I heard the Special Task Force is going to hitt the bots hard now, that the patch has

Anyone else hear the same?

i mean i did just sacrifice 1000 lala's to Ifrit and prayed for this to happen soooooooo MAYBE?


but really i have not heard

Its true.I t's TRUE.
He was sacrificing us by the bag!
I barely escaped.

In all seriousness however as far as I understand it that's unsubstantiated wishful thinking. The STF is, like, 3 people in Japan. I'm not sure what kind of big push they could even stage to take out bots in any lasting and meaningful way.

They don't announce in advance when they're going to take action. It's probably someone's wishful thinking though certainly it would be welcome if it did happen.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

In all seriousness however as far as I understand it that's unsubstantiated wishful thinking. The STF is, like, 3 people in Japan. I'm not sure what kind of big push they could even stage to take out bots in any lasting and meaningful way.

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The STF is not a completely isolated unit. There are others working with them, especially when it comes to processing account bans.

There's no lasting way to take out bots. They'll always come back because too many people enjoy cheating. It's still meaningful because it shows they are working against the problem and it deters those who are on the edge about cheating. Some players only do it because they think there's no consequence.

The biggest single change to help "push" would be to give players a "report bot" right next to "report RCM" and let regular GM"s actually take action, instead of firing them if they even admit to seeing a bot.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

They don't announce in advance when they're going to take action. It's probably someone's wishful thinking though certainly it would be welcome if it did happen.


The STF is not a completely isolated unit. There are others working with them, especially when it comes to processing account bans.

There's no lasting way to take out bots. They'll always come back because too many people enjoy cheating. It's still meaningful because it shows they are working against the problem and it deters those who are on the edge about cheating. Some players only do it because they think there's no consequence.

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we have no proof one way or the other about them being, or not being an isolated unit. we do have evidence that the GM's cannot escalate suspected bot issues to them. we do have in game proof that there is no DIRECT way to report a bot to the STF without leaving the, knowing the page to go to, and then filling out a report against a bot.

the trend lately seems to indicate that less and less are being deterred by any idea of "consequence" because there seems to be little consequence involved in even blatant cheating and the accounts being banned have likely been hacked and are just throw away accounts for the cheaters. (for example the RMT barkers)

There was a slight spike in the number of bans during the week of the restoration rankings, but it's since dropped back down to the usual disappointing levels.

A token effort to attempt to appease people, I'd assume.

I think the GM's and the STF are failing miserably

I had a turn in at waking sands and noticed some bot activity, I waited there for 20 minutes, taking screen shots, watching them run off through the ground and made a report for 105 unique bot characters...
thats on ONE NA server in ONE area

by whatever metric they use to gauge success, it seems to be rather inadequate.

the number of bots they list as "account banned" isnt even the teeniest tip of the smallest iceberg...

ps. and this is abotu the lowest of teh low hanging fruit they could get. a GM just has to sit there and hit ban... not many brain cells required for that. a two year old could do that job.. or a trained turnip...

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

I think the GM's and the STF are failing miserably

I had a turn in at waking sands and noticed some bot activity, I waited there for 20 minutes, taking screen shots, watching them run off through the ground and made a report for 105 unique bot characters...
thats on ONE NA server in ONE area

by whatever metric they use to gauge success, it seems to be rather inadequate.

the number of bots they list as "account banned" isnt even the teeniest tip of the smallest iceberg...

ps. and this is abotu the lowest of teh low hanging fruit they could get. a GM just has to sit there and hit ban... not many brain cells required for that. a two year old could do that job.. or a trained turnip...

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It's largely due to them focusing on the gibberishly named bots, which is a pointless endeavour as they'll be remade within a minute or two. They need an automated process that is reviewed and constantly updated to handle those types. What the STF should focus on are legit players botting aka your speed hacks, market board botting and etc. Sadly, they almost never bother. That's a big reason botting has become so rampant. No one has even the slightest fear they'll get caught. The only thing SE did crack down on (supposedly) is third party website purchases. I can't imagine why they'd prioritize that. It couldn't have to do with losing money and thus actually hurting them. Nah...

Like Kage said. The whole process is a token effort at this point. It'll keep getting worse until they're finally forced to do something to save face.

at this point, I think the ONLY market they are doing anything is is the Japanese market. The NA and EU markets they seem to have given in to defeat if they ever even tried.

I agree, the gibberish, remade in a minute bots should be an easy and automated fix. they teleport, go through the ground and objects. you would THINK that something in the code would be flagged for such blatant cheating. I dont know of ANY legit players that "accidentally" do that to be caught up in. so the excuse of "inconveniencing real people" doesnt cut it with that activity.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

I think the GM's and the STF are failing miserably
....

ps. and this is abotu the lowest of teh low hanging fruit they could get. a GM just has to sit there and hit ban... not many brain cells required for that. a two year old could do that job.. or a trained turnip...

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GM's arn't allowed. If they do that, they get fired. They arn't even allowed to be in the same ROOM as a place where a bot has been reported to them. It's litterally against the rules. Not figurative. Actual rules against it.

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Originally Posted by ICountFrom0

GM's arn't allowed. If they do that, they get fired. They arn't even allowed to be in the same ROOM as a place where a bot has been reported to them. It's litterally against the rules. Not figurative. Actual rules against it.

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thats hilarious... sad.. but hilarious

Yup. When the special task force got made, GM's got handcuffed. Rules have only become WORSE for them over the years.

all it seems to have accomplished then is made it even EASIER to run bots undetected by anyone/anything that matters

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Originally Posted by ICountFrom0

Yup. When the special task force got made, GM's got handcuffed. Rules have only become WORSE for them over the years.

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Can you sauce me on this?
I'd love to read about GM rules. That sounds fascinating.

Probably get them in trouble if I did, sorry.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Can you sauce me on this?
I'd love to read about GM rules. That sounds fascinating.

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I’m afraid to burst the bubble but he wasn’t being serious.
There are rules and restrictions on what a normal GM can and cannot do, but to what extent is generally mostly kept unknown. The more knowledgeable we are about their inner workings the easier it is to get around them.

Ah, that's too bad.
Thanks Canadane.

I hate to burst your bubble, but the cheaters already ARE getting around them.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

I’m afraid to burst the bubble but he wasn’t being serious.
There are rules and restrictions on what a normal GM can and cannot do, but to what extent is generally mostly kept unknown. The more knowledgeable we are about their inner workings the easier it is to get around them.

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I actually was being serious. GM's are not allowed to handle the bot stuff at all, they will get fired if they try.

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Originally Posted by ICountFrom0

I actually was being serious. GM's are not allowed to handle the bot stuff at all, they will get fired if they try.

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Right, bot investigations are outside of their scope of responsibility. STF handles it. In any job, you're generally told not to do things that aren't part of your job responsibility unless requested by a manager who has the authority to ask you to do it. If you do something without authorization you can be terminated.

Basically, people need to stop saying the GMs aren't doing their job because bots exist. SE decides whether or not the GMs are doing their job correctly. If you feel SE should be doing more as a company to tackle the bot situation, that's a fair opinion to state.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Right, bot investigations are outside of their scope of responsibility. STF handles it. In any job, you're generally told not to do things that aren't part of your job responsibility unless requested by a manager who has the authority to ask you to do it. If you do something without authorization you can be terminated.

Basically, people need to stop saying the GMs aren't doing their job because bots exist. SE decides whether or not the GMs are doing their job correctly. If you feel SE should be doing more as a company to tackle the bot situation, that's a fair opinion to state.

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My guess to the root of the problem - and it's a guess - is that those that sold on the market board, the pros that kept within the rules, earned too much. I easily made 1-2 million a day, and I didn't even work hard for it. Those that really worked hard could easily make 5 million a day. SE saw this and found it to be unacceptable, so they decided to let the bots run free, to keep the prices down. This is a short term solution, as it will have unwanted consequences, something SE probably will find out, if they haven't already. In addition, if I understand it correctly, this isn't much of a problem on the Japanese servers, because the Japanese players are much more willing to follow rules than us westerners, who basically, in most cases, will disregard any rule, if we can get away with it, so SE don't really care much about it. To explain this means I have to get into the word 外人 (gaijin), something I'm hesitant to do, as it's a very sensitive subject for the Japanese. ;)

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Originally Posted by Angelhearth

My guess to the root of the problem - and it's a guess - is that those that sold on the market board, the pros that kept within the rules, earned too much. I easily made 1-2 million a day, and I didn't even work hard for it. Those that really worked hard could easily make 5 million a day. SE saw this and found it to be unacceptable, so they decided to let the bots run free, to keep the prices down. This is a short term solution, as it will have unwanted consequences, something SE probably will find out, if they haven't already. In addition, if I understand it correctly, this isn't much of a problem on the Japanese servers, because the Japanese players are much more willing to follow rules than us westerners, who basically, in most cases, will disregard any rule, if we can get away with it, so SE don't really care much about it. To explain this means I have to get into the word 外人 (gaijin), something I'm hesitant to do, as it's a very sensitive subject for the Japanese. ;)

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SE still cares. It's just very hard to get a handle on the RMT/bot problem when players are so insistent on cheating.

Not that it's going to make anyone here feel better, but there's a severe botting problem in Classic WoW right now as well - but only on the NA servers. WoW players have the advantage of add-ons and websites that track AH data over time so you can see what's going on. Blizzard had a ban wave that hit 74k accounts back in June that caused the NA markets to adjust for about 2 weeks. Then the bots reappeared and prices started crashing as supply started skyrocketing again. Blizzard did change how some of the most heavily hit nodes spawned but that evidently just made a small difference until the bots adjusted again.

If Blizzard, with their aggressive and fairly well publicized anti-bot efforts, is struggling in their home market, is it any wonder that SE might be struggling with bots in the same market?

Ultimately, if you want to kill RMT and botting then you need to get rid of the players who take advantage of those things. As long as there are buyers, there will be sellers. If there were no buyers, the sellers wouldn't be able to stay in business.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

SE still cares. It's just very hard to get a handle on the RMT/bot problem when players are so insistent on cheating.

Not that it's going to make anyone here feel better, but there's a severe botting problem in Classic WoW right now as well - but only on the NA servers. WoW players have the advantage of add-ons and websites that track AH data over time so you can see what's going on. Blizzard had a ban wave that hit 74k accounts back in June that caused the NA markets to adjust for about 2 weeks. Then the bots reappeared and prices started crashing as supply started skyrocketing again. Blizzard did change how some of the most heavily hit nodes spawned but that evidently just made a small difference until the bots adjusted again.

If Blizzard, with their aggressive and fairly well publicized anti-bot efforts, is struggling in their home market, is it any wonder that SE might be struggling with bots in the same market?

Ultimately, if you want to kill RMT and botting then you need to get rid of the players who take advantage of those things. As long as there are buyers, there will be sellers. If there were no buyers, the sellers wouldn't be able to stay in business.

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There is a much easier way to get ridd of the market bots, give everyone the same opportunities as the market bots. As to the harvesting bots, you need to put in place programs that will detect repetitiveness, make all node spawns totally random, get the program to ask the suspected bot a question and if it isn't answered within a few seconds, ban the account, the whole damned account, not the character. You could also start with banning the gil-buyers, not only the sellers. For the sellers it's a minor inconvenience, for the buyers it's their life. And lastly, you can start selling gil directly to the players, or change the way housing works, and make it into a quest to get a house.

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Originally Posted by Angelhearth

There is a much easier way to get ridd of the market bots, give everyone the same opportunities as the market bots. As to the harvesting bots, you need to put in place programs that will detect repetitiveness, make all node spawns totally random, get the program to ask the suspected bot a question and if it isn't answered within a few seconds, ban the account, the whole damned account, not the character. You could also start with banning the gil-buyers, not only the sellers. For the sellers it's a minor inconvenience, for the buyers it's their life. And lastly, you can start selling gil directly to the players, or change the way housing works, and make it into a quest to get a house.

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Not sure about banning on one fail, I think the gathering bots could pretty easily be taken out by different random effects coming up that you had to use an ability to mitigate or you lose the node. Nothing crazy but injecting randomness in would massively deter the bots but players wouldn't really be effected. Give the benefit of additional gather or gives a bonus to GP or something by successfully hitting it but missing it just makes you lose the node. Or similar to your idea just have something that every X number of nodes theres a stacking percentage to bring up said question, failing the question gives a flag similar to missing a group queue. Once you accrue like 5 failures you are locked out of gathering for like 12-24 hours. It wouldn't ban but it would kill any ROI for the bots since that lockout would make them less effective at gathering than a player. Making the percentage stack like 0.1% each gather after x number and percentage is reset after a successful answer, but not on a failure, so queries more on people failing them or something would help keep it from coming up on actual players doing a grind.

An insta-ban if someone "doesnt answer in seconds" Then hope that you never have to go for toilet :)

Some things that could work:
- Set a limit on logins per day (High enough so nobody with a lot of disconnects or RP chars would be affected)
- Add a cooldown on price adjustments - this could also make the entire marketboard more interesting.
- Add a secret achievement for a specific amounts of time or items gathered per day and use this as internal alert.
- Add more superrare materials that you only get in limited quantities from DoW / DoM dutys.

Oh and of course: If the marketboard doesnt use an Encryption: Add Encryption.

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Originally Posted by Charlotte_Wells

An insta-ban if someone "doesnt answer in seconds" Then hope that you never have to go for toilet :)

Some things that could work:
- Set a limit on logins per day (High enough so nobody with a lot of disconnects or RP chars would be affected)
- Add a cooldown on price adjustments - this could also make the entire marketboard more interesting.
- Add a secret achievement for a specific amounts of time or items gathered per day and use this as internal alert.
- Add more superrare materials that you only get in limited quantities from DoW / DoM dutys.

Oh and of course: If the marketboard doesnt use an Encryption: Add Encryption.

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I do like the idea of super rare limited daily mats for something. Seems like that could make for competitive items (kinda like submersible items and the like)

And I'm on the same agreement on the 'ban immediately', cooldown on price adjustments I like too, if you had to wait like 10 seconds to update another price it would certainly throw off automated things and not really bother normal people
The time thing could be interesting with the acheivements and flags the acct in some fashion though warning the bots to chill seems meh on that.
Limit on logins per day could you elaborate on?

For those limited mats:
It would also give others the chance to get some gil too and could help to keep prices up for a bit longer and to avoid massproduction. Like with those expensive beast-tribe mats back in HW.

I think "achievements" that get unlocked when someone does an insane amount of specific things in a given time would be a great way to get an bot alert. And would be easy to implement. This would work for all computer systems and as it is an achievement it's not against privacy.

About the limited amount of logins: I assume an account with MB Bot is constantly rotating trough all 8 Alts. A limited amount of logins could prevent them from doing that.

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Originally Posted by NamidaTekika

Not sure about banning on one fail, I think the gathering bots could pretty easily be taken out by different random effects coming up that you had to use an ability to mitigate or you lose the node. Nothing crazy but injecting randomness in would massively deter the bots but players wouldn't really be effected. Give the benefit of additional gather or gives a bonus to GP or something by successfully hitting it but missing it just makes you lose the node. Or similar to your idea just have something that every X number of nodes theres a stacking percentage to bring up said question, failing the question gives a flag similar to missing a group queue. Once you accrue like 5 failures you are locked out of gathering for like 12-24 hours. It wouldn't ban but it would kill any ROI for the bots since that lockout would make them less effective at gathering than a player. Making the percentage stack like 0.1% each gather after x number and percentage is reset after a successful answer, but not on a failure, so queries more on people failing them or something would help keep it from coming up on actual players doing a grind.

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Randomness isn't going to deter a bot. There will be failures at first but once the bot programmers know the list of conditions, they can program the bots to react faster than a player could (though they could also add in a delay to simulate player reaction time to a small degree). The randomness would likely end up deterring players far more than the bots simply because it gets annoying and makes the content less fun to do. That's why so many players decide to turn to using bots in the first place - they find the requirements of the content too annoying to do themselves.

What is generated through programming code can be identified and countered through programming code. That's the ongoing battle between game developers and bot programmers.

You all talk like this is new problem that only FFXIV deals with. Botting has been around since the dawn when the very first mmo launched. Make virtual money, in a virtual world and profit from it. Be it in game or outside the game. If the mmo brands haven't solve the problem after all this time, don't expect it will get better any time soon. If they had a solid solution, don't you think they would have solved it long before now?

It will never entirely go away. A bigger, better bot is always there to take it's place.

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Originally Posted by Arazehl

You all talk like this is new problem that only FFXIV deals with. Botting has been around since the dawn when the very first mmo launched. Make virtual money, in a virtual world and profit from it. Be it in game or outside the game. If the mmo brands haven't solve the problem after all this time, don't expect it will get better any time soon. If they had a solid solution, don't you think they would have solved it long before now?

It will never entirely go away. A bigger, better bot is always there to take it's place.

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The blatant levels I see the bots around the market and gathering is kinda like a mockery though. How long they are allowed to run and the like is just silly. I played wow for years and ya I ran into some bots but those were the exception more than how commonplace and open they appear to be in this game. There isn't a solid solution but they could do LEAPS AND BOUNDS more to even crush ones that are active for months and months on end and garnering multiple reports.

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Originally Posted by NamidaTekika

The blatant levels I see the bots around the market and gathering is kinda like a mockery though. How long they are allowed to run and the like is just silly. I played wow for years and ya I ran into some bots but those were the exception more than how commonplace and open they appear to be in this game. There isn't a solid solution but they could do LEAPS AND BOUNDS more to even crush ones that are active for months and months on end and garnering multiple reports.

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Bots in general have been all over the place in WoW. You weren't paying attention if you rarely saw them.

As for the situation with market bots, who needed a market bot in WoW when you were free to download and use add-ons like TSM and Auctioneer that allowed you to operate at near bot efficiency if you took the time to configure them? You might lose the AH deposit if you cancel and relist but those were usually insignificant in value because they were based on sell to vendor value instead of listing price. I knew a few players who spent almost all their time in the AH canceling and relisting their auctions. Making gold was their primary game play.

I've mentioned it before but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a FFXIV version of TSM out there. We know marketboard scanning tools exist because they've fed information to the various marketboard websites that have appeared from time to time and creating a UI that would make it easier to cancel and relist items based on scanning results shouldn't be that difficult. Such a thing would allow a player to change their prices with almost bot like efficiency. Still against the ToS but not actual botting.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Bots in general have been all over the place in WoW. You weren't paying attention if you rarely saw them.

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Yes, a long time ago, but Blizzard took some serious action and they never really got back to the level where they were a problem. It might also have had something to do with the fact that Blizzard started selling gold (don't remember the name of the item) so the gold sellers didn't earn much.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

As for the situation with market bots, who needed a market bot in WoW when you were free to download and use add-ons like TSM and Auctioneer that allowed you to operate at near bot efficiency if you took the time to configure them? You might lose the AH deposit if you cancel and relist but those were usually insignificant in value because they were based on sell to vendor value instead of listing price. I knew a few players who spent almost all their time in the AH canceling and relisting their auctions. Making gold was their primary game play.

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And if SE had allowed add-opns like that (as you suggest), or better yet, implemented them in the game, there wouldn't be any problems with bots on the market anymore.

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Originally Posted by Angelhearth

Yes, a long time ago, but Blizzard took some serious action and they never really got back to the level where they were a problem. It might also have had something to do with the fact that Blizzard started selling gold (don't remember the name of the item) so the gold sellers didn't earn much.

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Even with the WoW token, the bots were still there.

Can't speak for WoD when the WoW token was added. Let's face, everyone was sitting in their garrison. Who was out there able to see the bots in action? Could be even the bots were doing all their farming in the garrisons.

Legion - a constant string of bots going around, especially in Suramar. Ore and herb prices crashed hard, leather was somewhat better but then leather doesn't have the high demand the other have. Thank goodness they had changed how nodes work so you still had 15 seconds to gather from a node after a first character used it. Otherwise, the bots would have owned that expansion.

BfA - didn't play. If there's a lack of bots in BfA, it's probably because of two things - the player population took a huge hit (rumor was it dropped from about 6 million at start to under 2 million by year's end) and the launch of Classic WoW - which has a major infestation of bots that Blizzard is struggling with right now. Bot operators go where the buyers are and the buyers in current WoW were disappearing rapidly.

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Originally Posted by Angelhearth

And if SE had allowed add-opns like that (as you suggest), or better yet, implemented them in the game, there wouldn't be any problems with bots on the market anymore.

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If SE allowed add-ons or implemented similar tools as part of the game, the market bots might be gone but we'd still have the undercutting. We'd still end up with the complaints.

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Originally Posted by Arazehl

It will never entirely go away. A bigger, better bot is always there to take it's place.

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It will never go away, but it is in the worst state here than it's ever been in. Nearly all the big sellers of crafted items now can be linked to bot fcs (6-9 members comprising of bank alts and 1 maxed DoH/L with nothing but msq done and impossibly high FC activity rating). They've been there months without bans, selling tens of thousands items as cheap as 10% of the next cheapest market price. This only really started seriously late Stormblood, I imagine it's linked to how accessible crafting and exp boosts made setting up bots worthwhile, but that's speculation.

"WoW is bad too" or "MMO's always have bots" doesn't mean it's perfectly fine and a good thing if the game becomes completely overrun with them. I appreciate there isn't a simple fix and SE do care about it but it's still fact there's a serious issue with botting now. I hope they can at least do something to reduce the impact.

Thats the thing. Botting and undercutting has really always been. But having both combined and single chars destroy an entire economy / gamemode with auto undercutting is another dimension and needs to stop.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Even with the WoW token, the bots were still there.

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I played WoW from beta until a year ago, with a couple of years away in between, and I never, ever saw anything comparable to what I see here, in FFXIV, never.

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Originally Posted by Angelhearth

I played WoW from beta until a year ago, with a couple of years away in between, and I never, ever saw anything comparable to what I see here, in FFXIV, never.

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As I've pointed out before, bots are running wild in Classic WoW right now - but only on the NA realms. EU realms seem to be relatively free of them. It could be that retail WoW has been in a similar position all along since players are segregated by regional license. Buy a license in NA and you can only play on the NA realms. Buy a license in EU and you can only play on the EU realms. If you want to play on overseas servers, you've got to buy the other license from an overseas dealer and pay the additional currency transaction fees.

If you were playing on the EU realms while I was playing on the NA realms, it would explain the difference in our experiences.

With FFXIV, it doesn't matter which license you buy. You get your choice of worlds in any data center and there are many NA players (especially those on the East Coast) who prefer the EU worlds because they feel their connection to the servers there is better than it is to the servers on the West Coast or because their daily schedules line up with EU prime time better.

If buying from RMT or running a bot is primarily a NA cultural thing (wouldn't surprise me with the "win at any cost" attitude so common among many here), NA players could be increasing RMT demand on the EU worlds and so you're seeing a lot more bots there than you did in WoW where you'd have very few NA players on the EU worlds.

Regardless, it's still a problem and always will be one as long as there players who would rather cheat than play the game as intended. Remove the cheaters and there's no reason for RMT or bots to exist.

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Originally Posted by Angelhearth

My guess to the root of the problem - and it's a guess - is that those that sold on the market board, the pros that kept within the rules, earned too much. I easily made 1-2 million a day, and I didn't even work hard for it. Those that really worked hard could easily make 5 million a day. SE saw this and found it to be unacceptable, so they decided to let the bots run free, to keep the prices down. This is a short term solution, as it will have unwanted consequences, something SE probably will find out, if they haven't already. In addition, if I understand it correctly, this isn't much of a problem on the Japanese servers, because the Japanese players are much more willing to follow rules than us westerners, who basically, in most cases, will disregard any rule, if we can get away with it, so SE don't really care much about it. To explain this means I have to get into the word 外人 (gaijin), something I'm hesitant to do, as it's a very sensitive subject for the Japanese. ;)

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That's like saying if a professional in the real world spent the time to learn a trade, found a way to market their skills/product and got rich, does not actually deserve to be earning that much. If I spent the time to grind for new gear, learning where all the mats are, how to acquire them, and synth an item efficiently, shouldn't I be allowed to earn more gil for my time?

Also, I doubt letting bots run free is SE solution to lowering MB prices, but just a current lack of resources in terms of improving/expanding their STF team. For a game with millions of players paying monthly subscriptions and purchasing optional items, they could hire a few more employees to address the issue.

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Originally Posted by Voidle

That's like saying if a professional in the real world spent the time to learn a trade, found a way to market their skills/product and got rich, does not actually deserve to be earning that much. If I spent the time to grind for new gear, learning where all the mats are, how to acquire them, and synth an item efficiently, shouldn't I be allowed to earn more gil for my time?

Also, I doubt letting bots run free is SE solution to lowering MB prices, but just a current lack of resources in terms of improving/expanding their STF team. For a game with millions of players paying monthly subscriptions and purchasing optional items, they could hire a few more employees to address the issue.

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I wonder, would you find it strange if I thought you were one of those that were opposed to SE banning the people behind the bots?