Square, if youre going to ban Gil buyers, give them a PERMANENT ban

[Riepah]

I'm willing to bet that most people that are buying gil right now would continue to buy it even if the punishment was as severe as the police coming to their house and physically arresting them.

And that's fine. Once they incur that punishment, they're off our backs. Good riddance.

[Akuryu]

82 buyers got a temp ban. And that's just a 2-week period.

Guaranteed a lot more than 82 people bought gil over those 2 weeks. Far more are getting away than are being caught. If only 82 people were buying gil, there wouldn't be enough money to sustain RMT.

Gil sellers don't just have a single account/character on each server, sitting on a mountain of gil, just waiting to be caught. Gil sellers have multiple accounts, and create new characters across those accounts, with gil spread out across them. Sometimes gil gets filtered from 4-5 characters down to 1 single character to make the trade. Sometimes they delete that character right after. They are pretty good at evading detection. This makes determining buyers with certainty that much harder. You'd have to hire full-time staff just to monitor the economy of each server. It's just not realistic.

[Gilraen]

When gilbuyers are banned, potential gilbuyers afraid to buy, gilsellsers will leave, and all the ad spam will disappear like in the JP servers. Customer satisfaction will in fact improve. That's the whole point!

Actually... that's NOT why RMT have all but abandon the Japanese servers. The Japanese players hate RMT even more than we do and, quite frankly, avoided buying gil from the start. Period. They don't care if it could give them a leg-up on other players because that's not how Japanese players think. Most US players, though... do. They look for the easiest way to get ahead and what's easier than just paying someone to give them gil. And Square IS permanently banning sellers and buyers alike, they just don't publicly shame either. When you can't relate to something you often can't see it ever happening to you, so people keep buying gil thinking Square won't catch them.

Will shaming people who buy gil have an impact on buyers... maybe, but it'd also introduce more toxicity into a community that I think has too much as it is. And Square likely thinks the same with how they haven't mentioned even one name in their counts of banned accounts.

[Radkat]

Snip.

You must realise that RMTs lose money with every ad spam account? Those get banned. They can only afford to keep doing it if the profits outweigh losses. There are lots of RMT sites out there, if they don't advertise, no one will even know they exist. They also need to keep up with the competition by updating their prices all the time and informing players about it. All this cost money (in the form of banned accounts), so they only do it if it results in more gilbuying.

Ummm... so if one gilbuyer gets banned, his other 7 static members will quit? Are you serious?

[Radkat]

Snip

Yeah I totally agree with you. JP servers never had an RMT problem because of their community. I'm just pointing out that when there is no demand for RMT like in JP servers, then RMT will be minimal, and ad spam will disappear.

SE does not need to shame anyone! They just need to let everyone know that they are actively targeting gilbuyers with severe punishment. That is enough to deter those who take their characters seriously.

[GenJoe]

Actually, people usually don't repeat an errant behavior after a temporary ban.

Nope.. Temp bans are easy to work around.
Make a new account, costs like $25, when you're buying hundreds of dollars worth of gil, I'm sure that doesn't really matter too much. Then get the temp ban slap, transfer over to main account.

Point is.. Perma ban = money gone instantly
Temp ban = money can be kept

Of course, all of that depends on the circumstances, but considering that SE doesn't use any instaban mechanics (at least none that I heard of) temp ban allows a lot of time to move the money around to its final destination, sacrificing a fresh account is something RMT folks do plenty of anyway.

[Gilraen]

SE does not need to shame anyone! They just need to let everyone know that they are actively targeting gilbuyers with severe punishment. That is enough to deter those who take their characters seriously.

But that's just it, Square does let everyone know that they are banning players and erasing gil. Every few months they put out reports on how many accounts they've banned and how much gil they reclaimed. But that's it, it's just numbers. What's so scary about that? "Oh, it was probably just some stupid kid borrowing mom's Discover card." Could never be someone smart enough to know better. This is how shaming would put a real dent in RMT clients, by showing who exactly is buying gil. Giving a 'face' to the numbers. Though I can garauntee most of the time it wouldn't be 'some stupid kid'.

[Intaki]

SE does not need to prove you bought gil to ban you. By agreeing to the ToS, you agree that your service may be terminated at any time for any reason or no reason.

[Radkat]

But that's just it, Square does let everyone know that they are banning players and erasing gil. Every few months they put out reports on how many accounts they've banned and how much gil they reclaimed. But that's it, it's just numbers. What's so scary about that? "Oh, it was probably just some stupid kid borrowing mom's Discover card." Could never be someone smart enough to know better. This is how shaming would put a real dent in RMT clients, by showing who exactly is buying gil. Giving a 'face' to the numbers. Though I can garauntee most of the time it wouldn't be 'some stupid kid'.

The reports have been very vague. 'Participating in RMT activity''. Does that mean gilbuying? Gilselling? Everyone comes up with their own conclusions. And the numbers are small, and the punishment weak. 82 players total? When you realise how many servers there are, you'll understand why I call it a small number. Temp bans won't scare other gilbuyers. It just tells them that if they get caught, they will still be back after the temp ban. It's the perma-bans that make people stop and think.

I don't think naming and shaming does anything. They can just do a name-change, or change servers.

[Akuryu]

SE does not need to prove you bought gil to ban you. By agreeing to the ToS, you agree that your service may be terminated at any time for any reason or no reason.

While true, we are paying customers. Every time they ban someone, they are cutting off a revenue stream. They aren't going to do that without proof.