Atlas Server Hacked via Admin Account

The early-access pirate survival MMO has had to suffer not only a glitchy beginning but now has to suffer through the embarrassment of being hacked. This forced the team to take the game offline for about 5 hours and force a rollback of the servers. To top it off, this happened twice.

The breach in security the first time was isolated to an admin account that was hacked on January 17. The result was a janky mess, causing tanks and aircraft to be dropped on the world in mass quantities and causing whales to spawn on land.

While this was enough to cause curious players to swarm the area to figure out what was going on, the servers were spammed with “Subscribe to PewDiePie” on the second breach. Both instances forced the game to go offline and force 5-hour rollbacks of the servers to get everything running smoothly again.

The hacker group, Black Butterfly, has claimed credit for the chaos both times. But it would seem that they have yet faced any consequences for their tampering. It would seem that they were able to gain access the second time by abusing an exploit, but Grapeshot Games has announced that they’ve protected themselves from any further tampering.

While Atlas and Grapeshot Games has had to endure a rough ride since the launch on December 22, 2018, the game has been able to maintain a concurrent player count of 33,000, doubling at the end of the year. It’s hard to see as of yet how these hacks will affect their sales. The game is currently available on Steam, for those interested in sea-faring adventure.