We anticipate that even with this update, third parties will continue

[Jojoya]

You're thinking wrong. There were other better solutions they could have taken. But they took this because it's easy.

Businesses generally aren't going to opt for the easy solution among multiple available choices when that solution ends up losing them a significant amount of money during the biggest money making part of the year for anyone selling products.

If they're opting for the easy solution, it's being done as a stop gap measure to get losses under control while they are working on a better solution that will allow them to go back to selling what customers want to be buying.

It's really entertaining to watch as segments of this community swivel from "SE is just a money hungry company out to rip us off via mogstation transactions" to "how dare SE not allow us to give them money to buy items from the mogstation" as if SE is on a constant mission to victimize everyone.

SE is a for-profit company. They want to make money. Part of making money is selling the things people want to buy. Part of making money is not spending money unnecessarily. Part of making money is keeping your business partners willing to do business with you. The account compromise situation, which was no fault of SE's, has caused SE to lose a large amount of money and made some of their essential business partners very unhappy. They're in damage control mode.

And it's happening because others have acted irresponsibly, whether it's the player who thinks the too good to be true deal is legitimate or unrelated companies who couldn't be bothered to make certain their databases were sufficiently secured.

There's nothing stopping any of you from purchasing gifts for your FFXIV friends off the cash shop. All that must change is what you choose to gift. It doesn't stop streamers, other content creators, clubs or FCs from holding giveaways. Again, it's just choose different items and wait the extra 3 days for the code to get purchased and sent.

Don't like the gifting restrictions? Thank the cheaters who'd rather give their money to criminals instead of giving it to those who actually make the game.

[Tigerlilley]

...aand your solution is...?

Keep the restrictions to friend list and this new tracking system they have now. There's no reason to remove items from being gifted.

If they had better systems, ideally the solution would also prevent you from gifting a mount/minion your friend already has but I highly doubt their backend could handle something like that.

Or actually, maybe they could, you certainly can't buy or roll for exclusive mounts/minions/music in game if you already have it. Even the scrip mastercrafter and gathering books tell you if you've already purchased them, which was an excellent QOL.

Just stating "well there are people who are abusing the system so now NONE of you can use it" is short sighted and ridiculous. Literally punishing the people who are, and want to, support them the most.

[Iscah]

There's nothing stopping any of you from purchasing gifts for your FFXIV friends off the cash shop. All that must change is what you choose to gift. It doesn't stop streamers, other content creators, clubs or FCs from holding giveaways. Again, it's just choose different items and wait the extra 3 days for the code to get purchased and sent.

They could also choose to gift non-cash-shop items, in which case prizes could still be given on the night.

[VelKallor]

Keep the restrictions to friend list and this new tracking system they have now. There's no reason to remove items from being gifted.

For ages you lot have been arguing for SE to do something about RMT. Okay, thats good, so far, so hoopy.

Then they do something.

And you still complain.

[TMW001]

Excuse me, maybe I wanted to gift the Lotus mount to my best friend?

So... now I can't?
I gifted her the fat cat too, what is this?

The friend thing is fine but why also restrict mounts?

That's a pity was planning to gift two friends a mount for when they finally join the game this just puts a damper on the surprise I was planning.

[VelKallor]

The friend thing is fine but why also restrict mounts?

The codes can be taken and sold for real money.

[rainichan]

There is a post on twitter by Lady Xhiel White, or @Miss_Xhiel . She made a post regarding why such actions were taken, and its related back with SE giving out the update for everyone to update their passwords due to breaches. Its EXACTLY about that, and the fact that doing ton of purchases revokes will get the companies processing said transactions to ban the company for having these problems.


I honestly recommend anyone who is curious to look it up and read it. (Its 15 tweets.) Its all legal stuff; and I think it'll help with some confusion. I don't like how things are happening, but it is what it is.

https://twitter.com/Miss_Xhiel/statu...57930184790021 some lite reading

Was coming in here to link this. I don't doubt they aren't working on bringing back the other stuff to be gifted, but for now this is just gonna have to be it. It sucks, but there's usually a huge uptick in this sort of RMT practice around the holidays. Just going on ebay there's plenty of "I'll power level you " and "buy my gil" posts; there used to be minion codes as well from the Mogstation... there's a distinct lack of them now. Once it's down to a manageable level (read: scaring the RMT buyers and any sellers from doing it) and they get the rest of everything coded in, we'll probably see a change.

It's getting cold out even in AZ so we got some fires going.

Yo anyway does anyone want a Smore?

As long as it isn't the one from Great British Bake Off a week or so ago, heck yeah I'll take one.

Something that I think should be noted is that a lot of people (from the thread title onwards) seem to think SE is saying it won't stop the scammers, but the thread title misses a key part of the quote.

The article does not say that they anticipate scammers will continue without interruption, but will "continue their attempts to sell fraudulently obtained items" (emphasis mine).

Yep, this as well. It's not "well it won't work but we're doing it anyway lol" it's "most will get scared off from doing extra illegal things, but there's always going to be the really aggressive RMT sellers who will inevitably find a way around this, but it'll take some time for that to happen" much like any botting that happens - while it's frustrating that a chunk of botters go unpunished, there's plenty who do and they use programs to do it. Those get reworked once they figure out how SE broke their last program, but it takes some time for it to happen before they're back in business and we're back to square (heh) one in the devs figuring out how the program works to shut it down again.

[VelKallor]

In case Twitter has a hiccup, here it is in total ( profanity edited out ) - two parts incoming.

A huge data breach elsewhere caused a drastic increase in hijacked accounts. This logically means there's been a drastic increase in charge backs. How does that follow? Why does it matter?
Come with me on a magical journey and learn about Payment Processors. There are shady sites where one can purchase "discounted" Mogstation items. You shouldn't use these for many reasons, but two main ones are:

First, that item is getting revoked. Duh. Second, they use compromised accounts to purchase the item codes. The second is the big one. Because the people who have the compromised accounts certainly aren't using their money to buy those codes to pass along. Otherwise they'd be losing money. Instead, they use a saved payment options on the account.

Do ya see where this is going now?

Bad actors purchased gift codes with stolen credit cards, they pss the codes alone for a tidy little profit as "discounted" and then inevitably, the card holder notices. They initiate a rightful charge back.Payment processors DO NOT like charge backs. Especially Fraud. ( ya got that right - Vel ) They're inevitable, so they tolerate *some* charge backs.

But SE just had a HUGE surge in compromised accounts. Which means SE just had HUGE surge in charge backs. Ask anyone who's dealt with a payment processor. They send you a letter from their legal department for that. Because it's a breach of contract. And they will cease to do business with you. "But why can't SE just change payment processors?"

Hahaha... hohoho... hehehe... get ready to be disillusioned kids.

There are basically 3 payment processors. In the world. Anyone else is basically working as a middle man on their behalf. SE is a large enough company to be working with One Of The Big Three directly. Probably Visa? They'd never tell. They make you sign an NDA that would break your foot if you dropped it. If you get Black listed by ANY of these 3, you're blacklisted by them ALL. This doesn't hold true for smaller payment processors working through them because you're not considered enough of a problem at that level.

But if one of the big 3 don't want you, none of them do.

( Edit: Ive been in that industry, in banking. They don t mess around and you dont want to get on their bad side. Ever - Vel. )

[VelKallor]

Part two: edited for profanity.

Guess what happens if you can't work with any payment processors? That's right... you literally cannot even spend your god damn money, much less get paid at all. So if your payment processor says "Do this" you DO IT. You may be familiar with this sort of nonsense from when OF was going to cease paying the people who made their name for them. Or when PH did The Great Purge... and still can't work with any payment processor despite gutting their site. Looking at what's affected, the speculation is that the most attractive items to steal were removed from gifting. Issue resolved so far as charge backs go.

No one is buying a discounted code for the $3 clothing item. They would for that $40 mount tho, but they can't.

( Edit: Australia's MAIN HEALTHCARE PROVIDOR Medicare was just hacked and breached. SOMEONE is grabbing the tiger by the..ahem...yeah wont finish that sentence - Vel )

Basic Summary of the speculation: People stole so hard the people who do money handling for SE that those people who do money handling said "You need to fix this or you won't get money ever again."

So they did. Or: THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS. Are workarounds going to be found? Of course they are.

But they're going to be much more complicated and all around bad in such a way as to immediately and drastically reduce charge backs *against SE* specifically down to a minimal amount. It's likely that people will resolve to basically use gift cards or some other way for giveaways because that's the only way to gift stuff on the mogstation worth gifting anymore. But that won't be a charge back against SE, now will it?

I muted this thread hours ago because people were arguing in my mentions and I don't wanna really get into intense arguments with people over what is stated to be wild ass speculation.Also it made Twitter useless to me lol

And another commentor on that thread

All of this happened to Runescape before, and it led to the highly controversial removal of the Wilderness and free trade, which soured the entire community but was necessary to prevent payment processors from universally refusing to work with Runescape.

Yeah. Ouch.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

The codes can be taken and sold for real money.

Friend, codes no longer exist. This thread is not about the lack of codes, they're gone, dead, never coming back— its the fact that they have put such heavy restrictions on players gifting one another items with the new system. Claiming it's because they can't track if a player already owns a "one-time use" item, when most of the items on the Mogstation are, in fact, one time use. We all saw the friend requirement coming from several miles away, but outright barring the gifting of mounts and minions is definitely taking it a step too far.