A Clarification on Exploits, Season 14, and Strategic Fluting
We’d like to take a moment to clarify our last statement. We have noticed confusion about what happened and our reasons for banning the accounts found cheating following Season 14’s Latesiesta on Thursday, March 18th.
The accounts banned were not associated with any one team’s strategy. Less than a handful of accounts exploited a bug that allowed them to receive hundreds of millions of coins by “selling” snacks without those snacks actually being removed from their account, thereby allowing them to “sell” the same snacks infinitely. These accounts then used their coin to determine the outcome of ballpark renovations for several teams. This exploit was also used to amass a large number of votes. If these accounts were allowed to continue it would have been trivial for them to determine the outcome of the Decree (for example) by casting more votes than the rest of the community combined. These votes were voided prior to the Season 14 election. See our original statement here: https://medium.com/@thegameband_studio/regarding-the-latesiesta-renovation-results-5505db96fe0d
The Blaseball.com bans had no relationship to the ongoing tension with Fans’ ability to change team and place votes.
Changing your favorite team is a part of Blaseball. Using strategic fluting (such as fluting to a team, placing votes, and fluting back) is fair play and within the game mechanics.
Player steals and swaps have been, and will continue to be, part of the competitive sport of Blaseball.
The Blaseball.com election is not an excuse for treating each other poorly. While we understand and empathize with feelings of disappointment over undesired outcomes, each season numbers will go up and down, but you cannot take back the impact of your actions.
Our goal continues to be empowering community organization and strategy through engagement with Blaseball’s systems. We are working on introducing additional features to build on the Wills system that will promote competitive balance and empower fanbases to protect themselves from unwanted outcomes.
