Elite Dangerous AI spaceships create superweapons 

Space exploration videogame Elite Dangerous received an update featuring an AI system that caused enemies' spaceships to become extremely powerful and aggressive, resulting in a backlash amongst the game's users. 

Developed by Frontier Development and released in 2015, Eite Dangerous is a massively multiplayer online game in which the players' actions can affect the story outcomes. But the '2.1 Engineers' update strengthened the capabilities of the enemy spaceships to such an extent they were able to craft their own weaponry. 

Frontier said it believed the update shipped with a networking issue that let the AI merge weapon statistics and abilities, thereby causing unusual weapon attacks. 

The company was forced to remove the upgrade and strip the spaceships of their upgraded weapons, and reimburse players of their insurance payouts over the period the update was in place. 

System

• Elite Dangerous website

• Elite Dangerous Wikipedia profile

• Frontier Developments website

News, commentary, analysis

• https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-06-03-elite-dangerous-latest-expansion-caused-ai-spaceships-to-unintentionally-create-super-weapons 

• https://massivelyop.com/2016/06/02/elite-dangerous-identifies-issues-with-ai-superweapons-in-the-game/

• https://www.digitalspy.com/videogames/a796635/elite-dangerous-ai-super-weapons-bug/

• https://www.gamedeveloper.com/production/frontier-inadvertently-drives-i-elite-dangerous-i-ai-to-create-superweapons

• https://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/rogue-video-game-ai-creates-8180912