English

Verb

duping

1. present participle of dupe

Duping refers to the practice of exploiting a bug in a video game to illegitimately create duplicates of unique items or currency in a persistent online game, such as an MMOG. Duping can vastly destabilize a virtual economy or even the gameplay itself, depending on the item duplicated and the rate at which duplication occurs. Modern persistent world games include automated detection of duping.

Effects

The effect of duping on the game's economy depends on whether an item or currency was being duplicated and to what degree the duping took place. Currency dupes cause inflation and conversely item dupes cause the item to lose value.

When currency is duplicated, it increases the overall amount of money in the virtual economy and increases prices in player-to-player transactions. In a 2005 case of currency duping in EverQuest II, the game's developers noticed an unexpected 20% rise in the total money found in the economy over a 24 hour period following the dissemination of the dupe. Although evidence as to whether or not this occurred cannot be substantiated, it has been voiced in many popular gaming avenues, such as Penny Arcade.

Another method to mitigate the effects of duping would be a rollback, in which game data is reset to an earlier data backup prior to the first known instance of duping. This can include all game data or be limited to specific items, characters, or other means determined to be involved in the duping. Significant rollbacks can be a highly unpopular decision with the players and is best done before much time has passed. Similarly, SOE was able to track and remove the duped currency in EverQuest II.

An immediate, although often temporary, step to prevent further issues from duping calls for aspects of the game to be disabled until the exploit can be addressed permanently. SOE stopped Station Exchange auctions to prevent the dupers from selling the illegitimate EverQuest II currency.

Other notable cases

Another example is Neopets' "Dupe Day". One day, the most expensive items were duplicated by a player, and then sold very cheaply, or/and donated. No one knew what was happening at the time, as they bought items they could not have obtained otherwise. Hundreds of accounts were frozen (term used in Neopets when referring to "disabled") for exploiting the glitch. (Many people are confused over the fact of having an item getting you frozen. It does not, and did not. The items were duped in such a way that in they were untraceable.) This day is probably the most well-known day in Neopian history. Another notable case was in the multiplayer version of Diablo (video game), and duping is quite common on Battle.net. No patches have yet been made to stop duping in the game.

References