Rock Band 4 developer Harmonix Music Systems Corp had to make a tough decision this week as it worked to resolve a serious exploit within the game. Some players discovered a game bug that they could exploit to inflate their song scores. As a result, Harmonix has decided to completely reset the game’s leaderboards, since a number of the high scores were achieved using the exploit.

“Rock Band 4 shipped with a handful of gnarly bugs, including an issue where experienced drummers can double-deploy overdrive by hitting the green ‘Overdrive’ gems at the end of dynamic drum fills,” Lead Designer Matt Derby and Creative Lead Helen McWilliams said in a post on the Rock Band blog. “But with your help, we’ve identified (and are fixing) potential score exploits that compromise the integrity of our leaderboards.”

The developers explained that they have discovered the root cause of the bug and will be releasing a fix, as well as implementing improvements to the leaderboard system that will allow them to avoid having to completely wipe the leaderboards due to an isolated problem.

“[We are making] an adjustment to our code that will allow us, in the future, to address song-specific bugs and issue targeted leaderboard wipes,” the developers said. “We’ll also be rolling out some score fidelity fixes to individual songs. These individual fixes will continue through the spring.”

They added, “We know that many of you have worked hard to climb the leaderboards, and that wiping your scores sucks. That said, these changes will ensure that in the future, you won’t be unseated from the top spot by someone using an exploit. And if we do discover an issue down the road, we can address it much more quickly and easily.”

The new update will go live in January.

Image credit: Harmonix / Rock Band 4