Yeah, I'm almost certain it was the latter. I remember they shared the code snippet, but that was in 2007 and the game's forums have been replaced since then. I did find a recounting of it:

https://forums.achaea.com/discussion/comment/249213/#Comment...

(and the associated quest to discover the easter egg of a coin landing on its edge with 1 in a million odds that was added when the bug was fixed)