Goddess of Victory: Nikke imposes 10-year ban after penalty controversy

| NBNTV = Jeong Dong-jin |

"In the past, they strictly issued permanent bans for rerolling or simple rule violations, but now they only gave a mere 7-day vacation to fraudulent users who shook the rankings of end-game content?"

Shift Up, the developer of Goddess of Victory: Nikke (hereafter Nikke), which is serviced by Level Infinite, has conducted a re-verification process to identify users of illegal programs, ultimately imposing a massive 10-year ban following controversy regarding the fairness of sanctions in Solo Raid.

According to game industry sources on the 9th, the incident began during the ranking settlement process for the Solo Raid 'Lavish Gummy' which ended on the 27th of last month. Abnormal gameplay records were detected where the boss, which should appear at certain intervals during battle, failed to be summoned.

The management team announced sanctions and the deletion of ranking records for a total of 7 accounts across the Korean, Japanese, North American, Taiwanese, and Global servers in the first official notice on September 2. However, public sentiment in the user community wavered as the sanctions included the lowest level of a 7-day suspension for one user. Criticisms mounted that the punishment was excessively light despite the compromise of fairness in end-game content where users compete fiercely for rankings.

In particular, as the phrase "Clear evidence of illegal program use has been confirmed" was included at the bottom of the first notice, suspicions rapidly spread among users that management had issued lenient punishments despite being certain of hack usage.

As public opinion worsened, Shift Up explained its technical limitations in a second official notice on September 4, stating, "Since we could not secure evidence that clearly proves the use of illegal programs, we applied differentiated sanctions ranging from 7 days to 10 years based on the number of times bugs were exploited through repeatedly playing abnormal states that were visually identifiable."

However, Shift Up did not stop there and embarked on intensive security re-verification to stabilize the situation, announcing a reversal in the final results through a third official notice on September 9.

In the notice, Shift Up officially confirmed the use of unauthorized hack programs, stating, "As a result of the re-verification, acts violating fair game rules, such as using unauthorized external programs, were confirmed in some accounts." Accordingly, the company declared a strong will for punishment by enforcing a maximum 10-year usage restriction (account ban) against the violators.

Furthermore, along with the re-application of usage restrictions on the violating accounts, Shift Up announced plans to supplement the anti-cheat system and release additional measures, stating, "We will soon provide follow-up response plans to maintain a fair gaming environment."