Cheater abusing the system

[thanthamthomap4]

Today I encountered a cheater on Arena. During my turn, the opponent repeatedly undid my move, forcing me to run out of time. As a result, I was expelled from the game and lost a large number of ranking points — I was ranked #1 before this match.

Could anyone please explain how an opponent is able to undo my move during my turn? And what should I do if this happens again?

Thank you.

[Quinlord]

Whoa, that's a crazy way to have a game end! The "undos" are also visible from the replay (at least six of them).

However, how can you be sure it was your opponent doing that as opposed to, for instance, a bug in the interface/backend of the website?
Looking at your opponent's past few games, this seems to be the only instance in which this series of "undos" happened (there is just another recent game won by expulsion, but there are no "undos" in the log of the replay. Also, them having a five-year old premium account with tens of thousands of games played does not smell like the typical cheater profile. Not saying it is impossible, but I feel there would need to be more data to have reasonable suspicion on the opponent.

[FrankJones]

How is it possible for one player to undo the opponent's move?

[Quinlord]

Ok I just tested it, and apparently the "Undo" function has been implemented poorly. I was just able to undo the move of an opponent by pressing the "Undo" button that is always present on screen

[FrankJones]

That's a serious bug.

I assume it has been reported already in the bug forum?

[Meeplelowda]

Could anyone please explain how an opponent is able to undo my move during my turn?

It's a bug.

And what should I do if this happens again?

It shouldn't happen again because why would you risk playing again until the bug is fixed?

I would report this player as exploiting a known bug. There is this report from October 2025 https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=188818

I'm surprised that something this big would only have been recently discovered with the game being out so long. Did it really go unnoticed that long, or did something in the framework change recently that introduced it?

[GiannisIsTheBeast]

Wow this sounds like a pretty bad bug. I kind of wonder what sort of testing these features go through before being released. Do they go through some sort of alpha/beta process like the release of new games? Not sure I’ll play a non-friendly game until it gets fixed. It takes a lot of games to gain any significant ELO once over 800 so losing 20 to this bs would be annoying.

[Meeplelowda]

I kind of wonder what sort of testing these features go through before being released. Do they go through some sort of alpha/beta process like the release of new games?

"Alpha" games
"Beta" games

[Jellby]

I'm surprised that something this big would only have been recently discovered with the game being out so long. Did it really go unnoticed that long, or did something in the framework change recently that introduced it?

It could be related to these:
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=45987
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46026

In which case it looks more like a BGA-wide change, that is either buggy or exposes bugs in games that had been "hidden" so far.

[Meeplelowda]

I'm surprised that something this big would only have been recently discovered with the game being out so long. Did it really go unnoticed that long, or did something in the framework change recently that introduced it?

It could be related to these:
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=45987
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46026

In which case it looks more like a BGA-wide change, that is either buggy or exposes bugs in games that had been "hidden" so far.

This seems huge. So is the hypothesis that this change is somehow now causing "undo" to display to all players and not just the active player (at least in Patchwork)?