New World Disables Wealth Transfers Following Gold Exploit

Amazon Games has disabled all forms of wealth transfers in its popular MMO New World following an exploit that was found in the game allowing players to duplicate gold as well as post images to the game's global chat and crash other players' games.

An update post published on New World's forums detailed the actions that the studio is implementing in wake of the issue.

"We are aware of a possible gold duplication exploit that has been circling and we are temporarily disabling all forms of wealth transfer between players," reads a statement from one of the game's Community Managers. "Any player that has engaged in the use of this exploit will be actioned against," the post states before going on to confirm that the developer is working hard on a fix.

Disabling all forms of wealth transfers in the game may sound like a pretty extreme step from the developer but it's definitely one way to ensure that the studio has control over the situation while it investigates the problem further.

The forum's initial statement did not specify exactly what action would be taken against players participating in the duplication of gold, however, a subsequent post has since outlined this more clearly stating that the studio will be "banning individuals who were using [the exploit]."

Gold duplication aside, the studio has provided fixes that should prevent players from exploiting other factors within the game including the use of the text chat to post images and crash other players' games.

"We discovered an issue where players were able to post images and other links in the chat that resulted in unsavory behaviour," reads a separate forum post published by the studio last week. "We have enabled a fix that should resolve this issue and prevent players from abusing and exploiting this feature."

While Amazon Games works on ensuring that players aren't able to duplicate gold in New World, it isn't the first time that the game has faced issues with currency since launch. Last month, IGN reported that New World was being affected by a deflationary currency crisis that had led some players to enact a barter economy within the game's servers.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.