Call the Pinkertons; this hacker bought $20 million in Magic: The Gathering Arena packs for $1 and then shared how he did it.
Daniel Mayer was the person to pull this off, and by his calculations, he actually got $20 million in packs on the game for under a single dollar!
According to his blog post, he overrode the game’s architecture to get the packs and is a malware reverse engineer by profession. This was, according to him, a search for knowledge and how much the system could take.
Hacker Buys $20 Million in Magic: The Gathering Packs For $1
So, the simplistic way of putting it, Daniel made an astronomical purchase in the game and overrode the system. This allowed him to get 21 million packs for basically free as it somehow forced the price of the purchase back down to basically 0.
Not only did he get all the cards, but he also ended up in a net positive for gems (he just used the ones the game starts you with), as the game gives them out for duplicate cards.
Coming from his blog, Here’s what he had to say about getting extra gems:
Another twist here, that I wasn’t expecting, is that there are a finite number of cards per set. There is also a cap on the number of copies of each card you can own: you can only open 4 copies of each card before they become useless since you can’t use more than 4 copies of a card in a deck. So what happens when you open so many packs that you reach the limit? I set up my autoclicker and found out. Once you cannot collect any more cards, the packs instead refund you gems.
He says he started looking around the game for bugs as he has an interest in Paper Magic’s pauper format. This also brings up something to consider about the game, as you don’t really “own” the cards. With online Magic, there is no actual scarcity of a physical product, and you don’t get anything tangible in your hands.
Luckily for MTG, he is a benevolent hacker and told them about the bug. Wizards has since fixed it in the most recent patch. Guess they won’t be calling the Pinkertons about this one after all.
Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first big bug he has found in the game, as he previously figured out a way to win games with a single click, forcing opponents to concede. That bug report netted him a small gem bounty for his efforts.
He also mentions that he will not be sticking with Arena, as he really likes the paper version of Magic better and actually playing with other people.
If you want to see all the technical details about the pack bug, check out his blog for all the details!
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About the Author: Travis Pasch
Travis Pasch
Job Title: Head Writer & Editor
Joined: 2019
Socials: @paschbass
Bio: Dark Eldar Dracon and Warhammer 40k hobbyist since the third edition in 1998. He also loves camping because you can only paint so much! He joined the Spikey Bits team in 2019 and has been the main daily writer since 2020.
Maybe one day, he’ll finish converting all his Ad Mech models and turn into a true tech enjoyer, complete with sad and happy robot noises!
