Recently GGn was blessed with the activation of a 24 hour site-wide freeleech, brought upon by many users donating to the global freeleech pot from the GGn Store. Fantastic work to everyone who chipped in to make that happen, and we hope that you managed to benefit from the download and upload bonanza!

During this same time, some other global buffs were also activated, buffs for IRC Lines, IRC Bonus and Forum Posts. It was soon realised that upon purchasing multiple global buffs that they would stack, allowing users to get points towards their achievements ridiculously quickly, completely devastating the achievement system and user classes. It is quite clear that it was not intended for the buffs to be used to this extent, a bug had been identified in the system and abused and exploited by a large number of users on site. Although many of those users did not break any of the IRC or forum rules when making their lines or posts, the unfortunate behaviour of a select few together with the damage caused to the achievement and user class system had to be addressed.

This is how the issue has been addressed:

• Changes have been made to the buffs system, where only one global buff of each type may be active at any one time, meaning they are no longer stackable.
• The posts in the forum games section have been rolled back two days. This means that any post that was made in the forum games in that time has been removed, and the achievements for those posts have also been removed.
• All achievements for lines made in IRC in the channels #GazelleGames, #linux, #AfterHours and #Brainstorming (including a 4x buff bonus) have been removed from users’ achievements for the period of the active global buffs.

We’re glad to provide these buffs and other goodies to our wonderful users, and it is somewhat a shame when a bug is exploited, especially at such a scale. We hope you’re looking forward to continued global buffs through the hard work of our users, just as we are!

GGn Staff