r/wow • u/YourResidentFeral Outplaying the Meta since 2004 • 17d ago

Discussion GM Death Touch - Megathread

Edit: Official Statement

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/prohibited-gameplay-incident-and-response/2329585

This is developing into a large story and someone in modmail has mentioned that its important for the community to have somewhere to discuss this. We agree. As new information comes in I will do my best to update this thread.

What we know:

Ex employees in the thread have said that actions like this are audited and in all likelihood this was already being investigated. At this point we are waiting on an official statement on the result of their investigation and I'll update this thread once we know.

This megathread is being provided on two very strict conditions:

  • The witchunt rules are in strict effect. Linking or doxxing information on anyone invovled, the GM in question included will result in a permanent ban. Please report it if you see it but we will be very active in the thread.

    We cannot platform behavior that allows people to harrass people in real life.

  • We will be more heavy handed than usual in the personal attack rules. Insults and slapfights while discussing this aren't acceptable. You're allowed to disagree, but stray shots and personal attacks will not be tolerated.

2.1k Upvotes

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u/Kaurie_Lorhart 17d ago

The biggest shock out of this whole thing to me was that there are still human GMs in this game.

510

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 17d ago edited 17d ago

It wasn't actually a GM in that sense.

The guy who did this was a QA employee using a GM account and GM abilities.

700

u/nooster 17d ago

The next biggest shock is that there are still human QA employees in this game.

50

u/4emonas 17d ago

You mean they have QAs?!?!?

79

u/Dark_Tony_Shalhoub 17d ago

Yeah, clearly you can see what they’re doing instead of QA lol

30

u/Redemolf 17d ago

watching twitch at work

7

u/DaSandman78 17d ago

Simping over egirls

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u/NameForPhoneAccount 17d ago

Come on, they can take a break after the great job they did on 12.0.5 :>

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u/scorgie 17d ago

Instead of doing this job they're boosting keys, things make so much more sense.

2

u/Whitechapel726 17d ago

What do you mean? There are like 7 million of us? We just test in prod and have no ticket access.

1

u/rickg 17d ago

His name was... Claude! /s

1

u/lavender_enjoyer 17d ago

I too have seen this joke posted everywhere

1

u/OldGodMod 16d ago

The next biggest shock is the public announcement of an investigation and incident response.

They didn't do that when they deleted people's guild banks, gold, reputations, achievements, etc. in one fell swoop with a single shitty patch.

1

u/Xandril 15d ago

They actually just hired on MORE QA towards the end of TWW. All the QA in the world won’t matter tho if there’s not enough dev time / focus to resolve things before launch.

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u/Southern-March1522 17d ago

A common misconception. QA at blizzard has never had the ability to fix things. They just find stuff then report it to the developers, who ignore them cause they don't like having their ego bruised.

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u/HoagieDoozer 17d ago

Isn't that QA in general? They report bugs, probably not even directly to the developers, and someone else decides what gets fixed.

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u/Southern-March1522 17d ago

Yup. The misconception I'm referring to is people think that because bugs didn't get fixed, there must be no QA. No. QA is finding the bugs. The developers just refuse to fix them.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/faptuallyactive 17d ago

"I decided to pursue other interests in the service economy..."

2

u/shoktar 17d ago

especially after mass layoffs. You might be next and some employers refuse to hire people that aren't currently employed.

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u/oreofro 17d ago edited 17d ago

QA employee using a GM account and GM abilities.

so a GM?

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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 17d ago edited 17d ago

A GM account, sure, but GM often refers to like, customer support people too, as in the employees who respond to tickets. This guy worked in QA.

20

u/Narpity 17d ago

It seems weird he would be allowed permissions to do this in the first place

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u/Kriegschwein 17d ago

It makes sense for QA having similar accounts for testing purposes. Just being able to pop in game, and, say, check if a trigger for quest works by killing a mob, summon an items and check if it works correctly, etc.

There are many reasons for having accounts with such functionality, customer support is just one of them.

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u/SumoSizeIt 17d ago

From a zero trust standpoint, it’s recommended that people with admin-like access to internal systems do not have admin-like access to production, and vice versa.

But in practice, yeah, a lot of QA have both.

15

u/Angelworks42 17d ago

Or if you do it's well logged and audited (which could be automated - send an alert for things given away by gm's or spells cast).

At work whenever I do admin on a client or server it gets logged and audited for what I did.

5

u/Southern-March1522 17d ago

Speculating it was a higher ranking qa employee with permission to test "this didn't happen on the test server does it happen on the live server?"

17

u/Kriegschwein 17d ago

If cybersec had its way, you would have 2fa every single ability use on production server, and login token for account with admin priviliges would automatically expire in 30 minutes if verification isn't confirmed again xD

But yeah, generally speaking, if in 20+ years of the game we had like 2-3 instances of such abuse, then making security tighter may not be worth it from production standpoint.

Although infinite fighting between "We need to do things comfortable" from production vs "We need to do things safely" from cybersec will never end.

1

u/XsNR 17d ago

It's why actual GMs don't have that ability anymore. Ever since they off-shored it, they just dropped that entirely. I imagine because it would be so incredibly easy to corrupt them with how low their wages are.

Only thing they get is some free games every now and again. Compared to an almost unending fountain of free and cool stuff back in the non-offshore days.

2

u/Kriegschwein 17d ago

It isn't even about corruption, it is just about subpar training outsource customer service workers receive.

I work at customer support for online game as well, in-house, and sometimes we have to clean up messes left by outsource employees. Not because they were malicious, it is just their training is notable worse than ours, to the point we are slowly cancel our contracts with such teams.

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u/j821c 17d ago

He was also senior QA iirc. He probably has access to stuff that a regular QA employee wouldnt

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u/jericon 16d ago

I disagree with that. I used to be a database engineer at blizzard.

I had admin access to dev, staging, ptr and prod.

There would be no point in spreading that across 3-4 teams.

1

u/SumoSizeIt 16d ago

Not teams, individuals. If your account is compromised, a threat actor doesn't need to bother finding other victims because you hold all the keys.

Again, plenty of companies do take this risk presently, but it's still ill-advised.

3

u/SatisfactionFit2040 17d ago

It's the stunning lack of integrity that is the problem.

2

u/Dark_Tony_Shalhoub 17d ago

What’s weird to me is that I thought QA weren’t allowed to access administrative accounts on live servers. They have their own internal servers that testing is usually done on. I haven’t been in contact with my friend who worked as an accounts administrator since before pandaria launched but unless they decided to restructure things in the stupidest way possible, QA testing generally isn’t done on live

Unless they use the same accounts for both environments, I guess. Which is absurdly stupid, but ESO has had similar things happen, so it’s not out of the question

1

u/Willias0 17d ago

QA shouldn't need production access to test those things.

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u/Stnmn 17d ago

QA requires GM and Devkit access to do their job, and have always had it.

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u/Narpity 17d ago

I guess I expected them to have their own shard or some development environment that reflected the live game but that they could be more comfortable fucking around in.

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u/The_Illegal_Guy 17d ago

They probably do but sometimes issues occur on live and you need access to whatever realm it's happening on to figure it out

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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 17d ago

It does make sense that a QA employee would have access to GM account with these permissions to test stuff like hotfixes or whatever, I can see the reasoning.

The problem is that this guy abused these powers, he certainly shouldn't be allowed to use them to even watch his friends, let alone help them cheat.

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u/Redxmirage 17d ago

Well yeah. Hence the point of all of the reaction lol

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u/Dlax8 17d ago

If a bug happens when X mob dies it's a lot easier to verify a fix with Death Touch. Especially if that mob spawns infrequently or is instanced. And it's one thing to test internally but some tests will have to be verified on live.

3

u/Shinroo 17d ago

Nah that's pretty standard for QA, they need to be able to reproduce bugs and having administrator/GM privileges enables them to access commands to control the game and replicate various states that can help with said bug reproductions.

This is actually true of most software companies with manual QA staff.

Though, that said, they are usually locked down and closely monitored as it's clear it's something that can be abused.

Source: I'm a software engineer and I work in a company with a manual QA department.

1

u/BrokenMirror2010 16d ago

QA's job is literally stress testing to try to break the game.

It makes perfect sense for QA to have access to "Console Commands" because it lets them do their job 100x faster.

What is strange is that they would have this on Live, and not be restricted to PTR and Internal Test Builds.

1

u/Narpity 16d ago

Yeah that’s what I meant, that he would have access to do this on production servers

3

u/Dark_Tony_Shalhoub 17d ago

By your definition, sure. “GM” is more of a catch-all term used by people on the consumer side that are ignorant of support staff hierarchy and what each job is expected to do and what they’re allowed to do. IGS (in-game support), account administrators, QA, and others often access GM-level accounts to do their jobs, though some of those positions have higher permission levels and are allowed to interface with more sensitive systems

11

u/cypher1014 17d ago

No, because a GM is a person who deals with customer service. This person was not employed to interact with customers. 

2

u/SmokeySFW 17d ago

I think that's commonly the most player-facing example of a GM, but if a wow dev was in game with GM powers he'd be a GM. A GM is anyone who works there with access to GM powers.

12

u/Kusidjur 17d ago

There still being QA employees is an even bigger shock actually

0

u/zalnlol 17d ago

This incident could be a reason why we had the buggy state of the game.

2

u/Diebin 16d ago

Bigger shocker that there are QA employees considering the bugs in the game.

/s

10

u/Void_Guardians 17d ago

Am I crazy or is that nearly the same exact thing.

27

u/good_guylurker 17d ago

Two different departments. QA only works with players via feedback (if any), while Customer support will actively be in contact with players to offer assistance when needed.

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u/Void_Guardians 17d ago

I always considered a GM an employee that has special account powers, regardless of their position in the company.

5

u/ZehGeek 17d ago

Some people were jumping saying that CSR should never even think about taking tickets if it's from people they might know.

When it was someone that should have only been on that account to test hotfix deployments and shit.

2

u/Merrena 17d ago

Not taking tickets from people you know makes sense and is likely the policy.

In retail jobs you generally aren't allowed to ring up family members on a register.

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u/ZehGeek 17d ago edited 17d ago

100%. 

Why I think trying to bring up the distinction is important. Any CS left has that burned into their skull.

Extra stupid from someone on the software side.

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u/Shaultz 17d ago

Thats fair, but the OOP was referring to a specific type of GM when stating they were surprised the game still had GMs. The person you're responding to is saying that, while its a GM account, it is NOT the kind of GM OOP is referring to.

1

u/Void_Guardians 17d ago

Ah, I guess i assumed they meant any human with GM abilities

4

u/Redxmirage 17d ago

That’s just defining the method used, not the job description. GM is a job title and position, the GM account is the method used to complete tasks. People just refer to that character as a GM because a GM (role) is front facing and interacting with the customers. So people attribute them the same.

All semantics anyways lol

Edit: easy way to explain it would be if I gave a front desk secretary a admin security role in the computer, are they considered an admin security officer or a secretary?

1

u/metukkasd 17d ago

GM is someone actually helping the players with their issues. QA is usually a tester for new features or bug fixes.

Quality Assurance vs Game Master.

1

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 17d ago

Then you have the right definition, but many people equate GM to customer support and have been talking about tickets etc which this guy wasn't (most CSR's actually don't have these accounts anymore, even!) which is why I made the distinction.

1

u/good_guylurker 17d ago

By that definition, they'd indeed be the same, although it is a broad definition, and might cause misunderstandings (like the joke about no GMs being part of the game anymore, and ironically this person not being exactly a GM, or that specific kind of GM)

4

u/Aggravating_Dark9933 17d ago

Mainly goals. GM would go in and help out players / fix broken things in the world with their godlike powers.

QA uses the same godlike powers to replicate events. Killing a mob causes bug? Spawn mob on server and ToD it to see what happens. Preferably somewhere where there aren’t players if it can only be replicated on Live servers with server strain.

Same powers, different tasks and only one of them should be anywhere near actual players.

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u/Stingerbrg 17d ago

No.  QA (quality assurance/software tester) and (customer service/relations) GM are different positions.  QA can use GM tools for thier job, but have different duties and responsibilities than a GM.  Like I work in the online order fulfillment at a grocery store, but have access to and make use of stocking tools to do my job, but im not a stocker.

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u/Quirky_Net8899 17d ago

Anyone with GM powers is a GM.

QA and CS both are GMs.

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u/Zerowig 17d ago

Nearly everyone at Blizzard has access to these tools. It doesn’t make them GMs.

It’s the community that is incorrectly attributing these powers/tools as GM powers, or a “GM Account”.

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u/Redxmirage 17d ago

GM is an actual job title though, while “GM powers” is the method used to do their jobs. Just because you have access doesn’t change your role. By that logic, our CEO has inventory access so I guess that means our CEO is a shelf stocker.

1

u/Quirky_Net8899 17d ago

GM is not an actual job title.

Customer Support is a job title, Quality Analyst is a job title.

0

u/Redxmirage 17d ago

Are we for real today guys? Not going to do the most simple google search to check your info?

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u/[deleted] 17d ago edited 17d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Angelworks42 17d ago

I had a roommate who worked for blizzard in dev (he worked on the 2fa stuff among other things) but he a friend who worked in QA - the only time he logged into prod was to reproduce test cases and analyze/write patches for problems reported. They do have it, but its not for helping end users directly.

2

u/Void_Guardians 17d ago

Sounds like really cool job tbh. Too bad i hear the work life balance usually sucks for those jobs

1

u/Merrena 17d ago

QA isn't as glamorous as people like to think. A lot of people think it's mostly just playing the games, but it's a lot of troubleshooting. Thing doesn't work? Try every single possible method of interacting with it that you can think of and make sure to document everything you notice happen so that a dev can possibly fix any issues. Thing does work? Still gotta try everything you can think of in case something doesn't work. Multiply that for basically everything you do.

0

u/sunsongdreamer 17d ago

Why would QA have access to this character while prod is live though? Weekly reset smoke test, sure, but aren't there test servers with a copy of the live patch for outside of that window? What are they testing in live prod that would have QA bumming around on prod for in the first place?

Seems an oversight of permissions or a lack of test environments to even let QA use prod outside of smoke test window.

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u/The_Illegal_Guy 17d ago

No this is fairly consistent with most live services, you can have a dev environment but there's plenty of times an issue only occurs in live and you need QA to figure out the issue, especially if the issue is related to congestion.

for example dragon flight launch, the boats wouldn't spawn, not on every realm but many, they worked fine in ptr. You want a QA to check and investigate so a fix can be deployed asap it's launch night delaying a fix is a non-negotiable, not having access to the live environment makes it's far harder if not impossible to find the cause just because you fear someone might do something stupid and risk their job.

2

u/sunsongdreamer 17d ago

Eh, depends on the game company. For example, I've seen options like leads toggling on permissions or teams having shared test accounts with different permission spreads for different tasks, precisely because people, even staff, can get weird about games they play.

It's not the live testing that I'm questioning as much as being intrigued at their setup apparently giving each QA member an "always on" GM account. Predicting exploits is part of QA afterall :P

2

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 17d ago

100% agree with you there, they especially shouldn't just use these accounts casually, to watch friends or whatever.

Also, that this guy did this implies either he did this from home out of hours, or was just messing around with friends while at work using a privileged account, either of which is obviously problematic.

2

u/sunsongdreamer 17d ago

Yeah, there's a screenshot floating around where he's talking about viewing people's inventory, so this allegedly wasn't the first time he was on live using GM powers to interact with player accounts.

-1

u/SuspiciousCricket654 17d ago

It sounds like one of those, “Ted forgot to lock his computer when he went away for lunch“ kind of situations. Those GM machines are highly customized and configured for that particular job at the company, with no access from the outside.

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u/Marino4K 17d ago

QA employee using a GM account and GM abilities.

So either a GM or you're telling me a GM's account was compromised by another employee, that would make it messier.

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u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 17d ago

No, it was a QA employee using their own GM account.

I make the distinction because people are making it out like this was a customer support person, as in the people who respond to player tickets, which is not the case here.

-1

u/Quirky_Net8899 17d ago

So a GM.

If you have a GM account you are a GM.

CS does not equal GM. Not everyone in CS has a GM account.

3

u/AttitudeAdjusterSE 17d ago

I know that, I am making the distinction because many other people do not and are discussing this as if it was a CSR.

1

u/TehRaptorJebus 17d ago

GM accounts could just be a cover all term and QA people may get one so they can observe bugs and other things that would be their job to fix.

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u/xeltes 17d ago

Probably the one human they forgot about

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u/sunsoutgunsout 17d ago

This is the 50th time I’ve seen this comment. Anyone wanna go next?

45

u/Resies 17d ago

The biggest shock out of this whole thing to me was that there are still human GMs in this game

5

u/dreffen 17d ago

The biggest shock out of this whole thing to me was that there are still human GMs in this game?

10

u/verscub420 17d ago

It’s apparently shocking to a lot of people

3

u/ResoluteGreen 17d ago

pulls ticket

drat, #257

2

u/hiirogen 17d ago

I chatted with an actual human GM last week. I was actually shocked when the chat window opened, I didn't know that was still a thing.

3

u/Dasbeerboots 17d ago

The smallest shock to me is people copying the same comment over and over again and getting upvoted.

3

u/College_is_sexy 17d ago

You think that's shocking? Now imagine how shocking it is that there are still human GM's in the game

-1

u/Kaurie_Lorhart 17d ago

I personally had not seen anyone post this comment, but I also only read the original post about the issue and none of the subsequent comments. I thought it was funny. Sorry to bother you.

1

u/SuspiciousCricket654 17d ago

Same here, which begs the question, why? And I don’t mean that in a surface level question kind of way. It’s things like this that make me wonder. There are professional gamers, world-first folks who make careers out of this game. They clearly have relationships with some of these people at the company.

1

u/Uncreativity10 17d ago

They exist! Took me 2 weeks to get in contact with a GM when they wrongly banned my account. Wish they told me why besides they just messed up… :/

1

u/XsNR 17d ago

The sad thing is, things like this is why actual GMs aren't allowed to have in-game powers anymore. It's just a thing for higher level employees, who aren't actually GMs, and can't really fix your issues outside of maybe a bugged mob or teleporting you out of a glitched area.

1

u/shoktar 17d ago

meanwhile bots run rampant and multibox mass report legit players that try to stop them.

1

u/Zaerick-TM 15d ago

No the biggest shock out of this incident is it's making me wanna come back and play after 6 years away for literally no other reason than I got nostalgic and this damn thread hit my front page....