"This is absolutely a T0-level incident in the gaming industry!" Recently, Hypergryph, known alongside miHoYo, Paper Games, and Lilith Games as the "Shanghai Gaming F4," officially launched the global public test for its heavyweight IP game "Arknights: Endfield." This release carries the company's ambition to expand into the global market, having garnered a staggering 35 million pre-registrations prior to launch. Surprisingly, a major operational crisis erupted on the very first day - a severe payment bug plagued the international servers, causing countless overseas players to be charged inexplicably. "Foreign players are panicking!" Industry insiders bluntly stated that this incident represents a relatively rare case of a disastrous start during the recent wave of Chinese game companies expanding overseas. This is not the first misstep for Hypergryph. Previously, the company's CEO, Huang Yifeng, emphasized the importance of adhering to originality, innovation, and cultural confidence. However, over the past year, his "commitment to originality" has been repeatedly questioned as the company found itself embroiled in plagiarism controversies, damaging its reputation among both industry peers and players. Foreign players are panicking! The payment bug has ignited a crisis of trust. The operational mishap with "Arknights: Endfield's" international release has been dubbed a "T0-level incident" by many netizens. Days ago, shortly after the public test began, players on domestic platforms like Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Weibo were the first to report serious payment anomalies on the international servers. A flood of overseas players took to social media, posting claims such as: "I didn't buy anything, but I received a PayPal charge notification," and "I tried to top up $10 for a monthly card, but $1200 was deducted from my account." Some users even shared screenshots showing their accounts being charged abnormally across different currencies and accounts without any action on their part. Several overseas gaming content creators confirmed this bug in real-time during their live streams, sparking widespread concern among players regarding the security of their accounts. Following the incident, Gryphline, Hypergryph's overseas publishing brand, responded urgently. They announced the removal of all PayPal payment channels, suspending related functions. An official statement promised to investigate and fix the vulnerability, initiating a full refund process. They claimed most abnormal transactions would be refunded within four hours and set up a dedicated customer service email to assist players who hadn't received refunds. However, this announcement failed to mention a specific compensation plan, a timeline for fixing the bug, or any explanation of accountability, making it appear rushed and lacking in sincerity.
The BUG column learned from industry sources that the core issue behind this payment bug might be a failure in the access control of the PayPal payment interface. The unique Billing Agreement ID (BAID) code used by PayPal to identify automatic payment agreements between users and merchants failed to properly bind and verify with player accounts. This, combined with a logic flaw in the password-free authorization process, led to payment credentials from different players being incorrectly linked. "Imagine 100 people queuing to check out at a supermarket (a high-frequency scenario). In a normal system, each person scans their own face and pays from their own wallet. But in the buggy system, the cashier, trying to save effort, leaves the first customer's wallet on the counter. When the next 99 customers come to pay, the cashier doesn't even look, just takes money directly from the wallet left on the counter." The BUG column reached out to Hypergryph's official channels to verify the cause of the problem, the number of affected players, and the total amount involved, but had received no response by the time of publication. Consequently, the incident has angered many players. Compounding the problem, the game's launch coincided with the end of the month, and some players faced substantial unauthorized charges. Some even posted about being unable to pay their bills as a result. This led some players to sarcastically refer to "Arknights: Endfield" as a game that can push overseas players into the "execution threshold." The so-called "execution threshold" refers to a state where personal income or financial health drops below a critical line (e.g., becoming unable to cover essential expenses like rent), leading to a rapid descent into financial crisis.
If the payment bug was a sudden operational crisis, the rampant cheating exposes Hypergryph's deficiencies in game security and fairness protection. An investigation by the BUG column found that by January 29th, just one week after the game's launch, cheat software was already widespread on third-party trading platforms. Searching for "Endfield辅助科技" (Endfield assist tech) on Xianyu yielded numerous listings for cheats, priced from a basic version for 1 RMB to advanced versions for several dozen RMB, with many listings marked as having "sold over 100 units." On Taobao, some merchants' cheat products had surpassed 900 sales within a week, indicating their pervasive availability. A cheat seller revealed to the BUG column that these cheats primarily target the PC version of "Arknights: Endfield," with core functions including revealing treasure chest locations, unlimited sprinting, damage multipliers, and map teleportation, significantly reducing game difficulty. When asked about the risk of detection, the seller confidently promised "zero bans so far, no need to worry about account suspension," even offering after-sales support to ensure the cheats run stably. Ironically, Hypergryph had made anti-cheat commitments even before the cheats became widespread. On January 20th and 21st, the official channels released fair play statements across multiple platforms, explicitly prohibiting the use of cheats, third-party tools, and irregular top-up methods. They claimed to employ backend monitoring and player reports to take strict measures against violations, including deducting gains, freezing accounts, and permanent bans, and urged players to report misconduct to help maintain the game environment. On launch day, the official channels reiterated these rules, reinforcing their anti-cheat stance. However, based on the actual situation, the official anti-cheat detection technology appears insufficient, enforcement is weak, and no effective deterrent has been established, severely impacting the gaming experience for many legitimate players. Hypergryph was founded in 2017, with its founder and CEO being Huang Yifeng. He previously worked at Google and led Hypergryph's technical R&D and engine development, credited as the key architect behind "Arknights." Throughout Hypergryph's rise, the "Arknights" IP has remained its largest and most well-known series. Today, miHoYo, Hypergryph, Paper Games, and Lilith Games are collectively known in the industry as the "Shanghai F4," a testament to their success. Founder Huang Yifeng has frequently spoken about adhering to originality, innovation, and cultural confidence. For instance, at the 2022 China Game Industry Annual Conference, he stated: "As a game company committed to originality, we always hope to gather talented creators and, through the combination of technology and art, provide a vast space for their ideas to grow." Contradicting this stance, his commitment to "originality" has been repeatedly challenged by plagiarism controversies. Six months ago, Hypergryph launched "Pummel Pummel," a multiplayer cooperative platform adventure game blending match-3 shooting, puzzle-solving, and other elements. However, around its launch, controversies alleging "plagiarism" of its art style and character design surged. On social media, some players commented that their first glimpse of "Pummel Pummel's" posters and PV (promotional video) immediately reminded them of Nintendo's "Splatoon." Additionally, "Arknights" itself faced a "plagiarism" storm at the time, as the new costume for the character "Ascalon" was accused of directly copying the design of the "Gore Magala" from Capcom's "Monster Hunter" series via asset flipping. While Hypergryph did not respond to the controversies surrounding "Pummel Pummel," after the uproar over the "Ascalon" costume, the unofficial operational account "Wan顽子" posted an apology across multiple platforms along with a modified version of the "Ascalon" skin. Returning to the launch troubles of "Arknights: Endfield," industry analyst Zhang Shule told the BUG column that for "Arknights" to capsize upon reaching "Endfield" indeed indicates a lack of meticulous craftsmanship leading to a failed maiden voyage. As a premium title Hypergryph poured its resources into, and as a sequel intended to advance the "Arknights" IP, hitting a reef on "launch day" precisely highlights the numerous oversights still present at Hypergryph. Zhang Shule believes that payment is one of the critical links connecting users to the game, and such negligence is unacceptable. This also exposes how secondary game developers can become overly obsessed with the "power of love" in game narratives, neglecting the crucial fact that technical prowess is what ultimately saves the day – technology still needs to be solid. Internal capabilities must be honed while external operations are synchronized; only then can domestic secondary games truly achieve a "dominating push" in the global arena.
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