Tree Of Savior Suffers "Silver Hack," Loses About 1/4 Of Its Players

Tree of Savior, IMC Games' spiritual successor to Ragnarok Online, found itself facing a major issue a few weeks ago. It appears that a player implemented a hack that generated infinite silver (ToS's in-game currency), which allowed him to purchase nearly everything off the game's trading post. Some players caught on to this and started listing items for exorbitant prices, which were quickly bought up as the hacker spread his wealth around.

So, everybody profited and it's all OK, right? Not exactly. IMC Games took action on Oct. 2, "correcting the error and preventing it from being abused again." A lengthy downtime followed, and when the game came back online, everything was back to normal.

Not exactly. To try and correct things, IMC returned any non-consumable items sold and removed the silver from the seller's account. Several accounts were temporarily restricted and reinstated eight days later, while those who were considered to be abusing the system received permanent bans.

It's the kind of messy nightmare scenario that no MMO developer ever wants to have to deal with, and it seems to have affected Tree of Savior's popularity. SteamCharts shows a marked drop in ToS's player count, which is down about 25% from what it was prior to the Oct. 2 downtime. I learned about all this thanks to a Reddit post extolling the game's virtues and imploring players to return if they were put off by the game's rocky launch, so at least someone out there is still singing the game's praises.