There are some constants in the universe that you can almost set a clock by. The sun will rise in the morning. You’ll have to pay taxes. You’ll buy Skyrim again. And Diablo 4 players will find new exploits to duplicate items. The latter has happened once again, with a fresh exploit serving up huge amounts of items, crashing the economy. Thankfully, Blizzard has stepped in, taking a massive hammer to the game’s trading system.
The exploit appears to have first came to light thanks to a Chinese Diablo 4 player who ran a livestream on the video-sharing site Bilibili. This quickly racked up thousands of views, with players learning how to duplicate almost any item in the action RPG. It appears that no item was safe from the exploit, with even non-tradable items being duplicatable. As a result of this, the going rate for some items like Stygian Stones tumbled, with the boss-summoning rocks being listed in quantities of thousands for a fraction of their normal price on Diablo 4 trading sites.
That’s all mostly come to an end now, as Blizzard has shut down trading across the entirety of Diablo 4, with even the ability to drop items on the floor so another player can pick them up being turned off. This drastic move means anyone duping items can’t really do anything with them – other than use them for their own characters.
“We will be disabling trading in Diablo IV while we investigate a possible duplication issue,” community manager ‘PezRader’ writes on the official forums. “We apologize for the disruption and will provide updates on when we will have trading available again once we further investigate and identify any issues we need to resolve.”
With most Diablo 4 seasons so far being affected by a duping exploit of some form or another, it’s great to see Blizzard taking such swift action to try and preserve the game – and the fun – for players who don’t want to see everything flooded with items that should be a little harder to get hold of.
This comes on the back of another feature of Diablo 4 also being shut down – the Gauntlet. Due to an issue identified with the fixed-seed dungeon, it’s temporarily unavailable until a hotfix can be implemented later this week. You can check out the full statement from Blizzard on this over here.
If trading is the reason you play Diablo 4 and you’re looking for something to fill that void right now, our guide to the best games like Diablo should see you find something you’ll love. You can also take a look at our ranked list of all Diablo 4 classes, if you’re looking to jump onto a new character and need a little guidance.
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