With Players Hitting Gold Cap and Using Runes to Trade, Diablo 4’s Economy Is as Good as Ruined Thanks to Multiple Duplication Exploits

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With Players Hitting Gold Cap and Using Runes to Trade, Diablo 4’s Economy Is as Good as Ruined Thanks to Multiple Duplication Exploits

Diablo 4 was considered as the “magnum opus of Blizzard” according to the internet. The title made by Blizzard received universal acclaim when it was first released in June of 2023. The game had generated around $666 million after the first week of its launch and crossed a billion dollars in revenue as of October 2024.

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4 was Blizzard’s magnum opus | Image Credits: Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo 4 is an ARPG where players have to level up bit by bit and obtain stronger equipment by defeating increasingly difficult enemies. The 2023 title was commended for its procedurally generated dungeons, atmosphere, storytelling, etc. But a few months after release, the entire in-game economy was and still is in shambles. How did the economy ****** in an online RPG game? Let’s find out.

What happened to Diablo 4’s economy?

Diablo 4‘s main transaction and trading currency is gold which players can get by completing quests, defeating elite enemies, opening gold chests, etc. During August of 2023, a duplication exploit was found in the game that would duplicate stacks of selected items including gold. This became a huge problem as Diablo 4 has an in-game economy of its own.

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| Image Credits: Blizzard Entertainment

The whole charade occurred three times with the most recent one being in August of 2024. Blizzard had to suspend trading items in the game due to items selling for more than millions and billions of gold in the game. Back then,

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, Adam Fletcher the director of Diablo said that they will be suspending any and all forms of in-game trades until they find a fix to the duplication exploit.

We will be disabling trading in Diablo IV while we investigate a possible duplication issue. 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.

The suspension was later removed in the same month after the duplication exploit was settled, but the damage was already done.

These suspensions to trades and bug fixes were like a garden hose sprinkling water on a forest fire. By the third time of the duplication exploit, the economy was already on fire to the point it was impossible for a bounceback. Hence, players found a new way to trade in-game which is through runes.

Are Runes a viable alternative to gold?

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| Image Credits: Blizzard Entertainment

Runes are a special type of socketable items that trigger powerful effects by buffing the players. They can be found in the endgame through Nightmare Dungeons, Whisper caches, and Tormented bosses. These Runes offer the players stat buffs and can trigger skills from different classes. These features ensured the players that Runes are a better alternative to coins which hold no value in the current economy of the game.

Using these duplication exploits, players were quickly able to acquire the maximum gold limit of 9 trillion. Even after Blizzard raised the cap to 99 trillion, players quickly reached that as well, ultimately breaking the in-game economy.

These exploits are evidence of how fragile MMO and live service economies are. Any vulnerability or bug that lets the players in the game duplicate an item in the game can instantly destabilize the economy. Although Blizzard did the right thing by stopping trades as soon as possible when the exploit was found, the issue remains a significant flaw in the game that has permanently destroyed the gold economy in Diablo 4.

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