Zwift issued two important updates this week, but neither arrived in the form of a downloaded game update, so they could easily be missed.
The first update came with the latest version of the Companion app, enabling push notifications for Club Chat and Event Creation. And the second set of updates locks riders’ height and weight during events, preventing them from cheating by making mid-race changes.
Club Notifications
A new pair of notification options was added to Companion on iOS and Android. You can now toggle notifications for “Club Chat” and “Club Event”:
- Club Chat notifies you when someone posts a message on your club’s discussion board
- Club Event notifies you when a new event has been created for any club you’re a part of
These notifications are enabled by default. Change settings via Settings>Notifications in the Companion app.
The “Club Event” notification is especially useful for small clubs holding club-only events. It allows members to learn about new events without organizers having to manually reach out to members by some other means.
These notifications were a popular request among Zwifters, so it’s good to see Zwift further developing the just-expanded Clubs functionality.
For more info on these new notifications, see this post from Shuji in the Zwift Forum.
Weight/Height Lock In Events
Zwift’s dev team responded quickly to last week’s kerfuffle over racers’ ability to change their weight and height mid-race. The exploit needed quick fixing, because racers could change their settings back before the event ended, making it difficult to detect the “doping”.
Yesterday, Shuji announced the fix via a Zwift forum post. Here’s the post in its entirety:
Today we are beginning a series of security changes to address an exploit in game where a Zwifter could change their weight while in an activity in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage in competition. This exploit could be detected on Zwift servers, but would be hidden from public view, therefore impacting community racing. The first fix, which is live today, addresses competitive integrity and ensures greater fairness, specifically in events.
What does today’s fix entail?
Starting today, weight and height will remain locked when you are in an event.
If you are in an event and you try to make a change to your weight or height via your zwift.com web profile, you may be presented with a generic error message. If you try on Zwift Companion, changes will not save, and therefore performance in game will not be impacted.
When can I change my height and weight?
You’ll still be able to change your height and weight when you are logged out of the game, or when you are logged in, but not active in an event.
What about the bug bounty program that was mentioned?
We know a lot of you are also interested to hear more about the bug bounty program. This will take time to develop but as with this fix, we will keep you updated as soon as we have news.
This is the first step of many we are taking to address game integrity. We look forward to updating you on additional efforts
We’ve tested the changes and they are working as described above.
This is a welcome fix and a fast response from Zwift’s team, so kudos to them for good work. It’s worth noting that Shuji says, “… we are beginning a series of security changes…” which means further changes are planned to address this exploit.
Our guess would be those plans simply involve making the UI more elegant, perhaps explaining why a rider isn’t allowed to change their height or weight.
It’s also interesting to note the post says, “This is the first step of many we are taking to address game integrity.” So Zwift has additional work planned in the broader area of “game integrity”. We’ll just have to wait and see how it all unfolds.
Questions or Comments?
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Why does Zwift restrict this kind of news to the Zwift Forum, which is at best difficult to navigate? Surely it could create its own social media profile or newsletter (sorry Eric) that we could subscribe to?
Put it in the launcher or starting screen like any reasonable computer game does.
Yeah, they do a lot of these anouncements in the forums, which are populated by the same small group of users. They are difficult to navigate and not all that useful. The only way I find out about them is if Eric reposts them or someone mentions them in the Zwift subreddit.
I appreciate reading about them with Eric’s commentary, but it seems so strange that the vast majority of people will have to go to a 3rd party to get information that everyone should know or they won’t know about it at all.
This is great, but also gets me angry. Zwift have implemented this really quickly. However, they have also known about this for ages and only done something about it when there was a massive backlash. The fact that they were quite happy for this to go on for so long shows they really don’t care about fair racing. Like I say, I’m really pleased they have acted quickly since the “kerfuffle” to fix it but think it’s a poor reflection on zwift the way they have handled this whole sorry saga. They have let honest riders races be ruined by… Read more »
The squeaky chain gets lubed. Obviously, this chain got squeaky enough to be heard by the “right” ears. Not an excuse, but perhaps an explanation. SQUEAK ON!
Does this mean that Luciano is now allowed to race without being invisible? He has done a great service for the Zwift racing community (even if it wasn’t quite how ZHQ would’ve preferred it be delivered).
He was un-shadowbanned last Saturday, so he’s good to go!
Why allow in-game weight/height changes at any time?
Cause when you first create a game engine that how it works and you have to add code to prevent that from happening? They used to allow bike changes without stopping.
Why allow in game weight or height changes? Because young people still grow and all of us can gain or lose weight
By “in game” he means “while you are moving in the game”. People don’t tend to change weight or height too much during the course of one ride.
“In Game” = While riding in Zwift land – I certainly don’t lose 20kg while riding a race, nor do I grow an extra foot taller, so i don’t see a need to allow changes “In Game”
good on you then
Code development and bug fixing for live apps is always iterative….it’s just how it works
Because the game is rather badly designed and there is no real menu. Hopefully the coming new UI solves that at least partially.
First I’ve heard of it. I can’t believe this was actually happening. What’s wrong with people?
This choice cannot have felt satisfying for anyone who won a race using it, can it? I mean, if you thought of Zwift as a bike racing game, as opposed to some sort of zero-sum exercise to do with beating the terms of an abstract computer game? At least one note about this has suggested that it might be possible to look at past results and identify cases in which a user had jiggered her or his weight during a race. It’s odd how easily the analogs to “doping” of other sorts come to mind; the data from past events… Read more »
Now we know what to do to get something fixed quickly! Can we hire Luciano? 😉
Soooo…they were able to roll out this fix in less than a week. In other words, it took a highly visible PR disaster to light the fire under their collective butts considering how long they knew about the hack.
Pretty much this.
There are so many outstanding issues that could easily be fixed in Zwift that are repeatedly raised on their own official forums and yet nothing gets done until they are publicly embarrassed about it.
Yet they can bang out a new ride series or road section seemingly every other week?
It seems like there are a lot of problems at Zwift that could be fixed with a change of management or ownership at that organisation.
Ride series are easy, just schedule an event and write a blurb, doesn’t take much time.
They are definitely not pumping out new road every other week, people would like to see more of that.
Fixing cheats in races used by a small portion of the userbase doesn’t bring in new users (and doesn’t really stem the majority of current user losses) unless they’re embarrassed about it. Especially since the round of funding, their goal is increasing revenue (either by brining in new users or raising rates) not improving user experience.
You’re probably right here about the new-users priority. Not to be excessively critical, but I think organizations undersell the retention of existing users a lot of the time. You want to find a sweet spot where you’re periodically delivering major new features — Clubs! Pace Partners! Personal Best bots! — but also putting in steady bug fixes that address conspicuous pain points. Generally speaking, across lots of business models, it’s cheaper to keep existing users. The people driving the business often don’t concentrate enough on the fixes. In some ways it’s harder from their POV to sell that activity. Heck,… Read more »
Agree 100%
Getting new users is almost always more expensive than keeping current users, but new users is always a more sexy number to report to shareholders than, “well, we didn’t have as much churn and user turnover this quarter compared to last.”
So is the conclusion that we have no clue how many people were employing this cheat (including pros) without being noticed?
I show App Verstion: 3.33.0 (1213). Is this the one?
I can’t seem to be able to change my weight at all now on the companion app… My weight is wrong and even when I’m not in the game I can’t change it on companion. I have tried deleting and reinstalling the companion app, and I have tried changing it on the main zwift website too but even with that I can only go to 45kg (and it’s stuck at 46kg on companion). Do you have any suggestions? I’m tiny, 98lbs (44.5kg) and 5ft tall but it says I need to be under 17yrs old in order to put my… Read more »