played ArchAge. And beginning tomorrow, Trion Worlds will roll out a new security feature to its Glyph account management system that will ask you to input a special, one-time-use code when accessing the service from another computer or a computer you haven't used in a while.

You should also change your password and make sure you don't use the same password for multiple sites, Trion Worlds said (though that is good advice anyway). You can change your Trion Worlds password right now through this link.

ArcheAge is a PC MMO created by Jake Song, the man perhaps best known for his work on the Lineage series. The game, developed by XLGames, aims to separate itself from the pack by letting players adventure through the world at their own pace and by blazing their own trails. You won't find pre-defined paths. For more, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.