Gellyberry Studios fell victim to a ransomware attack

Indie game developer Gellyberry Studios sustained a ransomware attack that compromised their promising MMORPG game, “Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore.”

The attack compromised the game by deleting approximately 17,000 player accounts, wiping clean the in-game items and progress the gamers’ community accomplished.

Ethyrial, a free-to-play old-school MMORPG still in its Early Access phase on Steam, relies on monthly subscriptions and community support to fund its ongoing development. The ransomware operators targeted the central server and sabotaged every involved detail in the game. The attackers systematically encrypted all data, including local backup drives. In addition, these miscreants included a demand for payment after encrypting the data so the victim could acquire the decryption key.

 

Gellyberry Studios restored that game manually, refusing to comply with the attackers’ demands.

 

Based on reports, Gellyberry Studios decided to opt for manual restoration rather than trusting the assurances given by the attackers. In an official announcement on the game’s Discord channel, the developers revealed the details of the hack and their resolution to rebuild the server and recreate account and character databases from scratch.

The toll of the incident affected all 17,000 player accounts and their in-game characters. However, Gellyberry Studios pledged to restore everything entirely lost possible for everyone affected manually.

Furthermore, the developer assured everyone that every affected player would receive a new premium ‘pet’ in-game alongside their lost items and progress. Gellyberry Studios, now experiencing an unfortunate cybersecurity challenge, has outlined its plans to improve its security measures.

These proactive measures will include increased offline account database backups, the implementation of a P2P VPN for all remote server access, and restricting access to a specific IP address range.

Fortunately, Ethyrial: Echoes of Yore will relaunch its servers to accommodate its players again despite suffering a massive cybercriminal incident. Gellyberry Studio urges players to create new accounts and request manual restoration through a dedicated email address.

This comeback of the game developers has proven that the attackers will not receive any reward for their malicious activities. Therefore, game developers should also invest in cybersecurity solutions to avoid nuisances in case of a cyberattack.