Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Remember the Fruit Machine Bug that was discovered by TNT in December 2001? Well, what other benevolent bugs were abused by the players for their own personal gain?

 

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Remember the Fruit Machine Bug that was discovered by TNT in December 2001? Well, what other benevolent bugs were abused by the players for their own personal gain?

Question

I remember discovering and abusing the Fruit Machine Bug by pressing refresh many times and getting a lot of expensive free stuff. I conducted a charity giveaway on the Neoboards near to Christmas time. A girl player was overjoyed that I gave her a Shoyru Sword, worth around 48k Neopoints in 2001.

Then on December 27, on the NeoNews page, TNT announced yes there is a bug on the Fruit machine, and anyone who abused the Bug would be frozen and not unfrozen.

I reckoned my account would get frozen any day or hour now, so I moved all my stuff into my sister's account, to later move to a new account if I did get frozen. Then when my account didn't get frozen due to refreshing the Fruit machine many times, I moved my stuff back.

I later learned in the Neopian Times newspaper that no one got frozen for refreshing the Fruit Machine by accident; they had to commit that act at least 1,000 times to get frozen. I guess I only abused it hundreds of times then.

And how did TNT keep track of every users' refresh of the fruit machine anyway?

===

Anyways, what other "benevolent bugs" do you remember gave bug abusers unfair advantages to those who knew how to abuse them? How did TNT fix the bugs and deal with the abusers then? And when did these happen?

 

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[–]Pristine_Ad_9538 62 points  

Nah, it’s fair game. Someone not double-checking if they missed a couple 0s in the price isn’t our fault.

[–]blamethecranes 12 points  

I think it would if you went on your sides to purchase it when it was cheap. Getting one on your main when they made the mistake on pricing it doesn’t seem like it would count.

[–]math-is-magicUN: Goalkeeper50 8 points  

See also: buying the wrongly priced HT capsules. That on TNT tho, I think, it's not really exploitation imo

[–]swimmer913 10 points  

To be fair I don’t think the HT Cap was a pricing error, I think it was (truthfully) a whining Neo-Billionaire issue but that’s just imo 👀

[–]starpiece 4 points  

I never caught the cheap PB in time but I’m sooo heckin grateful I got the caps before the increase. I would have neverrr been able to do it at 50mil a pop

[–]math-is-magicUN: Goalkeeper50 5 points  

Yeah same. I burned all the money I’ve earned over the years, but I knew it was never gonna happen if I didn’t get it before that price went up.

[–]starpiece 4 points  

Yup I’m still trying to financially recover from it 😅

[–]satansboyussy 21 points  

I accidentally did no. 3 a few months ago and got a warning from tnt after they approved the score and gave me the trophy. I freaked out at the time and I've been advised by other players to never play that game again but nothing else ever happened to my account lol

[–]hilarioushumbug 6 points  

What was the game, if you don't mind me asking? I did 3 in Eye of the Storm, but no warning came with the trophy. Must've not gotten a high enough score to warrant one :D

[–]satansboyussy 8 points  

Clockwork Codebreaker

[–]crystalglassxxxBreakfast Club ☀️ 14 points  

for a while, usuki frenzy was adding crazy amounts of bonus points for grabbing the extra usukis. my high score is way above the 600 or whatever the score cap is and i didnt even mean to do it😭 luckily nothing happened to my account for it

[–]No_Patience8886 9 points  

So all those big trophies on those mighty users' pages were earned by cheating?

As a kid, I played fairly and thought people were insanely good at these games.

[–]Zidormizidormi 19 points  

As someone who used to trophy hunt, no. At least not typically. The easiest way to earn trophies is to submit a good score right after they reset for the month.

[–]Chemical_Success1153 2 points  

I always think about that for Fashion Fever. Like, it has to be IMMEDIATE.

[–]flamingnomeneo_username prettydot411 1 point  

noted!!

[–]HighCalCalzoneZone 9 points  

Hannah and the Kreludor Caves allows you to replay levels and grind for points doing so. I was in a guild that was having a competition using different game scores, so I decided to go for a big score on that one. And since I was aiming high, might as well do enough to get a gold trophy, right? So I replayed the second level until my score would put me at second overall on the high score table. Only I didn't realize that I did this as scores were due to reset, and that the scores for the past month had been unusually high, so come the next day, I not only had the high score, but it was by an incredibly large margin. And it stayed there for the month as no one else felt the need to spend hours on beating it.

[–]bacon_meme 3 points  

I did the bank account glitch on accident when I was a kid. I didn’t notice it until I had millions. I bought a drake transmog potion and some paintbrushes. TNT never took away my money, pets, or froze me…. But I felt so guilty that I abandoned that account and made a new one lol.

[–]lugiassis 53 points  

Lower cost of living lol

[–]Chemical_Success1153 1 point  

Curious!

[–]unconfirmedpandahas never performed an experiment on a chia  27 points  

There was a glitch with the official shops for a few hours years and years ago that wouldn't deduct np or count the purchase when you purchased something. Basically infinite stock for free. But once everyone worked it out, it slowed the website down so no one could load the shops to take advantage of it lol.

[–]Past-Western-6734 16 points  

I remember this. That morning, I randomly thought, “What happens if you refresh the page?” So I tried it, was delighted to receive the item again, and repeated a few more times.

When TNT commented on the bug later, I was terrified I’d be frozen.

[–]Fun_Television_1289u/ crispy_crunch3 2 points  

YES!! This is the one I remember - I cloned a wooden bed worth about 4K as well. I was mad at my sister, so I cloned a ton and sent them to her account, thinking if I got frozen, so would she. Neither of us did and she sold them all

[–]lavender_fluff 23 points  

Goddamn hackers!

[–]lunarchmarshall 26 points  

Hacked so good I didn't even press the skip button 💅

[–]tanrei 3 points  

Ahhh yes! I put all mine on the TP and let them randomly attach to all my pets. It was fun because I didn’t know which one the pet would end up with.

[–]ArtisticWatch 14 points  

The Devious Unconverted link of 2020(ish) and the aftermath

The PC was lawless. TNT doesn't really care for the pound chat and multiple users left and right were causing reversals and people were ending up with nothing in return.

At the same time, PC Santa came, posting pet pages full of UC pets that were magically stuck in the pound.

The people who were left without a pet due to TNTs broken reversal tool were told tough luck by support. They wouldn't be getting any pets back and creating new UCs was IMPOSSIBLE.

It couldn't possibly be done! The system wasn't able to create new UCs!

But then users discovered Jungle_boo. A TNT made pet, too young to be a true UC made before the calamity of the conversion. (There also was a dn UC plushie wocky that was 30 days old that got converted by a TNT member)

People called to TNT to change their policy. But again, they refused and Jungle_boo was converted! With an added customisation of a no banner.

The reversals ramped up and more and more people were left out of pets before suddenly. A Neo Truths was discovered, a link that could turn any pet into a UC as long as they had the correct colour and specie.

The link was abused by a selling site that had been creating their own UCs to sell on!

This link circled the PC and was met with outrage! Some users created pets on shell accounts, others too scared to use it.

It took TNT 2 days to patch the link. A few pets got converted back but too many had been created.

Another board dropped. A box file containing hundreds of high end UCs made and stuck in the pound. Some people only grabbed one or two, many filled their greed with pets.

TNT gave up.

Their policy was changed, they now granted UC duplicates to people who had traded a UC and got a reversal. They were offered a brand new UC of the one they traded to save TNT from reversals.

Initially it was only on pets in the pound. This was quickly abused by people pounding RN/RW to make into higher tier UCs and TNT made it so it had to be done on newly created pets instead.

That should have been the end of it.... right?

PC being the PC, people started reversing their own pets to get VWN high end UCs. Suddenly people had VWN UC darigan wockies, RG kyriis and more. Only a few hours old!

People would loan out BN pets for people to turn into VWN by trading for a stolen pet and causing a reversal.

This abuse went on for years until January 2024 when TNT decided to end the reign of the UC pets.

[–]FitGuarantee37 7 points  

99,999NP. The year of the great Transition when we were without the website for months.

[–]gothvalley 2 points  

I remember this. I held onto the suap I got in the shop for 99k for YEARS purely out of fear of losing my account.

[–]tisfortana 1 point  

They went back through and took a lot of the items that were duped didn’t they?

[–]gothvalley 2 points  

Not mine. I waited and waited. Then I transferred it, used it in the bd and figured it was safe so I sold it. Probably 6 years later?

[–]spacemanvince 8 points  

birthday cupcakes, create pet or i think there was a list of pets to adopt on their bday, get the cupcake, send pet back to pound, feed cupcake to main, once a day

[–]ToastCathoarder 5 points  

I know it's wild. Like especially if ppl don't do it too much like if you click it and it glitches and you're like whoa what so you click it again.. that's p much harmless vs people abusing the glitches.

I found out today that in Canada if you have counterfeit money even if you weren't aware of it being counterfeit it's a crime. If you own a business and accept counterfeit money you can get in serious trouble and I'm like okay but like what if you don't do it ON PURPOSE like why punish the victim here too?? I feel like TNT punishing users who accidentally abuse a glitch but didn't seek out to make a glitch is in the same vein

[–]jdb1984jdb1984 2 points  

With the page that gave out random events on every visit/refresh, the people who visited only a couple of times were fine (it was a neopets.com page, so no need to be overly careful). But the ones who abused it and visited hundreds of times were frozen

[–]Worth-Mission-8085 11 points  

My thoughts exactly. Like, how you gonna punish people for a glitch in YOUR products/services? That's like if someone bought a product that improved their life in a way the company didn't expect, and they sue the consumer for it.

[–]Unlucky-Macaroon-647v o i d · e s s e n c e  1 point  

reading all these comments, they rly make a lot of people paranoid to the point of abandoning their accounts. that’s wild for a “children’s” site

[–]ToastCathoarder 1 point  

I remember in like the late 90s at school being told that the internet isn't a playground and if you break the rules online there are serious consequences. It probably only applied to school like the teacher was saying don't screw around during this class if you're gonna get into trouble but I took it to mean the entire internet at any time. So whenever I went online I was scared the police were gonna show up if I was bad. So I can understand it ahaha.

[–]No-Fan-1123cinnamon2057 3 points  

Nit sure if this counts but the faerie quests. If you leave a different page open on the shop wizard you can still use the shop wizard to complete the tasks I had someone actually tell me to do this and said it was an easy way of doing them. Sketched me out because isn't that technically cheating too? Don't want to get a ban EVER and I'm terrified of it lol

[–]quigglebaby 5 points  

This is 100% allowed, you won't get in trouble :)

[–]No-Fan-1123cinnamon2057 1 point  

Oh thank goodness!!

[–]spiraldrain 4 points  

Just check up on u/neo_truths profile. He discovers a lot of shady stuff

[–]PotentialAd6835 3 points  

This! My girlfriend at the time discovered this and told us about it. You could hold F5 on a certain screen. Nps would go up higher and higher. Made enough to buy a SOS from the tower and a few other UBs at the time. I only remember the SOS because the pant devil stole it later on...

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