Actions Taken Against RMT & Other Illicit Activities 2/12/2015

[Snugglebutt]

In my experience they ban the RMT spammers reasonably often but I do not think a single RMT farming bot or non-RMT player botter has ever been banned from a single report I have made and I have reported hundreds of RMT farming bots, few RMT spam bots and half dozen non-RMT player bots. In the end it is no harder for a RMT spam bot to make a new spam bot than is for an RMT farm bot to make a new farm bot. They need to ban them all alongside the banning of those who buy the gil, I do not think they should just ban one group or another, they should ban them all to have the greatest impact.

[Kosmos992k]

In my experience they ban the RMT spammers reasonably often but I do not think a single RMT farming bot or non-RMT player botter has ever been banned from a single report I have made and I have reported hundreds of RMT farming bots, few RMT spam bots and half dozen non-RMT player bots. In the end it is no harder for a RMT spam bot to make a new spam bot than is for an RMT farm bot to make a new farm bot. They need to ban them all alongside the banning of those who buy the gil, I do not think they should just ban one group or another, they should ban them all to have the greatest impact.

The number of accounts banned for RMT tells is roughly 1/14th of the accounts banned for RMT/illicit activity, so I'd say that this wave would have had to include some of the 'bots used by RMT groups - unless they just banned nearly 7300 accounts for cheating.

[Black91CRX]

Have you seen RMT prices? It's like $750 for 200 million gil...Who does this?!?!?!?! lol

[Kosmos992k]

Have you seen RMT prices? It's like $750 for 200 million gil...Who does this?!?!?!?! lol

Insane people...?

[Noshpan]

I am of the mind of a volcano penalty system. Light punishments for first time offenses that gradually progress to more severe means of punishment with repeat offender, eventually leaving a permanent ban.

Have you seen RMT prices? It's like $750 for 200 million gil...Who does this?!?!?!?! lol

Lazy players who don't give one fig of the consequences.

I've spoken to people whom have admitted to purchasing in-game currencies from RMTs. They've admitted that they simply don't care if it tanks the game's economy or puts account information at risk. They don't care if it provides an unfair advantage against those who do not buy in-game currency. All they care about is their instant gratification of their selfish desires. Their thinking is that "It's not hurting me, so I don't care."

While I don't think this calls for punishment at all, but I personally find those people who, while they don't buy or sell in-game currencies, are apathetic because they don't feel that gil-buying hurts anybody are just as bad as the buyers and sellers.

[Nyalia]

Have you seen RMT prices? It's like $750 for 200 million gil...Who does this?!?!?!?! lol

Prices are server-dependent. I've seen prices that were $5 for 10m before, which is 7.5x what you said. And yeah, people do it, or else we wouldn't be having this conversation :P

[Black91CRX]

Prices are server-dependent. I've seen prices that were $5 for 10m before, which is 7.5x what you said. And yeah, people do it, or else we wouldn't be having this conversation :P

Oh, I didn't look that far into it. $5 for 10 mil? No wonder people do it.

[kyuven]

I'd imagine the temporary bans were given to accounts that may have been compromised by RMTers using rootkits and/or keyloggers.
In other words, people foolish enough to not run anti-virus/anti-malware programs regularly, but not legitimately part of the RMT "system."
This would include accounts that are registered to legitimate addresses using legitimate payment methods that suddenly started accessing from China or Romania or wherever out of the blue.

[Miitan]

*sigh*

People seem to be under the impression that everyone who buys gil gets caught and suspended/banned. Protip: They don't.

There are dozens of ways to disguise the fact that you've bought gil and friends have told me of FC members having the gil deposited into their FC chest and then removing it from there a bit at a time because it gives plausable deniability "I don't know how the gil got there, but we shouldn't complain".

People seem to think that gil sellers will magically disappear and everything will be flowers and rainbows if they just ban those darn gilbuyers, but the only time you'll ever see a reduction in RMT is when a game reaches the end of its life. Heck, IGE didn't pull out of providing FFXI gil until over 10 years after its initial release.

tl;dr Banning gil buyers will have no effect on anything except SEs bottom line and most people don't willingly shoot themselves in the foot.

Also inb4 someone accuses me of buying gil in a game when you get it handed to you just for existing.

[Asierid]

Snip

You are assuming there is a magic number of bans where people suddenly get it and stop buying gil. People will always buy it so long as people offer to sell it, regardless of price.

SE has limited resources when it comes to fighting RMT, they are smart to use the majority of that chasing the source of the gil and eliminating it in chunks rather then attempt to destroy it from bottom up from buyers. Doing it the other way would just result in the farmers dispersing the gil out to more dummy accounts where it becomes hard to tell what is legitimate and what isn't.

Yes, buyers should get in trouble. I also pretty much guarantee the people that got temp banned also didn't buy gil again since it turns into a permanent one after one strike.