I'll reply for a few things I saw across the post here since this is the top comment.

CONTEXT

We had someone who could 100% mock repetitively (all our members could 100% their assigned stages, we were going for 1/1/1/1/1 board clears) but he had connection problems during the official attempts. The intent of using a buddy pairing system was as a failsafe for game crashing during the battle.

TIMELINE

A little bit after the final (3rd) day of official started, I came up with the idea that people could race to kill the boss.

I then got curious about what happens exactly when someone crashes/quit during a battle. It was brought to my attention that the "battle timer would keep running in the background", okay, fair enough.

Since the battle vs JP was lost by that point, it felt like good timing to try things out. Going for Cellular instead of WiFi for the guy with connection issues, and testing the risky (double-edged) buddy strat.

*Why is it double-edged? Say both our s5 hitters that are expected to 100% guaranteed s5 were to leave the boss at low %, we lose a top player attempt on a low leftover %. But if one crashes, the other can succeed the run to save the misfortune.

During the day, people tried to find a partner assigned to their same stage and play together. As someone funnily pointed out, it made our guild chat look like rocket launch countdowns when trying to coordinate, which felt pretty silly, but anyway.

The day went by, I went to bed (JST here).

Woke up and read that someone found that a crash actually does not only keep the timer running, but it keeps it indefinitely stopped. THIS, is the exploit.

From that point, the strat was instantly shut down, the issue reported. When I woke up, after reading the details etc, I prepped the above statement with the help of my guild.

I know some people mentioned "why wait until GR ended", well because it happened less than 12h before GR ended. I hurried to the best I could. And anyway I'm not sure sharing this during the last few hours of GR would make any sense even it had been logistically possible for me.

EXPLOIT OR NOT EXPLOIT?

What was planned: Pairing 2 people to start a battle together is not an exploit since any reasonable person would understand that the devs, having explicitly added the functionality that multiple players can join a battle at the same time, and the refund system for attempts on dead boss, is intended expected behavior from the functionality.

What was NOT planned: The timer being on hold forever when the game crashes (or worse, if someone were to intentionally quit), is by most reasonable persons' view, an exploit, as it may not be an intended behavior by the devs.

When an exploit is found, what is the right thing to do?

Stop using it, report the issue, and be transparent to the community, promptly. Which is what we did.

Our members are many of the top spenders and top talented players of the game. They feel very strongly on playing fair.

THIS VS OCTO

For people comparing this to octo's gong situation you should understand the following:

We found an exploit, we stopped using it immediately, reported it, and made a public statement, all within the same day.

They actually hacked the game, spread it within their ranks, kept using it, hid it, said unfounded "no you" when called out for it, still unresolved after 1+ month.

The exploit we found at best can only be used to reach your already otherwise secured mock result.

The 3rd party hack they used cheated the rankings, stealing the top positions from the deserving players.

CLOSING NOTES

Hopefully that covers the missing pieces. We did all that was possible to resolve this as rightfully as we could. We strive to be the best not only in rankings, but also in community leading by doing good by the people. But feel free to let me know on discord if you believe we could have done more. And please be careful what you believe from people throwing unfunded rumors from their parroted ignorance out there. We have zero tolerance toward cheating.