InnerSloth, the developers of Among Us, have announced that they will be pushing an emergency server update after floods of reports from users that hackers have begun plaguing the game.
While indie social deduction game Among Us was first released in 2018, it experienced an unexpected lease of life in 2020, on a colossal scale.
In September the game surpassed 100 million downloads, and has spread to every corner of the internet, with many huge personalities streaming the game most recently including AOC a.k.a Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a popular American politician.
The extreme flip from quiet indie game to global hit has naturally come with its challenges, and the dev team has been trying their utmost to deal with the vulnerabilities that come alongside such unexpected demand.
One such vulnerability is the presence of hackers in the game. People have encountered varying levels of hacking including having their skins removed and spawning outside of the map, which seems to be as a result of hackers using mods in public lobbies.
Most recently, players have been experiencing a bout of hacking seemingly from one individual named Eric Loris, who takes control of the chat and forces every member to repeat the same message to “subscribe to Eric Loris on YouTube (or I hack your device.)”
This is what happened to me in the server pic.twitter.com/jr5lVoySkI
— ❈ 𝒟𝒾𝒶𝒷𝓁𝑜 ❈ (@HomeGirlV1) October 23, 2020
InnerSloth take action against hackers
As reports increased, InnerSloth were forced to take action to prevent the problem from getting worse. On Twitter they said “we’re are super duper aware of the current hacking issue and we’re looking into it.”
Hello everyone,We're are super duper aware of the current hacking issue and we're looking into it. We will be pushing out an emergency server update so people who are in game will get kicked from games. Please play private games or with people that you trust!!! Bare with us!! 😰
— InnerSloth (@InnerslothDevs) October 23, 2020
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They announced that they “will be pushing out an emergency server update so people who are in game will get kicked from games,” but for the time being encouraged players to “please play private games or with people that you trust!”
Developer Forest stated in his own tweets that the reason it’s taken until now to roll the update out now is because he “was afraid of false positives.”
He explained that “you totally might see the game think you’re hacking when you’re not. I’ve done my best to find this kind of bug, but my hand is forced this time.”
So yeah. I'm rolling out the server update. I'm using a faster method than I've done before, but it'll impact players more. Trying to be careful, but also, you might get booted. It's for the greater good at this point. Consider it an "emergency maintenance for ??? hours"
— Forest (@forte_bass) October 23, 2020
Also worth nothing that the reason I didn't roll this update out sooner is that I was afraid of false positives:
You totally might see the game think you're hacking when you're not. I've done my best to find this kind of bug, but my hand is forced this time.
— Forest (@forte_bass) October 23, 2020
It is hoped that this emergency update will put an end to, or at least dramatically decrease the number of hackers in the game. Not only that, but allow the game to continue to prosper as it has done so far this year.
