Big brother is always watching, and in this case when you try to exploit a Karma glitch that thousands of other Redditors have noticed in Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet took notice. With this little bug, players could buy weapons for a fraction of their price, and resell them for their full value, making a large profit. Lead Producer Chris Whitesdale took to Reddit to explain what happened.

Today we banned a number of players for exploiting Guild Wars 2. We take our community and the integrity of the game very seriously, and want to be clear that intentionally exploiting the game is unacceptable. The players we banned were certainly intentionally and repeatedly exploiting a bug in the game. We intended to send a very clear message that exploiting the game in this way will not be tolerated, and we believe this message now has been well understood.

ArenaNet took swift action, and now over 3,000 players have gotten the banhammer. Luckily, they have decided to be merciful, even though the players knew what they were doing. Players may file an appeal and be given a chance to make amends, but no doubt their accounts will be under special watch from now on.

Please use the subject heading of "Karma Weapons Exploit Appeal", then confirm in the body of your ticket that you will delete any items/currency that you gained from the exploit. You should submit only one ticket. Once you have done so, we will lower your ban to 72 hours, and following your re-activation we will check your account to make sure that you have honored your commitment. If that commitment is not honored, we will re-terminate the account.

With the way ArenaNet has been posting bans publicly on Reddit recently, this is surprisingly lenient for them, but who knows, maybe they'll decide to make your character wear a scarlet "C" ingame or something. Creative punishments certainly are fun, especially when broadcast on Reddit.