For those unaware, Spyma- oh who are we kidding? You all know about Spymaster by now. What you might not know is that earlier today Spymaster reset a number of member accounts, wiping out their experience and funds. Here’s the explanation on Get Satisfaction:

Hello guys, I’m Eston, the director of MI6.

The Directorate have found a large amount of Spymasters have mysteriously ended up with quite a few billion dollars in their Swiss Bank accounts, something that isn’t even possible for as short as our spy rings have existed.

This means that all of this money has been generated through exploiting the wire transfer service and through a lot of hacking of the Spymaster system. It is all part of a large money laundering operation that has been put in place by rogue agents. Because of this, we have reset all accounts that have been affected by the hackers in this money laundering scheme. This means it will appear that your account has been opted out of the Spymaster system.

If you want your account back and we have banned you, you may appeal by posting your Twitter username here. We will reinstate your account’s original level, experience, and spy ring, but we cannot reset your funds to the same amount. . You have been scammed by the money launderers and should blame them for any financial issues you have.

The Directorate is not responsible for money laundering operations and, just as in the real spy world, you should never give out your Swiss Bank account number to anyone you do not know.

I was one of the affected people. As instructed, I added my name to the list. We’ll see what my account looks like after a few hours.

The bottom line here is that Spymaster was hacked, and a large number of people have had their accounts reset. While it’s certainly unfortunate that this happened, cheating is a common problem in all forms of gaming both online and off. Blizzard spends a considerable amount of energy working to keep all walks of the unscrupulous in check. Vegas casinos spend huge sums of money to combat the issue. In either case, when someone is accused of cheating, the proper protocol is to notify the suspect of the claim, present evidence, determine the punishment, and provide a means for appeal. Spymaster has failed on three of these four steps.

I wasn’t aware this had occurred until I attempted to sign into my account earlier this evening, and was informed that I had opted out of Spymaster Twitter invitations (I hadn’t). After posting a quick tweet I was informed by a follower that Spymaster had detected some cheaters and reset their accounts. That led me to this tweet: “All of those blatantly exploiting Spymaster, your accounts have been reset to zero.”

At this point the only evidence any of us have is the explanation provided on the Get Satisfaction page. While Spymaster has made provisions for accounts to be reinstated to their former state, all earned funds are lost, and at this point it looks like there is no means for us to get our money back.

Spymaster is gaining traction quickly, and with good reason. It’s a fun game with very little commitment. I’ve been playing it daily since I got my invite, and while I’m disappointed, I understand that these things happen. What I’m having trouble swallowing is the fact that Spymaster publicly accused all of the affected of cheating and reset our accounts with absolutely no evidence that any of us did something wrong. Their explanation regarding Wire Transfers and Swiss Banks Accounts rings hollow, as I never once used a Wire Transfer and had not yet earned enough to open a Swiss Bank Account ($560k). As I noted in an @reply earlier today, the concept of exploiting the app in any way had not occurred to me. While I don’t mind having to re-earn what little money I had, Spymaster’s own words on the matter border on libel. Many of the people in our Spyrings are colleagues and other business professionals, and I take the accusation very seriously.

I hope that after everything settles down Spymaster will come forward with some evidence of wrongdoing, or at the very least a better explanation of how it was determined that an account was involved. The Directorate owes us that much.