If a game is rife with exploits, people won t play it for long and thus the lucrative monthly fees will quickly vanish. A company has two choices in dealing with exploits fix them or ban players who use them. The former can be difficult. When the community sees a player exploiting, they want to see that player punished for not playing by the rules. Since banning has a way of hitting all the big news sites, the word of mouth gets around quickly that the company is being proactive in stopping exploiters and making the game fair for all.
Players often have quite a bit of time and money wrapped up in their accounts.
As an example, let s take an Ultima account that I started three months ago. This account currently has a maxed character on UO s most difficult server, as well as a nice house and a full stock of equipment. As for time spent it took me approximately 40 hours of character development time and I have probably since logged about 60 hours of playtime. The disparity between the value of an account for a game company and for a player is clear. Companies can and will whisk away an account at the drop of a hat, leaving the player no recourse to get it back.