Valve has reportedly paid a hacker a total of $11,250 for finding a bug in the game that was used as an exploit for many hackers.
A twitter user with the hande 2Eggsss was paid $9,750 and $1,500 on 2 separate occasions for reporting 2 major bugs to Valve. This practice is common among bigger tech companies, who often reward “ethical hackers” for finding loopholes in their systems and in turn preventing a potentially huge attack in the future.
While the exact nature of the bug was not disclosed, a payout as huge as this suggests that it could have been a pretty big exploit. The move also encourages hackers to report such bugs they find rather than exploit it, at least considering the financial gains that come with it.
This is not the first instance where valve have paid out an independant or a group for reporting a bug. Back in March, they pad $18,000 to a group of hackers for reporting a very “severe” bug. The move, though surprising, has been universally appreciated by fans.
