Fix for New World Chat Crash Exploit Has Been Released by Amazon

New World has had its fair share of problems at launch, but this recent one may be the most damaging. Thankfully, it seems Amazon was quick to act and has released a fix for an exploit that allowed players to crash the game for others using the in-game chat.

Players were starting to worry about checking chat in-game as some people had found ways to send messages containing disruptive images and, in some cases, malicious code that could crash the game. This was first reported the day before yesterday, and the earliest use of the chat exploit was pretty harmless. But it didn’t take long for a few players to start using it for nefarious purposes.

As was shown in Josh Strife Hayes’ video, it was possible to inject an item link message with a code that could crash your game when you hovered your mouse over it.

Amazon was made aware of the situation and said they were “taking a look to prevent this from occurring.” They have now deployed a fix and said in a forum post that it “should resolve this issue and prevent players from abusing and exploiting this feature. This should already be enabled in each region.” Item links from now on should be safe, but it’s always good to be wary.

Before the fix, players were advised to close the game’s chat by pressing Enter and switching off channels or muting them entirely by clicking the gear icon above the typing field.

Aside from the malicious game crashing code, players could use the exploit to send images other than the art that was included in the game. This would consist of images that reach beyond the text chats on-screen borders. One player has reported they were “flash banged” by a server-wide message that filled the screen in bright yellow boxes.

Issues like these are pretty common in MMOs. Reddit user Booner999 shared how he remembered people were posting funny and malicious images in WoW’s chat, and user chinaexpl0it spoke about a similar exploit on Tera Online. So, Amazon had a decent amount of understanding of the problem and could fix it quite quickly.

About New World

New World is an upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) by Amazon Games set to be released on August 31, 2021. The game was previously scheduled to release in May 2020 but was delayed to its current date.

Set in the mid-1600s, players colonize a fictional land known as Aeternum Island, modeled after North and South Americas in the Atlantic Ocean. The game will be using a buy-to-play business model, meaning there will be no monthly subscription fee.