WG EU Code Fail

Hello everyone,

this morning and in the night, you might have heard stories about players getting outrageous amounts of gold from “leaked” bonus codes. So, here’s how it happened.

In the night, around 1AM CET, someone posted a bunch of these codes on Reddit. These codes were not “leaked” by anyone, it was simply (yet another) WG EU screw-up. It’s like this:

wgl_gf_qrcodelandingpage_del_001

This is a picture of the codes being released, as you well know. The address of this picture on WG server is:

http://worldoftanks.eu/dcont/fb/image/wgl_gf_qrcodelandingpage_del_001.jpg

These pictures with the abovementioned address were a part of the code release posts on the portal. Someone saw this address and figured out that since there is “001″ in the name, there might as well be “002″, “003″ etc., all the way up to “035″. And guess what – they were, because someone at WG EU was lazy and pre-uploaded everything. In total, around 30 various codes were “mined” this way

http://worldoftanks.eu/dcont/fb/image/wgl_gf_qrcodelandingpage_del_002.jpg

http://worldoftanks.eu/dcont/fb/image/wgl_gf_qrcodelandingpage_del_003.jpg

http://worldoftanks.eu/dcont/fb/image/wgl_gf_qrcodelandingpage_del_004.jpg

Etc.

The sum of gold from all these mined codes was substantial (definitely over 11k gold plus months of premium, some claim to get over 20k gold from the event). All these codes work for all the regions, Russians caught up quickly enough and by 7 AM in the morning, all these codes were spent. The disaster was amplified by the fact that WG EU office only has skeleton crew over weekends (this used to be actually enforced by French labor law around 6-7 years ago, not sure how it is now), so there was probably noone to catch this quickly.

To my eternal shame, I was not there to catch it, I was quite tired and went to bed earlier, I apologize. Congratulations to those, who managed to exploit it though.

61 thoughts on “WG EU Code Fail

  1. So this probably means no more codes for the rest of the event because they’ve all been used?

    Whoever uploaded and named these code pictures really needs sacking.

  2. shit (sry).. how can you be that incompetent? i mean so many fails in the last months, in every other company there would be an investigation..sure humans make mistakes, but not that many! (are.. wg eu alien? :P)

  3. After that they should exempt person who is responsible for naming files. In addition to punish people who have used undisclosed pot codes.

    • Agree. Whoever has activated unpublished codes should have the gold removed and then they should create new codes.

      • They should have a mechanism for doing this but will they use it? Creating new codes is more easy and WG probably don’t care that a few people will not be watching the finals now because they have the codes already.

        Meanwhile the rest of us feel angry that someone has got something that we have not and we feel we should have had it – or at least a chance to get it.

        • Uhm, did they really intend for people to have a chance to get thousands of gold and months of premium for free? That doesn’t like Wargaming at all to me, I would guess they would revert the codes (if they can), so people have to get gold by paying for it.

      • I am enjoying your butthurtness and tears almost as much as I enjoy my 79 days of premium and over 20 thousand gold. But you are no match for my newly acquired E-25, it’s more fun than you.

  4. So, for the first time ever, SS failed to catch up with WG… ;)
    Not blaming you at all, just joking.
    BTW.: All codes already used or blocked

  5. I even still was awake to that time and still missed it… at least i got one of the codes on the stream yesterday :)

  6. I caught about 6k gold + 25 days of premium, a friend of mine actually was able to get 100+ days

  7. Because of previous 50gold codes I managed to redeem only four codes before getting reached code usage limit. Still got myself 3k gold and 15 days of prem.

  8. Well, it’s pretty hard to get different names for the files..

    However I don’t think the ones, who used the codes, should get blamed. Even if some say, they hadn’t done it, everyone of us had done the same and we know that. ;)
    So congratz to the lucky players and hopefully we get some codes today. :)
    Altough we dont get any more codes, I’m fine, cause it’s a complete free choice of wargaming to give away some codes.

    • It’s not hard to upload one file at a time with the same name as you release the codes. In fact that would be easier than changing the link each time to point at a different file.

    • “Well, it’s pretty hard to get different names for the files..”

      It is really easy to create pseudo-random names for files. Like a password generator or a UUID generator.

  9. Despite the incompetence of WG EU, I still wanna say FUCK YOU to all those bastards who exploited the site. Thx for ruining everybody else’s fun, you just show the world how greedy you are. Where has the honesty gone?? Are we all just becoming so selfish that we make sure to take everything for ourselves and leave nothing for everybody else??

    I seriously hope that WG can backtrack the codes and permban the ppl who used them, but I guess I’m just being naive that WG can accomplish such a thing.

    • Well.. if u had the chance, u would have waited till the codes appeared on twitch?^^
      C’mon man. Everyone had done the exact same thing. Don’t accuse them of being greedy. With ur logic everyone who watchs the stream for a code is greedy, because the codes are intended for the ones, who enjoy the Grand Finals. ;)
      So don’t act like u r the next Jesus and be honest, especially to u. :)

      • I got codes, but by the right way, the way it was supposed to be.

        and no, I would have told WG about their fail, but I guess Im the only honest person here anyway…

        Woras… how many codes did you “steal” then???

        • How would you have informed WG?

          Raised a ticket which would be looked at in 3 days?

          Post on the forum for some junior moderator to delete and ban you for breaking the forum rules?

            • lol talk about greed, wg earns tons of money, game and servers still suck, lags like hell… Screw them, i havent bought any gold in a long while and, after this, I never will. You go ahead and get your hair cut, little sheep :)

            • you have to take in consideration that codes were leaked at 8 pm and by 7 am they were already used because Russians got theirs hands on them. my point is they even if somebody said to WG anything it was end of theirs shift and who would like to stay a few hours more on theirs job if they don’t have to.

        • And how is that stealing, It`s their failure? He was in the right time on the right place, and he exploited the opportunity… codes were published online!

          So don`t cry because you have not had a chance to use them…

          • He just mad cuz he didn’t get teh kodes. Btw i only managed to get like 1k g in total and 3 days of prem. Still have alienware code to use.

    • A good portion of people including myself got these codes off of a Reddit post. Codes are posted there often. Why would anyone think these codes were any different then the ones that are posted all the time? No one should get burned by WG for this. Sgt.Kokken this had nothing to do with greed or honesty. The codes were posted in a public forum and then used.

    • 35 page codes 001-035 each one:

      50 gold = 1750
      100 gold = 3500
      300 gold = 10500

      so these where 300 gold codes?

      agree with OP,
      each code usage is just like any “transaction” and can be traced to users, those who used the codes before release should

      1) Permaban
      3) account wipe
      4) their accounts published for naming and shaming
      5) possible civil lawsuit if they live in EU .

      i hate MMO Users, i wish i could punish them and squash them like the little roaches they are.

  10. Lucky for those who get the codes. Here in ASIA Server only few codes lurking around. I only get 6 codes and no premium. (200 Gold+50 Gold+50 Gold+50 Gold+50 Gold=400 Gold)

  11. There are actually two levels of incompetence in this.

    Not only someone uploaded all the codes with simple names, but someone else didn’t set time limit on those codes (OR someone else was lazy and their system doesn’t allow such fancy things) AND finally someone was so incompetent that WG isn’t able to unredeem those codes (or just simply don’t care)…

  12. If i would be in WG i would take that gold back and ban those accounts :-) :-D

    • Why so much butthurt? :D Same thing happened ~2 years ago when i farmed like 40k g and over 150 days of prem with codes and my clan members who didn’t managed to get it were so mad and they were all crying like you. I hope you get banned and removed the gold. In fact i think you gonna get banned!!!11 And then when i didn’t get banned and all my farmed gold was intact i teased them for months :D Stop whining. Nothing will happen to those who farmed gold. Btw i got 1k g in total from all these codes and i don’t mind. I am sad i didn’t get online sooner to get more, but nothing i can do about it.

  13. This reminds me of WoT beta days when ive got like 60codes from a giveaway. Got a Lowe, Type 59 and 6months of premium lol!

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  15. I got two of those codes last night at 1.45am, first one had been used up by then but got the second one of 1000 gold, then went to bed :(

  16. i got 10.000 gold and 28 prem days and arround 01.00 hour they blocked the codes otherwhise i had some more :-) thx wargaming for failing in a good way :P

  17. Just gonna say, it was practically impossible to get more than ~13.5k gold and ~45 days of premium, as that was roughly the max value of every code leaked
    People saying they got 20k or 60 days are just bullshitting

  18. I got the codes about 11 minutes after they were posted on Reddit. I received 7000+ gold and 1 month premium. Was a great day.

  19. The question is: how to hell all this codes were active at this moment?!
    For me it looks, that somebody prepared a gift for “a friend” and accidentally it was taken by a “hacker” and spread out.

  20. “The disaster was amplified by the fact that WG EU office only has skeleton crew over weekends (this used to be actually enforced by French labor law around 6-7 years ago, not sure how it is now), so there was probably noone to catch this quickly.”

    ……http://www.despair.com/effort.html

  21. 2 50g codes from this morning and then nada. I guess WG is just gonna pretend they gave all the codes away and not because of their incompetent.

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