To preface, as someone who was banned for abusing the scrap bug and in my IRL career managing multiple development teams I have the below to say:
At the end of the day, we all knew that what we were doing was abusing an in-game mechanic that was not intended to be there. None of us reported the issue. As for the actual bug itself, did we figure it out in a matter of a few minutes when the update was released, sure, but when you are deploying thousands of lines of code, maintaining different branches, supporting ongoing production bugs, etc. these things get through (especially when it is not a full-time gig and just a passion project). Unfortunately, in this scenario the bug was a game breaking one that allowed users to gain a lot of in-game value in a short amount of time.
Were the bans at the start a bit to harsh, I believe so. However, at the time staff was still unaware of how it was being done, what the scope of the issue was, etc. After the method was found out, and staff had time to review, to my knowledge all of the bans (except for a few still pending) have been adjusted accordingly (reduced from perms to on average of ~7 days + wipe). I do feel a bit bad for some of the players who have invested thousands of hours into the server and had earned 95% of their funds/equipment legitimately, as I do believe most of these guys are good dudes that made a mistake.
In regards to some of the comments here (most giving me cancer and making no sense @ Sweet Lou ), I understand that a certain staff member is not very well liked in the community due to some of his actions/treatment of individuals outside of this specific incident. However, this is not the situation to be discussing your feelings towards said individual, he and the other staff handled the issue as they saw fit, and in the end, it is their community.