New World's Economy Has Been Shut Down... Again

Amazon Game Studios has taken New World's player-driven economy offline for the second time in less than a month following the discovery of a new item duplication exploit over the weekend.

"We are aware of a possible duplication exploit that has been circulating the forums and social media," a post from a New World community manager reads on the game's official forums. "We are disabling all forms of wealth transfer between players (ie. sending currency, guild treasury, trading post, player to player trading) while we investigate. Any player that has engaged in the use of this exploit will be actioned against."

The duplication exploit in question seems to stem from being able to duplicate trophies, which are items players can place in their homes to receive powerful passive bonuses. Many of the top-tier trophies can be incredibly expensive to craft or purchase from another player, so being able to duplicate them is definitely a big deal.

Unfortunately, this isn't the first time New World has had this problem. An earlier coin duplication exploit saw Amazon disable the economy for an entire day just a few weeks ago. Other issues since New World's massive launch saw a since-fixed invulnerability bug causing problems for players engaging in PvP.

New World recently received a public test realm where players can try out upcoming changes to the game, including the addition of the new Void Gauntlet weapon. Amazon is also working on additional combat balance updates and the ability to transfer characters between regions, something the developer previously said wasn't possible.