Gold seller, Hacking, Exploiting, Bots, and Third -Part software.

Noaani wrote: »

There are some legal issues with this.

Almost anything can be legally challenged. Nothing is absolute, everything is subject to interpretation by individual judges presiding over a case, including aspects of the U.S. constitution. Contract law, which the EULA you sign before playing a game is a contract, while not as solid as the U.S. constitution, is pretty solid. Challengeable yes, again everything is, but it's pretty solid.

A EULA is an end-user licensing agreement. You don't own anything in this agreement. Not even the game itself, much less any virtual items in it. It is licensed out to you. And that licensing agreement can be cancelled at any time, for any reason by both you or the company if that's what the EULA states. Which it usually does.

I don't think this is normally done, but theoretically a company could put a covenant not to sue, or a general release of claims into the EULA, which when you sign it, you'd be giving up your right to sue the company over any specific issue such as termination of your account.

But they don't really have to do this because most cheaters don't sue when they're banned. Neither do most people who are wrongfully banned. Which essentially makes this whole discussion pointless. Because most claims like this would be dismissed before even going to trial. It'd probably be hard to find an attorney that'd even take the case. The person suing would have to hire an attorney, pay filing fees, and they'd have to actually show up for the court date. That's a tall order for someone who knows their case is likely going to be dismissed. Granted anything is possible, I'm just talking reality here though.

All customers need to be treated the same, kind of. Not all cheaters have to be caught at the same time. Not all cheaters have to be caught ever. This isn't the same treatment, some are caught and punished, some aren't. If you can prove persecution, discrimination or otherwise targeting of a certain individual or group, that's where the chance begins for building a successful case. But the company will be given wide latitude in policing their own game in general by courts. If they can't police it, who can?

And who do we want banned? People that cheat. Not people that didn't. So of course we want Intrepid to have tools that determine that to a certain confidence standard. And some kind of investigative record that could be presented in court, if it ever even got to that point. So when I say zero tolerance for people caught cheating, I mean people that have actually been caught, people that have met Intrepid's standard of this account is cheating.

Noaani wrote: »

It is worth noting that in addition to all of the above, action can only ever be taken against the account that purchased gold. If I create a new account and use it to purchase gold, then hand that gold off to my main, Intrepid can ban that new account, and not much more - at least not if I am willing to argue the point.

Yes they can ban the account that the gold is handed off to. There's no in game record of your credit card transaction with a gold seller. It's not tied to the account or any account in that way. But they can ban any account for any reason, and certainly an account that they've traced illegal gold to.

You can argue that point, that your account wasn't the first to touch the gold. You have a much better chance arguing that directly to Intrepid in an appeal, than you do arguing it in a court.

Okeydoke wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

There are some legal issues with this.

Almost anything can be legally challenged.

Indeed.

There is a small point of clarification to be made to some of what you have said though. Contracts are somewhat solid legally - however, you can not sign away any rights expressly given to you by law. If you live in a jurisdiction where you are given the right to sue, no contract can remove that right from you (there are sometimes exceptions where this can be done, by adding in a form of conflict resolution that is better for the disadvantaged party in the agreement).

However, a contract is able to state that it removes said rights - and the company is able to remind you of this fact should you begin a suit. It is only when it is in front of a judge (or mediator, or what ever as per jurisdiction) that this falls to pieces.

You are right in that it isn't normal for an EULA to state that you can not sue the developer, but it is fairly normal for them to state a specific jurisdiction in which you must do it should you opt to sue (usually the jurisdiction the developers head office is in). These are sometimes able to be enforced, but sometimes are not.

All customers need to be treated the same, kind of. Not all cheaters have to be caught at the same time. Not all cheaters have to be caught ever.

This is all true, but all players caught cheating in the same manner must be treated the same.

Imagine I have a second account. It isn't connected to my main account in terms of credit card, MAC address, IP address or anything else. If that second account purchases gold and then sends it to my main account, in order for a developer to do anything to that main account, they MUST do that same thing to any other account caught being sent gold that is known to be purchased.

Based on this, imagine getting that second account, buying some gold, and then sending it off to the officers of a rival guild - perhaps disguised as a purchase sent to the wrong player or some such, something most people would just quietly pocket in an MMO.

Now, if I do both of the above myself (buy gold and send some to my main, and some to rivals), in order to ban my main, they must ban all accounts that received gold - and I am able to prove which accounts received gold.

The problem there is that this only matters if I am willing to argue the point - at my own expense. This is why many companies are able to do this - no one has challenged them. Those that put less effort in to it are generally the companies that have been challenged, and have lost.

There is an interesting point to be made in all of this though - there is no law about people excluding others in recreational activities.

As such, the only actual guaranteed method for dealing with gold buyers is for their guild to boot them. if you are the kind of player that would play a game like Ashes and feel the need for a purchased advantage, being booted out of your guild and not welcomed in to any other guild is basically the same as being booted from the game.

So really, the best defense against a game being overrun by RMT is us players. Not by reporting such things to developers, but by excluding players we know to be purchasing.

Caww

Ban me now because if I see gold sellers going at it in chat like New World, I'm gonna throw in the towel and Buy!

Caww wrote: »

Ban me now because if I see gold sellers going at it in chat like New World, I'm gonna throw in the towel and Buy!

lol

Spif

"Ban the buyer" will probably work better as a deterrent in AoC than many other games, because there is a long road to the top. But that still doesn't mean that people who are getting bored with AoC won't do it. Less to lose if you are thinking of moving on anyway.

I don't see how you can stop account sales

Although it's not illegal, it goes against several companies' policies. Anyone who violates these guidelines is subject to legal action by game companies. They often don't worry about small-scale transactions like account sales since they aren't worth the effort or money, but they reserve the right to file lawsuits against individuals who repeatedly break their regulations, particularly gold growers and account hackers.

Asgorath wrote: »

Although it's not illegal, it goes against several companies' policies. Anyone who violates these guidelines is subject to legal action by game companies. They often don't worry about small-scale transactions like account sales since they aren't worth the effort or money, but they reserve the right to file lawsuits against individuals who repeatedly break their regulations, particularly gold growers and account hackers.

In order to be even remotely successful with a lawsuit, the developer would need to be able to point out directly where the defendant has cost that developer money.

Since we have all seen that players don't leave a game due to black market sales, there is no loss in revenue for those developers to show.

Account "hacking" is a different situation. That is actually illegal.

Kilion

Asgorath wrote: »

Kilion wrote: »

Since nobody mentioned it so far I will just point you to the Wiki on the topic of security systems

do you know how many gaming industries say, "These systems collect user data and flag abnormal activities for investigation, We do have already built into the game on the outset is essentially behavioral metrics. So in the game, as a player does normal things and they acquire normal gold, that's all good and well, but if there start to be item IDs that appear on the player account that are out of the norm, like either a large amount of gold or significant legendary items, what it does in the back-end it flags the account for view so that we can take a look at where did this item come from. Is it coming from a known gold seller or a flagged bot, or whatever; then we investigate." https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Security_systems

Let us discuss this point,
Do you know how many big games that say something about combating, cheating, exploiting, and collecting user data, every one of these big games has its own system that monitors and collects player's behaviors. No matter well protected the system is, hackers will always find a way to huck. You cannot just include security and anti-cheating features in your game. You want cheating hackers on your team because they can develop complex techniques to stop cheating by checking to see if an outside process is reading memory that the came has allocated. To develop a software architecture where cheating is possible, you need the assistance of specialists. These days, developers are overly reliant on the same damned engines, which makes it quite simple for individuals to publish hacks. A hacker may rapidly port everything he creates for the UE5 to ANY UE4-UE5 game after writing it for the UE5. You perceive the closed beta hacks in that manner.

What is the point of this "discussion" if you don't think Intrepid is incapable of managing their game properly before it even launched? Since nothing can be done about the hackers I guess it is all doomed anyways *eye roll*

My point is not to criticize intrepid studios if they are or not capable of managing their own games. The point of this discussion is to talk about how gaming industries can combating against hackers who take advantage of gaming companies' vulnerability for their own success or give them an advantage in a game they are playing. We all see how lots of big companies are getting hacked and gold sellers, bots, bugs and more kill the game.

Asgorath wrote: »

My point is not to criticize intrepid studios if they are or not capable of managing their own games. The point of this discussion is to talk about how gaming industries can combating against hackers who take advantage of gaming companies' vulnerability for their own success or give them an advantage in a game they are playing. We all see how lots of big companies are getting hacked and gold sellers, bots, bugs and more kill the game.

In regards to that kind of hack, Intrepid are essentially relying on AWS, as they are hosting the servers.

If you want to talk about anything in regards to wider security than that - this forum is probably not the place.

Noaani wrote: »

Asgorath wrote: »

My point is not to criticize intrepid studios if they are or not capable of managing their own games. The point of this discussion is to talk about how gaming industries can combating against hackers who take advantage of gaming companies' vulnerability for their own success or give them an advantage in a game they are playing. We all see how lots of big companies are getting hacked and gold sellers, bots, bugs and more kill the game.

In regards to that kind of hack, Intrepid are essentially relying on AWS, as they are hosting the servers.

If you want to talk about anything in regards to wider security than that - this forum is probably not the place.

I don't agree with you on that.

Noaani wrote: »

There is a small point of clarification to be made to some of what you have said though. Contracts are somewhat solid legally - however, you can not sign away any rights expressly given to you by law. If you live in a jurisdiction where you are given the right to sue, no contract can remove that right from you (there are sometimes exceptions where this can be done, by adding in a form of conflict resolution that is better for the disadvantaged party in the agreement).

Yeah you can still sue, even when you give away your right to sue in a contract. But when you waive your right to sue, the grounds on which you can sue are heavily limited. Many of the more mundane reasons that you might sue for are blocked by you waiving your right to sue and will be dismissed by a judge immediately in most cases. You need an extra, extra good reason to sue for it to not be dismissed immediately.

An example would be, you signed a waiver not to sue, but a whistleblower from the company that you signed that contract with has come forward and said that the company included that waiver precisely because they KNEW that the ramifications of the contract would make people WANT to sue. The waiver not to sue wasn't meant to protect the company from being sued if things just happened to go wrong. The waiver was meant to protect them because they KNEW things we're going to go wrong. Or reasonably should have known.

Second, if you sign a waiver not to sue, and then you file a frivolous lawsuit, the chances that you get sanctioned by the court and have to pay the defendant's court costs are increased. If you don't have that extra, extra good reason, and then you sue anyway after agreeing not to, the judge is going to ask you if you have a habit of filing frivolous lawsuits. And then he's going to help you break that habit by sanctioning you. Given that the defendant asks for those sanctions, which they will.

All of this is moot if you have a good case. If you have a good case, you have a good case. It will go forward. The tldr is that a waiver not to sue makes it much harder to successfully sue a company, and increases the chances that the person suing gets fined if their case is frivolous. But you are right in that I can still walk my butt down to the courthouse and sue anyway, whether I have a good case or a bad case.

Noaani wrote: »

Imagine I have a second account. It isn't connected to my main account in terms of credit card, MAC address, IP address or anything else. If that second account purchases gold and then sends it to my main account, in order for a developer to do anything to that main account, they MUST do that same thing to any other account caught being sent gold that is known to be purchased.

Based on this, imagine getting that second account, buying some gold, and then sending it off to the officers of a rival guild - perhaps disguised as a purchase sent to the wrong player or some such, something most people would just quietly pocket in an MMO.

I see what you're saying here. But I disagree. I don't even think this case would make it to a courtroom, it'd be dismissed. Again, anything is possible in law. It could have happened before, it could happen in the future.

But just supposing it did make it to a courtroom, the game company is going to argue that their determination was that group of players A was indeed cheating and group of players B (officers of the rival guild) was not. And they'll provide evidence and reasoning of why they think that and remind the court that they have sole domain over that decision because it's their game, they're the only ones who can police their game. They'll further remind the court that according to the EULA, the player doesn't own the game, their account, or any virtual item in it, so no property was illegally taken from them, and also as stated in the EULA they can ban any account for any reason. These are the reasons this case won't get to a courtroom in the first place.

Unless the player can prove they're being unfairly targetted, and even then the company still has a case that they can ban for any reason. But the beginnings of a successful case start when the player says that this is happening to them because the game company doesn't like Russians, or people with brown skin. Or not even things like that, just unfair treatment. But now they have to prove it. They have to have the evidence that this is so. They could potentially force some actual evidence of it out of the company through discovery, if it exists.

If it can be proven, or if they at least have compelling evidence of it, great, game on. But you better have some evidence of it on your own. A judge is not going to let you probe a company's records and internal communications through discovery just because you "FEEL" like you're being targetted because of your skin color. A judge will give the benefit of the doubt to the company because he knows the company has no interest in screwing over it's own customer base, and has an inherent financial interest in NOT banning accounts for frivolous or illegal reasons in the first place. The company exists to make money, not lose potential money by banning people for no reason.

Liniker

sorry but after your post saying they should ban people from Teabagging... just can't take anything else serious lol

Okeydoke wrote: »

They have to have the evidence that this is so. They could potentially force some actual evidence of it out of the company through discovery, if it exists.

Having proof that you are being treated differently than others that have committed the exact same "offense" is enough proof to cover this.

That was the point of my comment about sending gold to rival guilds. If the developer does not know that you owned the account that sent players the money, and they picked you out of that bunch and just banned you, then you can turn around and say they are being prejudicial against you.

Now, if you sent yourself 100 gold and everyone else 2 gold, it would be fairly clear what is going on. However, if you sent yourself 100 gold and the leader of that rival guild 100 gold, it is less clear.

A judge will give the benefit of the doubt to the company

Literally only in America.

Liniker wrote: »

sorry but after your post saying they should ban people from Teabagging... just can't take anything else serious lol

I didn't say that. I think you're replying to Asgorath, not sure though.

Noaani wrote: »

Having proof that you are being treated differently than others that have committed the exact same "offense" is enough proof to cover this.

If you can prove that, you have a case. The company will argue that banning cheaters, by it's nature and by the nature of the industry we are in, can be imprecise at times and it's reasonable to assume some mistakes get made. And then they're going to say, it's our game, we have a responsibility to police it, and it's in the EULA we can ban for any reason. The player did not own anything we took away, and the player acknowledged by signing the EULA that this could happen, that they could be banned for any reason. At that point it's just a judgement call by the judge. What side of the bed did he wake up on today. I know how most will decide. But judges are individuals, anything is possible.

A judge will give the benefit of the doubt to the company where it is due. If you have a compelling case, that benefit of the doubt goes away very quickly with a fair judge.

Okeydoke wrote: »

If you can prove that, you have a case.

I mean, yeah, you need proof.

Once that proof is provided though (which can be done), they can argue all of those things all they like, but they still need to finish the day with treating you and the others that received gold in the same manner. All banned or none banned, which ever they prefer.

Chances are though, if you show the developer that you have that proof, they wouldn't be dumb enough to let it go to court, nor even mediation.

The point I am making here is - the harder a developers stance on banning people for any activity is, the more likely players are to use that stance as a weapon against other players.

I have seen multiple cases where players have targeted the accounts of rivals in MMOs, with the situation here being one such case.

Edit; I am curious, imagine being in the game for three years, being a respected member of the server, being high up in your guild, all the character progress that goes along with that - then one day you simply have someone purchase an expensive item from yo), and then find yourself banned for receiving purchased currency, how would you feel?

A hard stance on banning gold buyers puts the ability to cause that in the hands of every player.

Noaani wrote: »

I mean, yeah, you need proof.

Once that proof is provided though (which can be done), they can argue all of those things all they like, but they still need to finish the day with treating you and the others that received gold in the same manner. All banned or none banned, which ever they prefer.

According to the contract, they don't have to be equal with enforcement. Nowhere in the contract does it say they have to ban equally. They can ban for any reason. I'm just talking legally, not morally. On legal grounds, the player loses, even if morally right. But sometimes judges don't rule on legality, they rule on morality. Higher level judges will usually overturn those moral judgements on appeal though. The law has to be followed to the letter, or the law means nothing. You want the law to be moral though, everyone should, and if it's not, you start a movement and change it. Morality morphs and changes over time, it's not static, so the law sometimes has to play catch up.

But that's why this is an interesting subject, which I'm sure we're boring anyone else reading this. But it's interesting because one day this issue is going to come to a head. At some point something is going to be challenged in a way that could potentially force these EULAs to be written differently, that tilts some power back to the user. Or a landmark piece of legislation is going to be passed, a gamer's bill of rights of sorts.

This type of judicial precedent or legislation would go beyond just gaming companies, it has implications for users of all online, live service platforms. Social networks etc. We as the users have very little power. These companies can do virtually whatever they want to us within the bounds of the agreements that we sign. That problem is just going to grow as more and more people become more and more connected to and dependent on these types of platforms.

The good thing for now though is that most gaming companies are fair, if not perfect. As far as I know at least. They actively do not want to ban you or anyone. They want your money. I'm sure there have been rogue customer service agents that aren't fair, GM's that play favorites because they know someone in X guild and hate someone in Y guild etc. You, as a company, obviously have to deal with and remedy those situations for, if nothing else, PR reasons.

This is from the UBISOFT EULA. "The EULA is effective from the earlier of the date You purchase, download or use the Product, until terminated according to its terms. You and UBISOFT (or its licensors) may terminate this EULA, at any time, for any reason."

By terminating the EULA, they terminate your access to the game or service. This is solid as a rock. It's very clear. It's not deceiving. The only way you are able to play the game in the first place is by agreeing to this. Most judges are going to take one look at this and dismiss any case you try to bring.

They can terminate your access because you said the sky is blue. You AGREED that they could do that to you. It's in the print, plain as day, no deception. If you don't agree with that morally (I don't exactly), then you shouldn't agree TO it. And you shouldn't play that game. But what choice do we have at this point, it's in virtually every EULA.

Where the rock begins to get not so solid is if the company is doing something illegal in their banning. Discriminating on race, religion, gender etc. Purposefully banning people so that they have to re buy the game, making the company more money, fraud essentially. Though this is generally moot, because it'd be a PR disaster that would likely lose the company money. Same with discriminating on race, gender etc, wow what a bonehead move that'd be.

Anyway, where I agree with you is that there are always untested legal theories that could work, at any time, on a given judge. But here's examples of what attorneys say when asked this question.

https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/banned-from-an-online-mmo-game-paid-hundreds-of-do-1782593.html

https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-i-sue-a-game-company-for-wrongfully-banning-me-1186663.html

https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/how-can-i-sue-a-gaming-company-for-wrongfully-bann-3422294.html

https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/if-they-do-banned-my-account-can-i-sue-them--2453976.html

Most of those answers are basically just like yeah.....no. A couple of the answers actually do kinda show some support for what I think is your main position. That basically you could get a motivated attorney and raise some hell, and possibly get some kind of favorable outcome.

holy fk this got long

Noaani wrote: »

Edit; I am curious, imagine being in the game for three years, being a respected member of the server, being high up in your guild, all the character progress that goes along with that - then one day you simply have someone purchase an expensive item from yo), and then find yourself banned for receiving purchased currency, how would you feel?

I'd be upset, very upset. On the other hand, weird as it sounds, I'd be happy that there's anti cheating enforcement going on. I'd just be very upset that I was an innocent caught up in it as collateral damage.

The reason why I feel this way is because I think cheating has gotten to epidemic proportions. I think there's a growing portion of gamers, especially the younger generation, that feels like if you aint cheatin you aint even tryin. The FPS genre is a joke right now. There's a couple games that seem to be able to keep cheaters at bay, but it's largely a joke right now across the genre. And mmos have their own problems as well.

I'm ready for the crackdown. It should have never gotten to this point to NEED a crackdown. The problem with crackdowns is that innocents inevitably get caught up in it. But the ship must be righted or these games mean nothing anymore.

But anyway, I'd want an appeal process with the company where I can contest it. And I'd hope they have an open mind to at least the chance that they occasionally wrongfully ban someone. Because they most certainly do.

Not going to go into full detail because I just typed out a freakin giga book. But RMT in Ashes is going to be a big deal if left unchecked. It's not your grandmas RMT in WoW. Almost everything you do in Ashes can be measured by gold per hour. Mayorship can be bought by gold. Siege scrolls. Tens of thousands of people can be directly affected by people cheating RMT'ing for gold. Other things I'm sure too. On top of the open economy where everything can be bought for gold, which is direct player/character power.

If Intrepid isn't interested in dealing with bots and gold selling, maybe they should have made a cozy lil instanced dungeon crawler or something. Or a faction based pvp game where currency isn't king.

What the hell good is it for Ashes to have as one of its core principles NO P2W, when there's tons of P2W anyway? But an even worse version of it. The money paid to win doesn't even go to the company for further and faster development, it goes to sleazy fucks that don't give a shit about you, me, the game, fairness, ANYTHING, but themselves.

Okeydoke wrote: »

By terminating the EULA, they terminate your access to the game or service. This is solid as a rock. It's very clear. It's not deceiving. The only way you are able to play the game in the first place is by agreeing to this. Most judges are going to take one look at this and dismiss any case you try to bring.

For the most part, businesses that maintain a "right of refusal of service" have a legal obligation to enforce this equally. They are usually free to set the terms (not always), but once set, those terms need to be equally enforced.

The EULA establishes a developers right to refusal, but the actual law (all contracts are beholden to all applicable laws) demands equality. As such, there is no need for it to be in a contract - in the same way employment contracts dont repeat all employment law, despite still being beholden to said employment law.

Of the four examples you gave above, there of them were talking about bans for valid reasons, and the last one was talking about the person being an idiot (note to Vaknar; not calling anyone here an idiot) and not unsubscribing, then wanting to get the subscription fee back.

Of the three examples given for banned accounts, there is no reason at all to assume the developer hasnt been equal in their treatment of subscribers.

Okeydoke wrote: »

But RMT in Ashes is going to be a big deal if left unchecked. It's not your grandmas RMT in WoW. Almost everything you do in Ashes can be measured by gold per hour. Mayorship can be bought by gold. Siege scrolls. Tens of thousands of people can be directly affected by people cheating RMT'ing for gold.

Indeed.

It may seem as if I am, but I am kot actually advocating for Intrepid just giving up on dealing with RMT.

I am somewhat firm in my belief that going after gold sellers is going to be by far the best method of dealing with the issue.

With gold sellers, as long as Intrepid are thorough with investigations, they wont have that fallback of unequal enforcing of the ToS. Even more to the point, any avenue that such cpmpa is may have will be expensive. While players may be willing to spend money on getting an accou t back based on principle, a company is only ever going to weight up profit/loss calculations.

All Intrepid need to do to get gold sellers out of the game for good is make it so that it is not profitable to maintain a presence there. As with any company, if a given market isnt proving to be profitable, they will exit that market.

This wont completely rid the game of gold sellers, but it can get rid of the top 95%. There will still be some players that have a spare few hundred gold and decide to try and get $20 for it, but you wont have people buying 100k gold to purchase mayoralty of an economic node.

The best point about it, imo, is that it can be done with literally zero wrongful account bans. People selling gold are by necessity putting themselves out there, advertising their services. People buying gold are not doing this.

Then there is the fact that people selling gold are probably only in the game for that reason. Removing them from the game will have no disruption to the game other than in direct relation to gold buying. Players that buy gold though, they are your friends, your guildmates, your rivals. Banning them will have a negative impact on your game. If instead of banning them we can simply remove the opportunity for them to buy gold, that is a win for literally every valid player.

It also isnt putting a VERY potent weapon in players hands, which in a game like Ashes, hundreds of people will be willing to attempt to use, which is an obvious benefit.

Edit to add; to be clear, there absolutely are reasons where a developer can ban an account and the player has no recourse. In fact, this is true in the vast majority of cases. It just isnt true in all cases - and it is among these fringe cases where players can and will turn any hard stance by a developer in to a weapon.