Fans of the Elder Scrolls Online will be disappointed to hear that the game’s guild banks have been temporarily disabled. Zenimax Online shut them down on Friday….likely in response to a massive duping bug.

The bug, which apparently was so simple that many players stumbled upon it entirely by accident, involved placing stacks of items into the guild bank and then withdrawing them. Players reported other players in full legendary gear with billions in gold – just from removing and selling the same stack of mats over and over again. Shortly thereafter, the bug gained major attention after it landed in a post Reddit. Zenimax says that they have banned thousands of players that exploited this bug, though it remains unclear how far the bans will do. There is, of course, the issue of how to handle all of that ill-gotten money as well. However, with the guild banks now offline, the exploit has been stopped rather effectively.

It remains to be seen how this will effect the over all economy, as Zenimax chose to forgo auction houses in favor of the current system – which they have just temporarily shuttered. This could be bad news for ESO, as the game recieved only moderately positive reviews when it was first released.

One user even posted a video of how to exploit the duping bug: