The account suspensions and gil reset leave a black mark on this game.

[Aegis]

In the "real world" that you keep talking about, if you put an item for sale in an auction house and it sells, but it was bought with stolen money, the seller would not be locked up for a week. It would be the auction house that has to deal with it, in this case SE as they run the market in effect.

I don't want to drag this analogy out too far, but yes, if you receive stolen or otherwise illegally obtained money in the real world without doing what the authorities consider adequate checks on the provenance on the money you are held criminally responsible under money laundering regulations. possible penalties include custodial sentences, loss of license to operate and unlimited fines.

HSBC was fined hundreds of millions earlier this year by US authorities for exactly this.

[Ignnis]

Selling items to criminals is illegal in the real world. SE did the right thing to enforce the policy in game.

Yeah because I can totally see who's buying my stuff on the market.

[scarebearz]

I don't want to drag this analogy out too far, but yes, if you receive stolen or otherwise illegally obtained money in the real world without doing what the authorities consider adequate checks on the provenance on the money you are held criminally responsible under money laundering regulations. possible penalties include custodial sentences, loss of license to operate and unlimited fines.

HSBC was fined hundreds of millions earlier this year by US authorities for exactly this.

Please re-read my post, I was talking about auction sales.

[Quesse]

Selling items to criminals is illegal in the real world. SE did the right thing to enforce the policy in game.

Lol. You don't know what they did. Because they haven't said anything. You make it sound like your theory is fact. It isn't.

Why did they erase gil earned by quests as well then?

[Susanoh]

Selling items to criminals is illegal in the real world. SE did the right thing to enforce the policy in game.

I covered this in my initial post. That doesn't seem to be what happened. Tons of people who were suspended claim to have had their gil reduced by 99%. There is absolutely no way that 99% of the money earned by the richer player accounts were made by selling to "criminals." What seems to be what happened is that a large number of gil entered the economy through methods unintended by SE, and as a response SE swept up many of the richest players and reset their gil.

Imagine if, in the real world, a large number of counterfeit money was introduced into the economy. As a response, your entire bank account, and the bank accounts of a select group of others, got reset. Maybe most of the money you made actually came before the counterfeit money was introduced. Maybe some of the money you made came from working an honest job and you know for a fact it isn't counterfeit (in game, this is the case for people who made a chunk of their money from quests/leves and still saw their entire wallet go up in smoke). In this situation it wouldn't matter. Money got introduced, money got taken away, everything goes back to normal for everyone accept the people who were cheated out of their savings for a quick fix.

[NZ_Player]

1: gaping holes in security
2: no back up plan or restoration process
3: lack of definitive information
4: feed trivial fluff to distract and entice unaffected portion of the community in the hopes of a silent recovery via digression (this hasn't happened yet but its on the way)

SE should have ensured account safety and placed a recovery system prior to launch, just ask trion.

[Aegis]

Please re-read my post, I was talking about auction sales.

But why? We don't have an auction service in game. We have an escrow service.

Why would you bring auctions into it? ffxiv has never had auctions. We have a market Ward which is an escrow service.

We also have direct trades and mail.

[Azoryl]

I think most of the people who claim they got thier gil through "legit" means are actually lying. There is no way to prove any of it, so they can say whatever they like (both sides actually) and no one can prove anything.

[Azoryl]

I covered this in my initial post. That doesn't seem to be what happened. Tons of people who were suspended claim to have had their gil reduced by 99%. There is absolutely no way that 99% of the money earned by the richer player accounts were made by selling to "criminals." What seems to be what happened is that a large number of gil entered the economy through methods unintended by SE, and as a response SE swept up many of the richest players and reset their gil.

Imagine if, in the real world, a large number of counterfeit money was introduced into the economy. As a response, your entire bank account, and the bank accounts of a select group of others, got reset. Maybe most of the money you made actually came before the counterfeit money was introduced. Maybe some of the money you made came from working an honest job and you know for a fact it isn't counterfeit (in game, this is the case for people who made a chunk of their money from quests/leves and still saw their entire wallet go up in smoke). In this situation it wouldn't matter. Money got introduced, money got taken away, everything goes back to normal for everyone accept the people who were cheated out of their savings for a quick fix.

If you steal 10,000 dollars and go to Vegas and then win 1 million dollars with the 10,000 you stole. It is all illegal money, and the government will take all the winnings. It is all fruit of the poisonous tree...

[ArkhamNative]

I don't want to drag this analogy out too far, but yes, if you receive stolen or otherwise illegally obtained money in the real world without doing what the authorities consider adequate checks on the provenance on the money you are held criminally responsible under money laundering regulations.

Players are already using every available tool to verify every single gil for every single transaction in-game. All 0 of them. It's not even a suggested practice, let alone legally (ToS) required one, for either buyer or seller to investigate the other party.

HSBC was fined hundreds of millions earlier this year by US authorities for exactly this.

And in this analogy, the "bank" would be SE as central authority and operator of the trading establishment where buyer and seller never meet, and all transfers are done electronically before the seller knows the identity of the buyer.