The Invincible Bug on MMORPG Margonem: How Cheaters Ran Rampant for Six Months
During six months, a gang of players found a bug allowing them to become virtually invincible on the MMORPG Margonem, and the developers left the cheaters alone. Margonem is a browser-based MMORPG released in 2006 and developed by a group of Polish students. Originally, the game was simply a student project, but with a growing community, the title grew and students quickly got into it full-time.
Margonem, mainly played in Poland, can still boast of having more than 15,000 active simultaneous players each month. The MMO is playable on browser, just , with Polish and English servers, and also benefits from a version Steam. The game is free-to-play and like every MMORPG, the player can complete quests, develop son character to take on powerful monsters in a group.
A strangely simple bug
The story begins in October 2022, when a student discovered a bug with the game’s equipment. The player managed to change the description of one of his items, and by adding a semicolon, he was able to craft an amulet giving 777 points of characteristics in all its values. In comparison, the best gear in the game only increases between 200 and 500 points of characteristics in a single value. He and his friends created whole sets of modified items with absurdly high values, which could do whatever they wanted without stopping them.
Obviously, the developers quickly noticed the problem and fixed the bug. However, the problem is that they didn’t remove player gear. Even though the bug was fixed and it was impossible to recreate modified equipment, overpowered items were still running around in the nature. It took 6 months before the game developers removed these objects that tyrannized the balance of the server. On top of that, cheaters weren’t even banned from Margonem. Despite the anger of the players, the developers never spoke more about this story, and therefore no justification for these 6 months of expectations and the reason why the players were not banned.
