Elder Scrolls Online studio asks players to publicly name and shame gold spammers

The Elder Scrolls Online developer Zemimax Online Studios has encouraged players to publicly name and shame those using gold farming bots, an unusual move that breaks the team's own rules of conduct.

It follows this new Elder Scrolls Online 1.0.6 patch, which includes a note from Zenimax pledging to put a stop to gold farming bots.

Now, over on The Elder Scrolls Online forum, the team wrote, "We request that anyone who has received a private message they believe to be from a gold spammer to post the sender's username as a comment in this thread."

"Please note that our Community Code of Conduct does prohibit naming and shaming," the post adds. "However, in an effort to expedite the process of identifying and banning the spammers' accounts, we are making an exception for this situation. We will investigate each alleged spammer account individually to avoid false reports."

Zenimax has blocked the ability to send private messages on its forum as gold farmers were using the system to conduct business.

Eurogamer adds that yesterdays 1.0.6 patch has not rolled out across all regions. An update from Zeminax explains that while server maintenance was conducted to prepare for the patch in Europe, the update was not issued.

It reads, "The maintenance is complete, and the European megaserver is now back online and available. However, due to an unforeseen issue during the maintenance, patch 1.0.6 was not deployed.

"We are currently investigating the issue encountered that prevented us from rolling out patch 1.06. The previously announced maintenance scheduled for on the North American megaserver is cancelled and will not happen for today, Tuesday the 29th of April 29th."

We'll have more once it happens.