On 10 March, My DeFi Pet (MDP) – a play-to-earn virtual pet game banned almost 3k accounts due to policy violations. To be exact, they banned a total of 2985 accounts, and reset another 7711 accounts to Level 1. At the time of writing, there are 16.76k users in a month as reported by DappRadar. Based on this statistic, such a ban will effectively remove almost 18% of the game’s monthly user base.
About My DeFi Pet
For those unfamiliar with My DeFi Pet, it is a virtual pet game on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and KardiaChain. The game was first launched in May 2021 and garnered 30k active players after 1.5 months of the launch. Players can collect, breed and evolve/level up digital pets called monsters. They can also earn native cryptocurrency $DPET tokens via seasonal Boss Fights and social mining.
Why the ban on these My DeFi Pet accounts?
In-game resources such as crops are important in helping players to upgrade their monsters, thus increasing their earning potential. Coupled with new Boss Fights and PvE events lately, some bad actors were reportedly exploiting these resources using third-party cheating tools.
This led to a ban wave starting 23 Feb, when the MDP team suspended several hacker accounts for committing such violations. To provide clarity, the team has further outlined account ban rules in their Discord channel as below:
- Account ban: Applicable to accounts with pets, but possess an excessive number of in-game resources. Banned accounts will have to undergo a 10-year ban period. Additionally, pets in banned accounts will be reset to base level.
- Account reset to Level 1: Applicable to accounts without pets, but possess an excessive number of in-game resources for an extended period of time. Affected accounts are still playable.
Community’s Response
Only a few players welcomed the ban and cited that this is a must-have approach to achieve fair play. Other players mostly lamented about the diminishing returns from playing this game. This is coming from the fact that $DPET price (per CoinMarketCap) plunged almost 97% from its all-time high of USD 9.2695 in July 2021, to a mere USD 0.2792 as of 12 March 2022.
Interestingly, one attentive player pointed out on Facebook that there is a bug in the game which allows players to multi-harvest the crops. If left unfixed, it might cause unwanted bans on players who multi-harvested by accident. Nevertheless, players can still repeal to MDP management, if they find themselves being wrongly banned.
Fair Gameplay for All
Nonetheless, this is not the first ban wave conducted by the MDP team. Ever since integrating the anti-cheat system in July 2021, the game banned numerous fraudulent accounts to ensure fair gameplay among MDP players. Additionally, MDP upgraded its game server in early March 2022, to help weed out hackers and cheaters in the game.
Since GameFi boomed in 2021, account bans are becoming more common in this space. Popular blockchain games like Axie Infinity usually ban players who violate multi-accounting and bot account usage policies. Back in Dec 2021, several Axie Infinity players exploited a bug in the game to view opponents’ cards before ending their turn. Due to this, hackers achieved an almost 100% win rate in PvP battles. The Axie Infinity team quickly banned these accounts after verifying such abuse.
Eventually, keeping a level playing field helps reward worthy players and we can see that the My DeFi Pet team is committed to achieving this. If you wish to learn more about My DeFi Pet, you can visit their official website, join their Discord channel or follow their Twitter/Facebook page for the latest news and updates.
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