What Happens When You Exceed 2,147,483,647 Life in MTG Arena?

If you're a programmer you probably already suspect what will happen. It's official. We seriously broke MTG Arena by rolling the life total over the limit for a signed (aka negative/positive) 32-bit integer. Join professional doctorate of screwing with Arena, Cindershadow, and me on this adventure that ends in a very unexpected way. Breaking Arena is FUN!
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[@thewildmage36]

You should've ulted ajani with negative life

[@cinderstar6634]

We need more “Breaking Arena” videos! These are the best!

[@cheesewizard8943]

Evra: has negative toughness Also Evra: I do not -control the speed at which lobsters- die

[@spencerhansen2927]

The numbers on screen are probably 32 bit, but in background are probably 64 bit to save memroy when running the application

[@NathanJervis]

@@jonathantillian6528 Note that the way negative numbers are stored in memory (2's complement) handles subtracting from a negative and subtracting for a positive number the same way. So if the life total was a large 64 bit number that became displayed as a negative 32 bit number it'd also explain why attacking did 1 damage but didn't trigger a game loss. Also the logic being bypassed because it never went from positive to negative seems like a very finnicky and problematic way to handle it. There's ways to go to less than 0 life and not lose the game, and handling all those state transitions seems a lot harder than doing `if life < 0 and noPreventGameLossEffects then`

[@dascandy]

@@jonathantillian6528 The game looks to do its calculations for creature power as signed 32-bit ints, and the creature's power/toughness are stored as signed 32-bit ints, plus number of 1/1 counters as signed 32-bit ints. So its toughness is still positive, and no +1/+1 counters will ever make that negative, so no need to check those (... famous last words, yes). So the creature is calculated to then have negative power & toughness and deals no damage (because you don't do negative damage). I'm not 100% why it doesn't die after hitting a 1/1, but it might be that they only check the sign flipping on the life total before and after change to see if you died. And swapping your life total with its power, and then having its power be your old life total plus counters is ... broken, of course.

[@weskerwaldorf2824]

Hit like immediately pretending I understood what you were talking about.

[@AStonedLemon]

Gotta save up that sweet, sweet memroy!

[@calebrobbins6406]

This is what I should be getting in my recommended videos.

[@treazon88]

Just finished the video and can't help but wonder what would have happened if you had hit your opponent unblocked after the damage counter turned negative...

[@xicufwm]

Yeah! Why DIDN'T they do that?

[@Bdawg71692]

I can't believe they didn't try that!

[@DaDunge]

Nothing happens. You can have negative power in magic, it happens a lot.

[@lcg3092]

if the token took no damage, is safe to assume neither would a player

[@Rikonian]

This vid absolutely made my night. Keep up the great work Des.

[@WalcomS7]

Now this is a good idea, I hope to see more of these kinds of videos because they're very interesting even if you don't play Arena.

[@amfekuber]

Great video! You guys were cracking me up

[@durant3248]

So like the first video I saw was the one testing settle the wreckage. I was amused but the video was funny. Today KZbin suggested this video. After somehow picking myself up off the floor (dying from laughter and fear that I would be dragged into the black hole for watching this video) I clicked on the subscribe button because obviously the things YOU do for science cannot be missed! Good job.

[@Galexyk]

Me: */is casually browsing KZbin/* This video: */shows up/* Me: what happens when you 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩

[@Cindershadow]

EPIC LEVEL, desolator is over 9000

[@isaacrobertson4374]

Thank you desolater, very cool

[@Yellowboxable]

Fantastic video! Way to push the limits!

[@mehtheorc]

That was. An EPIC experiment @rtr. Izzet have you seen this guy? His name is Des, you should hire him.

[@zakd2124]

2.147 bil? That's a blue partyhat babyyyyy

[@mosbyvanpanhuis2589]

I love these kinds of experimental videos

[@squeektheweek6949]

This reminds me when I was in middle school in computer class I had set the high score on every PC on mine cart or w/e that game was called (math game using simple machines) by going so far in the negative by spamming a failing combination it became the maximum positive number.

[@SyphonGhost]

The type of Magic Content I enjoy

[@DaDunge]

When I played magic with my friends in junior high we had a house rule which said that in a 2 player game you win if you reach +200 life. We have two cleric decks in onslught which both could generate 1 life for every cleric on the board so we needed a limiter to how long those games could get.

[@project_genshin3935]

this is pretty cool to see!!!

[@ranmuke]

Apparently, having negative trillions of life doesn't lose you the game. I need to get back against those infinite damage things.

[@Luna-df3ny]

The game just doesnt show you these numbers, but they are correct in the background

[@cwinship]

Best comment.

[@TeDynef]

You would probably win if you respin the counter the other way around and then kill him

[@codefreelance2182]

Had me rolling LOL ... Power ball numbers and Kabbalah magic!

[@anthonyy6041]

This is by far the best FU deck I've ever seen!

[@felipeluz5035]

Probably the game only checks if "life points" go from above 0 to below 0. So when it goes to negative from an overflow, it takes an alternate path to the negative (never going through 0, in a way). So the game doesn't notice you're dead. xD

[@DaDunge]

More likely the integer which checks your life total to see if you lose the game is a smaller one which does not recognize positive or negative numbers above or below +/-32.000.

[@AsheTheFox]

You know the number is high when the finger has to come out.

[@noahklein9536]

Highest life I've ever gotten is over 4000 life and my opponent went down to -3000 something. Crazy

[@MoonMorslieb]

Mmmh... And one moment he block with Deathtouch 🤣🤣

[@justinstolowski5622]

That is just insane crazy...

[@blazenjestergames4025]

This was great

[@1123JGilbert]

Here's a great one for you Desolator... i was playing against infinite poly-raptor cancer vs. my cloner explore (yes also cancer, but it was fair becuase it was vs cancer) he got off his semi infinite combo leaving him with about 200 poly-raptors, but i had two 40/40 wildrgowth walkers... the game just said i lost because i couldnt respond in time to his semi-infinite combo(cant respond to abilities so it ate all my timeouts).. but i had a sleep in hand which would have tapped all his stupid dinos and given me the win since i had 210 life and he had 14. Would love to see this played out on arena, since in real life you just show them the sleep and the game is over. i played the whole 40 minute game out thinking i would have the win. I was almost literally vibrating with rage.

[@lohdhshs]

This is the MTG equivalent of heart of the cards.

[@main135s]

Unsure if it's in MTG Arena, but if you want to recreate this in the future, and Ageless Entity is in, just drop it, give it lifelink, and go in swinging against an indestructible creature. Ageless Entity gets as many +1/+1 counters as you get healed for. Which essentially means that every turn, it will double it's power, exponentially growing. Unless there were some ruling about lifelink not being considered healing that I don't know about, it SHOULD work.

[@mikeyjhilli]

I'm not an MTG player and even I found this fun and interesting.

[@elliscorten4275]

this had me in tears

[@michaelsmagic3132]

Beautiful

[@KrowdesAlexander]

I don't know what is more hilarious; the wacked commentary, or the insane glitches in the game. Lol

[@arzangofthebrothersoflightario]

Desolator is the best at finding exploits on Arena.I am glad to see that you are the first to have officially broken Arena.

[@DomcoRadlerLachtan]

It´s actually really important job, because the whole point of open Beta is to test the Arena before official launch.

[@lilacpilot3437]

He's not the first. The polraptor combo did that and I've seen a few others but this is definitely the most awesome

[@dziewon2866]

That's science right there

[@dindindundun8211]

Perfect opportunity for a cool easter egg

[@djethanol256]

Im not gonna scroll through to see when this started but im currently at 8:38 and you might notice that the auto-pass blue button in the bottom left is slightly off-center. Just noticed it lol thought it was pretty great

[@Et111thompson]

This is great

[@cohencoughlin328]

Imagine one day being able to do thing on paper

[@stevekeenan9673]

That channel fireball would take out a gran prix

[@DesolatorMagic]

It would take out an entire moon lol

[@lukebeck4745]

There's a card that doubles your life total and never goes into the graveyard

[@y3tti627]

That was amazing do more of these or I will send dimir agents to your house to mildly inconvenience your day by stealing toilet paper and freezing the locks on all of the doors

[@alexanderringler5747]

This is a hell of a bug-report :-D

[@bedwablackburn]

This is hilariously glorious...

[@josephmoore286]

Many man yyears ago, in one game at a weekly tournament, I had a combo set up. Instead of gaining millions of life, I decided to tell my opponent I will just gain 500,000 life with my combo, or something like that. Next turn he destroyed my combo maker and did his own combo where he was doubling tokens. I then kept drawing crap from my deck while he beat my face in. I was sweating bullets. I eventually won the game with 93 life..... Lesson to learn: if you can gain as much life as you can, go with trillions.

[@hayato1886]

Me personally if someone gains "infinite" life, I won't scoop. There's always a chance you could win.

[@adamt8963]

*cue Axis of Mortality*

[@panagiotisdavillas9786]

Ok now this IS FUCKING EPIC

[@Ducktor]

Me, an entry level programer: Hmmmm maybe I should have an if statement check to see if a number is going to overflow, if so don't let it go higher. Fixed.

[@001shadowknight]

Ok. That reminded me the time I used Hero’s bane to get to trillions of counters to only do 1 damage

[@asWerty5040]

You reach immortality!!!

[@ang4860]

Im proud to understand this video

[@chaselumsden2042]

Can't wait for the sequel: Is it possible to Divide by 0 in MTG Arena? Starting Mark Rosewater and with guest star Daniel Radcliffe as Desolator

[@grinchsimulated9946]

Eternity vessel + Vorel of the hull clade

[@KBgamer2010]

Rhys the Redeemed and Helm of the Host are available on Arena right now I think you can guess the implications here (God-Eternal Rhonas army with 171,798,691,840 power each)

[@jozzyalthefool9273]

I feel like this was Evra's destiny.

[@TetraTimboman]

MTGO, there's a few combos that still cause problems. Like Necrotic Ooze on the board, with Viridian Joiner (mana), Chameleon Colossus (pump), and Devoted Druid (untap) in the graveyard, you can get the Necrotic up to the max power and toughness easy BUT if you tap Necrotic for mana equal to power (Viridian Joiner's ability) after Necrotic is past 65536, then the game crashes because the mana is a 16 bit I think. Last time I checked anyway.

[@AntiPeach]

Should have included Oath of Teferi to speed up the planeswalker ulting

[@Sebal007]

Heyho: It's possible that ui and log treat the value as signed int 32, but internal math(like deathchecks) use an unsigned int 32. So while you get a negative number displayed, the internal code still evaluates in positive numbers. As long as you don't hit 0 precisely, it will just keep rolling over and over.

[@DaDunge]

My guess is it only checks for negative life totals against a smaller integer, it compares the larger bytes integer with a smaller one which does not recognize the larger one and thus you don't die. And neither does your creature.

[@wyhiobcarlile4879]

I think the rollover is continues so it records you are X levels above baseline so its basically just a visual bug for life and toughness but it breaks attack

[@geofastar]

I used to do this on NES jeopardy. If you went low enough you got a positive score.

[@TheKirbyT]

Breaking the game is always a good video

[@RosieDuck]

ok i just discovered this video & channel and i'm wheeze-laughing, everything is made funnier by the fact that i have trouble reading numbers so i EXTRA cannot follow ANYTHING that's going on, you'ree laughing, opponent's laughing, I'M laughing, what IS mtga even man wow XD

[@kibaakaamaaru]

Science!

[@Temphost1408]

Do it with the gain x life, azors gateway and cards to copy spells to go even further

[@michaelmitchell338]

I have had over 1.5 quintillion life in a game of paper magic back around Urza’s Block.

[@redstonepro5412]

How ?

[@kdgbr]

@@redstonepro5412 there are many infinite combos in Magic, but as per the rules "infinite" doesn't actually exist in the game, you have to declare an arbitrarily high number. So yeah, just find whatever endless combo allows you to gain life and declare how high you want to go. Could be one hundred, one thousand, a million, whatever: in this case, 1.5 quintillion

[@haruhisuzumiya6650]

@@kdgbr 1.4 quintillion 1,400,000,000,000,000

[@nathanhalford5711]

The counters from the Ajani caused you to gain the life

[@vasylpark2149]

Best video ever

[@coooolibri]

"negative attack, what happens when you hit with it now"? hahahahaha i was thinking the exact same, man!!!

[@DavBotsArcade]

Bahaha you know if that flipped just one more time it would have opened up the portal that sends Mark Rosewater back home.

[@Wabinator]

its over 9000

[@adamxue6096]

...And thus the good ol HS Lorewalker Cho + Divine Spirit goings have come to magic. Better yet, this one breaks way harder than just wtever minion dying due to having too much health. Such common things that happens on a daily basis, how could the Devs missed out on it.

[@DesolatorMagic]

Why is everyone asking for the decklist? There is no decklist in the traditional sense. 4x Evra, Halcyon Witness 4x Enhanced Surveilance for graveyard recycling 27-ish lands 4x Ajani for his ultimate of put +x counters where X is your life total 21 draw spells

[@cholland67]

Clear the mind would be better to keep shuffling graveyard back into your library

[@NikolaiManning]

Look for the video Hyper Cancer the recancering. It really quickly crashes arena. There is also one with dinosaurs but I can't remember the names of the cards.

[@foxw00d]

Destroying magicarena one bug at a time

[@SuperBulian]

Hey Des, Josh Hutcherson 2.0 saying hi.

[@RiseInAfterlife]

It also breaks if you have 200+ Life and a flipped Azors Gateway. Or try to spawn 1000 Krenko No-Pants Goblins at once.

[@Phy10s]

That was absolutely absurd and amazing all at the same time! I can't believe they had such sloppy code! I would've. Thought they would put a hard cap on life total.

[@servantofcygnus]

Phy10s Hard cap on life total doesn’t exist in paper, why should it digitally?

[@usun7521]

it's ok code for beta, plus client display numbers and server numbers can differ and they are likely cutting corners to improve performance and memory usage on client side. if you submit this video as a bug report - they might fix it. Or not.

[@nirartov4863]

EPIC

[@sheabroderick8625]

Should do a boros version and fling a billion damage at your opponent

[@Zosh_]

Fling a billion negative damage

[@CnDsaint]

Nice

[@kurtsloop2462]

I once played a guy in commander who would have to use a calculator to tally up his life. Eventually, everyone had a Sorin Markov and a few boardwipes to throw at him. He stopped.

[@superawesomecaptainmcfluff9506]

Fucking amazing.

[@IshioRamo]

you shouldve keep the attacks each time the power went blue to rack up even more XD

[@scaptal]

I guess that creatures don't die and game losses aren't handed out because you went to the negatives trough an overflow, I guess you have to come trough zero for you to lose (or for creatures to die) just a guess tough

[@KyouUkaru]

This should have more views lol

[@brettsackett]

More science!

[@rileyhedgesgold]

Zero deaths!

[@AidanWR]

I've actually lagged out of the game halfway through 32 evolution sage triggers. I was able to get back in though

[@saqvobase4301]

Could you use this combo in paper magic or does it only work on arena?

[@teamawp-gamesfunforsome259]

Omg!!!! Areana has been bugging out on me bad.. I hasnt been letting me cast instants on my opponents turns resulting in game loss for me and/or bad blocks. Its done it atleast 4 times. And seems to happen after i rank up. I was in draft went gold3 to gold2. And then gave me a no lander into a 4 lands which i know is very common. And there was 3 more on top i conceded after it didnt let me cast my instant, take up arms. I lost my creature and drew my 8th land.

[@itayraviv2932]

Happens to me every game man...

[@benjamincumming3371]

I was in a game where it crashed because I was creating 9 birds for each spell I cast and I put like 5 spells on the stack...

[@RealGateGuardian]

greatest game ever

[@harperlloyd3164]

Does anyone know what enchantment it was that made Everdawn Champion a legendary creature?

[@NovaCyn]

This is one reason using fixnum is superior to int for things that are not performance impacting :P

[@itsmejamesss]

I wonder what would happen if everdawn Champion gets hexproof, vigilance, indestuctible, flying, lifelink and trample and he got pumped to 10/10