SE's 3 Member Special Task Force at Work

[Mature]

I'm still wondering, from where Does it say they are the ones in charge of dealing with RMT?

[tocsin]

I'm still wondering, from where Does it say they are the ones in charge of dealing with RMT?

Yes, their website says it.

I, Personally, have a heck of a lot of respect for these 3 individuals. 3 people finding, investigating, and banning over 10,000 accounts per week? That's pretty impressive, and we, as players, don't make their job any easier.

[LandricFrey]

Yes, their website says it.

I, Personally, have a heck of a lot of respect for these 3 individuals. 3 people finding, investigating, and banning over 10,000 accounts per week? That's pretty impressive, and we, as players, don't make their job any easier.

Yes it is impressive that only three people do so much. It's also sad that SE puts such a huge problem in the hands of just three people. With the game as big as it is now, SE should make the investment of hiring more people for their Special Task Force. Obviously three isn't enough.

The main point of this thread is to raise awareness of this issue, the RMT problem in general, and to have some fun at the same time.

[LandricFrey]

The Special Task Force bravely faces the army of RMT.

[Riepah]

That's pretty impressive, and we, as players, don't make their job any easier.

Yeah, right, because us reporting bots is throwing such a wrench into their machinations! We should just all be silent and pretend RMT doesn't exist while the Task Force works on a solution.

The only thing that's impressive here is that SE thinks 3 people are enough for this job.

[Laraul]

Yes, their website says it.

I, Personally, have a heck of a lot of respect for these 3 individuals. 3 people finding, investigating, and banning over 10,000 accounts per week? That's pretty impressive, and we, as players, don't make their job any easier.

There's a part in the credits that list "Special Task Force" followed by three names.


I speculate that only one member is active at any given time, with each having there own eight hour shift. In any case it's not enough and they need to do more. RMT Spam is making a mockery of the game.

[KisaiTenshi]

There's a part in the credits that list "Special Task Force" followed by three names.


I speculate that only one member is active at any given time, with each having there own eight hour shift. In any case it's not enough and they need to do more. RMT Spam is making a mockery of the game.

I can probably answer this.

When you send a report, it doesn't land in the STF's inbox, it lands in a processing queue where GM's deal with the easy-to-ban RMT's, and the STF collages reports against the same player to open a case and collect evidence. That evidence is then used against future RMT's/cheats when they create/steal new accounts.

So they're probably not the ones that are banning the RMT spammers, they're the ones that are following the money.

At *placeIwillNotName*, there was a separate "bad people" and "bad items" department. I worked under the latter. You'd see the same stuff posted by the same chinese sellers, over and over and over and over, and they thought they were being clever. But I wrote a script that compared every listing they made character by character and that made the job so much easier. We weren't allowed to outright ban people unless they were selling counterfeits "again", everyone would claim innocent, and really, none of them are ever innocent.

But here's the thing you never realize. When I worked there, the department removes nearly 100% of the bad/counterfeit/fraudulent items before they even hit the public part of the site. The place I worked for invisibly delays items based on *not sharing* criteria so that almost none of it is ever able to hit the public part of the site. Despite brand names still sue the company but won't tell us how to ID anything, with good reason, they don't want to tell us how they know something is fake, so the counterfeiters can't "fix it" and try again.

So from SE's perspective, 3 people are probably enough, because one report might contain a dozen names, or a dozen reports might contain the same name. I'm sure they would hire more people if they didn't have a handle on the RMT traders. The spammers however are unlikely going to the STF, and are likely being banned by semi-automated tools that detect things like blacklisting and messaging rate.

[tocsin]

.

Mwahahaha, I love seeing people using the image I originally cropped and uploaded (and added the background discoloration) in other threads. it really shows that one person can make a difference!

snip.

Except, that the automated response given by GM's, when RMT is reported, is that the in-game staff does not handle RMT reports, and gives a direct web link to the STF submission form.

[KisaiTenshi]

Except, that the automated response given by GM's, when RMT is reported, is that the in-game staff does not handle RMT reports, and gives a direct web link to the STF submission form.

I said RMT spam. I sure hope you've been using the "report cheating" form in the game for the actual stuff you want sent to the STF. You know... after someone translates it. It's more likely that there's a dedicated NA/EU STF that just isn't listed in the credits.

At any rate, I think it would be absurd for them to be doing all this manually all this time, they probably had tools written back after FFXI was released to combat RMT, and revised them ever since and applied them to FFXIV v1.0 and v2.0 as they went. Trust me. When I worked at *above* , everyone has their own personal scripts for dealing with the stuff they see repeatedly.

[Laraul]

At any rate, I think it would be absurd for them to be doing all this manually all this time, they probably had tools written back after FFXI was released to combat RMT, and revised them ever since and applied them to FFXIV v1.0 and v2.0 as they went. Trust me. When I worked at *above* , everyone has their own personal scripts for dealing with the stuff they see repeatedly.

You assume that they have tools or have the knowledge/resources to create their own. This does not appear to be the case. For example... take a look at this listing of characters and see if you can spot the spammers from the legit accounts. It should be fairly easy to spot a pattern right away. If they had tools for this they could spot these before they start...