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A '''rollback''' is an operation which restores a database to a prior state. In Growtopia, this affects worlds, player inventories, [[gems|gem]] counts, and stats, usually in order to revert the effects of a game-breaking issue which cannot be resolved in another manner. Consequentially, any work which players put in during the timeframe which was rolled back is lost.
A '''rollback''' is an operation which restores a database to a prior state. In Growtopia, this affects worlds, player inventories, [[gems|gem]] counts and player progress, usually in order to revert the effects of a game-breaking issue which cannot be resolved in another manner. Consequentially, any progress which players made during the timeframe which was rolled back is lost.


In compensation for lost work and time, rollbacks are often accompanied with an [[Apology Weekend]], a weekend-long event in which in-app purchase values are increased and players have a chance of getting lucky drops from breaking blocks. Any gem purchases made within the timeframe which gets rolled back are given back to the player at double the value.
In compensation for lost work and time, rollbacks are often accompanied with an [[Apology Weekend]], a weekend-long event in which in-app purchases provide 25% extra gems and any in-app purchases made during the rollback is reimbursed and doubled. Players will also have a chance to drop extra seeds and gems upon smashing blocks during the event.


== Rollback I ==
== Rollback I ==
[[File:Imagetgyh.jpg|thumb|116px|The [[Rollback Plaque]] and its tree]]
[[File:Imagetgyh.jpg|thumb|116px|The [[Rollback Plaque]] and its tree]]
The first rollbacks occurred on February 23rd of 2013, and resulted in 24 hours of data to be reverted twice. The second rollback occurred only a few hours after the first, and sent players back to the same place they were rolled back to the first time.
The first rollbacks occurred on 23 February 2013, and resulted in 24 hours of data to be reverted twice. The second rollback occurred only a few hours after the first and sent players back to the same place they were rolled back to the first time.


The occurrence happened due to an oversight where store-bought items which had a rarity of 999 were able to be recycled at a significantly higher rate than the purchase price. Players caught onto this and took advantage of it, to effectively gain an unlimited amount of gems. This completely ruined the game's economy at the time. A rollback was issued to restore the game to a state before the exploit was first discovered, and the exploit itself was fixed by adjusting the store items to not recycle for any gems, though they were changed much later to recycle at 10% of the original price. The shop items were also set to not display a rarity.
The occurrence happened due to an oversight where items with rarity 999 were purchased from the [[Growtopia Store]] and recycled at a significantly higher rate than the purchase price. Players took advantage of this to gain an unlimited amount of gems. This ruined the game's economy at the time, requiring a rollback to restore the game prior to the exploit being discovered. The exploit was temporarily fixed by preventing store items to be recycled for gems, however, was later changed to recycle at 10% of the original price.


The Apology Weekend which followed this ordeal granted players to splice the [[Rollback Plaque]] in the duration of the event. It was made by splicing a [[Cave Background]] Seed with a [[Door]] Seed. After the weekend, the recipe would make the new [[Happy Joy Plaque]] instead, making it unobtainable.
An Apology Weekend event was released, allowing players to splice the [[Rollback Plaque]] for the duration of the event by splicing a [[Cave Background]] Seed with a [[Door]] Seed. After the event, the recipe would produce a [[Happy Joy Plaque]] instead. An unintended release of the seed was also seen during the early release of the item, however, was quickly removed, making it a [[Glitch Seeds|glitched seed]].
 
The [[Rollback Plaque]] was able to drop a seed as soon it was first released, however, this was not intended and was later removed, making existing seeds extremely rare.


==Rollback II==
==Rollback II==
The second rollback occurred on October 5th of 2013. Only a few hours of data was lost.
The second rollback occurred on 5 October 2013 where a few hours of data was lost.


The issue which ruined the game this time was with special "Null_seed". The Null Seed was able to be obtained from using a [[Harvest Moon Blast]] where a Null Seed could've possibly be planted. The item would recycle for random, abnormal amount of gems, ranging from millions to negative millions of gems. The item existed long before they were discovered, however, the damage to the economy had already been done and a rollback was required to fix the issue.[http://www.rtsoft.com/forums/showthread.php?33645-Incoming-Rollback-Oct-5th&p=215398&viewfull=1#post215398]
This occurred due to the release of the "Null_Seed" which was found planted in [[Harvest Moon Blast]]ed worlds. The seed would recycle for a random amount of gems, ranging from -4,294,967,295 [[Gems]] to 4,294,967,295 Gems (the maximum value for a 32-bit unsigned integer in computing, one less than the value of 2, raised to the 32nd power). The item existed long before it was discovered, however, the economy had already been damaged. A rollback was performed prior to the bug being discovered.


The [[Rollback Plaque II]] was available during the second Apology Weekend, and was made by splicing a [[Cave Background]] Seed with a [[Sign]] Seed. Unlike the previous plaque, this recipe was not reused for another item afterwards, until the Rollback Plaque III came out.
An Apology Weekend event was released, allowing players to splice the [[Rollback Plaque II]] for the duration of the event by splicing a [[Cave Background]] Seed and a [[Sign]] Seed. The [[Rollback Plaque II]] Seed dropped only for the duration of the event and stopped dropping once the event had ended.


The [[Rollback Plaque II]] Seed was able to be obtained during the event only, but, stopped dropping seeds once the event was over.
See the official announcement [http://www.rtsoft.com/forums/showthread.php?33645-Incoming-Rollback-Oct-5th&p=215398&viewfull=1#post215398 here].


== Rollback III ==
== Rollback III ==
A third rollback occurred on August 9th of 2015.
A third rollback occurred on 9 August 2015, where 24 hours of data were lost.
 
This occurred due to RAID arrays (data storage system used to store data about worlds) which had fried, leaving corrupted and missing data. This resulted in a rollback to the last daily backup.  


The RAID arrays which were used to store data about worlds had fried, leaving corrupted and missing data. Since the data was missing, a rollback occurred to restore data to the last daily backup.
An Apology Weekend event was released, allowing players to splice the [[Rollback Plaque III]] for the duration of the event by splicing a [[Cave Background]] Seed and a [[Sign]] Seed. The item did not drop any seeds.


The [[Rollback Plaque III]] was available during the third Apology Weekend (August 10 to August 11), made by splicing [[Cave Background]] Seed with a [[Sign]] Seed. The item did not drop seeds and the recipe was not reused.[http://www.rtsoft.com/forums/showthread.php?237876-ROLLBACK-3-IS-COMING-YES-(&s=08fa1b46696683ebc681aa98373056db]
See the official announcement [http://www.rtsoft.com/forums/showthread.php?237876-ROLLBACK-3-IS-COMING-YES-(&s=08fa1b46696683ebc681aa98373056db here].


== Rollback IV ==
== Rollback IV ==
A fourth rollback occurred on December 12th of 2017. A security exploit was used to gain [https://www.growtopiagame.com/forums/showthread.php?471909-Latest-News unauthorized access] to developers [[Seth Able Robinson|@Seth]] and [[Hamumu|@Hamumu]]'s accounts. Valuable items were unfairly distributed throughout the game and world data was corrupted, leading to the decision to rollback to the 10th of December, 2017. At the end of the Rollback, an Apology Event was held to help catch up on lost progress, any gem purchases made in the time period where time was rolled-back would be doubled as compensation.
A fourth rollback occurred on 12 December 2017.  
 
This occurred due to a security exploit where players managed to gain access to developer accounts, distributing valuable items throughout the game. [[Emerald Lock]]s, [[Da Vinci Wings]] and [[Phoenix Wings]] were temporarily made unavailable before the decision to perform a rollback to 10 December 2017 was made.


Like the previous rollbacks, the recipe for the [[Rollback Plaque IV]] was made by splicing a [[Cave Background]] Seed with a [[Sign]] Seed, during the event only.
An Apology Weekend event was released, allowing players to splice the [[Rollback Plaque IV]] for the duration of the event by splicing a [[Cave Background]] Seed and a [[Sign]] Seed.


See the official announcement [https://www.growtopiagame.com/forums/showthread.php?471909-Latest-News%20unauthorized%20access here].
== Rollback V ==
== Rollback V ==
A fifth rollback occurred on 14 February 2019. The cause of the rollback was due to players missing stuff (eg. worlds) after an update. All worlds were unlocked and reset to their basic states.
A fifth rollback occurred on 14 February 2019.
 
This was caused by Growtopia's data hosting service to suffer a critical drive failure on 13 February 2019, causing damage to their RAID array. After attempts to recover corrupted data, a rollback was performed as a full restoration was not possible and a rollback of just under 24 hours was performed.
 
An Apology Weekend event was released, allowing players to splice the [[Rollback Plaque V]] for the duration of the event by splicing a [[Cave Background]] Seed and a [[Sign]] Seed.


It was later realized that data hosting services for Growtopia suffered a critical drive failure on 13 February 2019. This led to a cascade of failures for the RAID array. After approximately 18 hours of attempting to recover the corrupted data, a rollback was issued as it was impossible to fully recover the corrupted data. A little under 24 hours of data was lost.
See the official announcement [https://www.growtopiagame.com/forums/showthread.php?532683-Official-Rollback-Announcement-(14th-February-2019) here].


At the end of the Rollback, an [[Apology Weekend]] was held, giving players who made gem purchases during the time period where time was rolled back double the gems and all players 25% more gems for gem purchases, increased drop chances for seeds and gems for a limited time following the server restart and, of course, the ability to splice [[Rollback Plaque V]]. This entire ordeal was held on [[Valentine's Week]], so the duration of the event was extended.
== Rollback VI ==
A sixth rollback occurred on 1 July 2020.


The 18-hour maintenance was also held during [[Valentine's Week]], thus in addition to the regular compensation given in the [[Apology Weekend]], [[Valentine's Week]]'s duration was also extended.
This occurred when new code was implemented that would permit for a future update. However, this code caused issues, leading some players to lose progress and the servers were quickly placed into maintenance. The issue with the code was fixed, however, player game progress was still lost. A failed attempt was made to rollback to prior to the release of the new code (resulting in 10 minutes of lost progress), leading to a rollback to June 30th 15:00 (Growtopia time).


Note: Server issues also occurred on the same day, failing to restart after a server crash. However, this was irrelevant to the cause of the rollback.


== Rollback VI ==
An Apology Weekend event was released, allowing players to splice the [[Rollback Plaque VI]] for the duration of the event by splicing a [[Cave Background]] Seed and a [[Sign]] Seed.
A sixth rollback occurred on July 1st, 2020 (Canada Day). After a server crash, the servers unfortunately did not automatically restart as they would usually. After this issue was addressed, they wanted to release the new IOTM and Subscriber Item in the July Update, including some new code, enabling them to be able to add some really cool features in the near future. Unfortunately, this code caused an issue, that leads to players potentially losing game progress leading the Growtopia Team's decision to Rollback to the 30th of June, 2020.


At the end of the Rollback, an [[Apology Weekend]] was held, giving players who made gem purchases during the time period where time was rolled back double the gems and all players 25% more gems for gem purchases, increased drop chances for seeds and gems for a limited time following the server restart and, of course, the ability to splice [[Rollback Plaque VI]].
See the official announcement [https://www.growtopiagame.com/forums/showthread.php?584144-July-1st-Server-Issues-and-Maintenance-Compensation&p=4284683#post4284683 here].


== Rollback VII ==
== Rollback VII ==
A seventh rollback occurred on July 3rd, 2020. When a duplication glitch was leaked and hundreds of expensive items such as the [[Blue Gem Lock]], [[Phoenix Wings]], and the [[MAGPLANT 5000]] were duplicated. The servers were placed on maintenance and the Growtopia Team made the decision to rollback the game 24 hours and made some of the duplicated items untradeable to prevent further damage to the economy.
A seventh rollback occurred on 3 July 2020.
 
This occurred when a duplication glitch was found, involving players quickly dropping items and exiting the world, resulting in many expensive items being duplicated. The servers were quickly placed into maintenance, however, it was found that the damage to the economy was too big to manually repair. A 24-hour rollback occurred to shortly after the duplication glitch started with many items becoming temporarily locked. The items locked were:
<div style="column-count:2;-moz-column-count:2;-webkit-column-count:2">
*{{ItemLink|Blue Gem Lock}}
*{{ItemLink|Diamond Lock}}
*{{ItemLink|Phoenix Wings}}
*{{ItemLink|Ultra Trophy 3000}}
*{{ItemLink|MAGPLANT 5000}}
*{{ItemLink|Heart of Gaia}}
*{{ItemLink|Unstable Tesseract}}
*{{ItemLink|Tesseract Manipulator}}
*{{ItemLink|Giant Eye Head}}
*{{ItemLink|Horns of Infinity}}
*{{ItemLink|Phoenix Pacifier}}
*{{ItemLink|Doodad}}
*{{ItemLink|Nightmare Devil Wings}}
*{{ItemLink|Da Vinci Wings}}
</div>
Since the rollback occurred during [[SummerFest]] 2020, an [[Apology Weekend]] could not be held until after the event which was extended for one day. During the Apology Weekend, a [[Rollback Plaque VII]] could be spliced for the duration of the event by splicing a [[Cave Background]] Seed and a [[Sign]] Seed.


Due to the time the rollback happened, the [[Apology Weekend]] couldn't be held. It commenced the end of [[SummerFest/2020|SummerFest 2020]], giving players who made gem purchases during the time period where time was rolled back double the gems and all players 25% more gems for gem purchases, increased drop chances for seeds and gems for a limited time following the server restart and, of course, the ability to splice [[Rollback Plaque VII]]. In addition to the regular compensation given in the Apology Weekend, [[SummerFest]]'s duration was also extended.
See the official announcement [https://www.growtopiagame.com/forums/showthread.php?584641-July-3rd-Duplication-Issue-and-24-Hour-Rollback here].
[[Category:Mechanisms]]
[[Category:Mechanisms]]

Revision as of 15:50, 7 July 2020

A rollback is an operation which restores a database to a prior state. In Growtopia, this affects worlds, player inventories, gem counts and player progress, usually in order to revert the effects of a game-breaking issue which cannot be resolved in another manner. Consequentially, any progress which players made during the timeframe which was rolled back is lost.

In compensation for lost work and time, rollbacks are often accompanied with an Apology Weekend, a weekend-long event in which in-app purchases provide 25% extra gems and any in-app purchases made during the rollback is reimbursed and doubled. Players will also have a chance to drop extra seeds and gems upon smashing blocks during the event.

Rollback I

File:Imagetgyh.jpg
The Rollback Plaque and its tree

The first rollbacks occurred on 23 February 2013, and resulted in 24 hours of data to be reverted twice. The second rollback occurred only a few hours after the first and sent players back to the same place they were rolled back to the first time.

The occurrence happened due to an oversight where items with rarity 999 were purchased from the Growtopia Store and recycled at a significantly higher rate than the purchase price. Players took advantage of this to gain an unlimited amount of gems. This ruined the game's economy at the time, requiring a rollback to restore the game prior to the exploit being discovered. The exploit was temporarily fixed by preventing store items to be recycled for gems, however, was later changed to recycle at 10% of the original price.

An Apology Weekend event was released, allowing players to splice the Rollback Plaque for the duration of the event by splicing a Cave Background Seed with a Door Seed. After the event, the recipe would produce a Happy Joy Plaque instead. An unintended release of the seed was also seen during the early release of the item, however, was quickly removed, making it a glitched seed.

Rollback II

The second rollback occurred on 5 October 2013 where a few hours of data was lost.

This occurred due to the release of the "Null_Seed" which was found planted in Harvest Moon Blasted worlds. The seed would recycle for a random amount of gems, ranging from -4,294,967,295 Gems to 4,294,967,295 Gems (the maximum value for a 32-bit unsigned integer in computing, one less than the value of 2, raised to the 32nd power). The item existed long before it was discovered, however, the economy had already been damaged. A rollback was performed prior to the bug being discovered.

An Apology Weekend event was released, allowing players to splice the Rollback Plaque II for the duration of the event by splicing a Cave Background Seed and a Sign Seed. The Rollback Plaque II Seed dropped only for the duration of the event and stopped dropping once the event had ended.

See the official announcement here.

Rollback III

A third rollback occurred on 9 August 2015, where 24 hours of data were lost.

This occurred due to RAID arrays (data storage system used to store data about worlds) which had fried, leaving corrupted and missing data. This resulted in a rollback to the last daily backup.

An Apology Weekend event was released, allowing players to splice the Rollback Plaque III for the duration of the event by splicing a Cave Background Seed and a Sign Seed. The item did not drop any seeds.

See the official announcement here.

Rollback IV

A fourth rollback occurred on 12 December 2017.

This occurred due to a security exploit where players managed to gain access to developer accounts, distributing valuable items throughout the game. Emerald Locks, Da Vinci Wings and Phoenix Wings were temporarily made unavailable before the decision to perform a rollback to 10 December 2017 was made.

An Apology Weekend event was released, allowing players to splice the Rollback Plaque IV for the duration of the event by splicing a Cave Background Seed and a Sign Seed.

See the official announcement here.

Rollback V

A fifth rollback occurred on 14 February 2019.

This was caused by Growtopia's data hosting service to suffer a critical drive failure on 13 February 2019, causing damage to their RAID array. After attempts to recover corrupted data, a rollback was performed as a full restoration was not possible and a rollback of just under 24 hours was performed.

An Apology Weekend event was released, allowing players to splice the Rollback Plaque V for the duration of the event by splicing a Cave Background Seed and a Sign Seed.

See the official announcement here.

Rollback VI

A sixth rollback occurred on 1 July 2020.

This occurred when new code was implemented that would permit for a future update. However, this code caused issues, leading some players to lose progress and the servers were quickly placed into maintenance. The issue with the code was fixed, however, player game progress was still lost. A failed attempt was made to rollback to prior to the release of the new code (resulting in 10 minutes of lost progress), leading to a rollback to June 30th 15:00 (Growtopia time).

Note: Server issues also occurred on the same day, failing to restart after a server crash. However, this was irrelevant to the cause of the rollback.

An Apology Weekend event was released, allowing players to splice the Rollback Plaque VI for the duration of the event by splicing a Cave Background Seed and a Sign Seed.

See the official announcement here.

Rollback VII

A seventh rollback occurred on 3 July 2020.

This occurred when a duplication glitch was found, involving players quickly dropping items and exiting the world, resulting in many expensive items being duplicated. The servers were quickly placed into maintenance, however, it was found that the damage to the economy was too big to manually repair. A 24-hour rollback occurred to shortly after the duplication glitch started with many items becoming temporarily locked. The items locked were:

Since the rollback occurred during SummerFest 2020, an Apology Weekend could not be held until after the event which was extended for one day. During the Apology Weekend, a Rollback Plaque VII could be spliced for the duration of the event by splicing a Cave Background Seed and a Sign Seed.

See the official announcement here.