The Sandbox is issuing a leaderboard update to enable players to understand how climbing up the rating works. As the Sandbox Alpha Season 3 heats up, there has been a debate on which actions are cheating and exploitation. Clarifying how things work is critical because the rankings are effective means of earning $SAND during an experience.
🚨 In order to provide a fun and fair playing field for all, we have made some updates to the leaderboard on selected experiences that were affected by patching glitches.
Read more for full details 👇 https://t.co/AiXJOyJDsc
— The Sandbox (@TheSandboxGame) October 17, 2022
Details of the Sandbox Leaderboard Update
The Sandbox leaderboard update will go live on the 17th of October. Once it takes effect, the team will cancel EP progress for the rankings on gameplay affected by patching glitches. This will enable everyone to participate in these experiences once again and ensure fair play. Users are encouraged to visit their dashboard and confirm the quests they need to redo.
There will also be an EP count reset for certain quests whose balances were compromised. Any player that earned experience points through such quests will lose them. Meanwhile, the general Alpha Pass progress in the “Rewards” tab on the website will not be affected. Your progress up to level 5 will remain the same. If you notice a drop in your overall score, it simply means that you simply have to redo some tasks. The time, conditions and other rules will remain the same.
Understanding The Difference Between Exploiting and Cheating
While issuing the update, Sandbox took time to explain the difference between cheating and exploiting. For one, the team clarified that both are not the same. While the former is frowned upon, the latter is welcome but must be done on a level playing field.
Undoubtedly, some players have discovered ways to utilize speed glitches like double jumps in their favour. While this does help them get ahead, it is not considered cheating. This is because glitching is a long-standing trick in speedrunning that exploits loopholes within the game’s framework. It is not surprising, considering that the project is still in its Alpha phase. On the other hand, cheating involves more vicious practices that incorporate third-party software, macro actions or speed hacks.
While glitching is not illegal, the team is ensuring that everyone has consistent access to loopholes. It explains why the team is revisiting some patching in the past that closed some of these well-known glitches. This disadvantaged some players who had not used them before the upgrade. Hence, they are issuing this leaderboard update to re-open those opportunities and steady the playing field.
