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

[KremlinKOA]

This situation is almost completely temporary. You think Square would just leave money on the table for literally no reason? No, thats absurd, they're a capitalist business. This whole situation just screams of 'we needed a solution NOW, we'll implement this and then change it when we get a better one operational' to me.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Let me tell you about New Coke.

Some decades back, Coke was afraid they would lose market share to Pepsi. Because Pepsi was sweeter and might give a bigger sugar rush.

So they developed a new, sweeter, recipe.
They called it New Coke.
It was a disaster and Coke sales fell through the floor.
Coca Cola Corp responded, a few months later, by bringing back the old recipe under the label 'Classic Coke'.

For a long time afterward, conspiracy theorists claimed it was all part of a secret ploy to make minor changes to the original Coke recipe and have the public accept them.
They claimed there were warehouses full of cans of 'Classic Coke' for a year, ready to go.

These theories were thoroughly debunked (For one, aluminium cans cannot hold Coke for that long without ruining it.) But people kept believing them.
Why?
Because they were under the, false, belief that Capitalist Corporations never make the mistake of leaving money on the table.


Corporations DO make major mistakes.
Square Enix made a few recently, that cost them money.

They badly underestimated the potential sales of Endwalker and had to stop selling the game while trying to upgrade the servers.
They let a major code bug through the QA tests and caused the first Housing Auction to be a disaster.
I can mention a few, minor, story flow errors in Endwalker that have left many streamers emotionally uninvested in *Spoiler Redacted*.

This is, IMHO, another such error. The anger here is a symptom of that mistake.

So in other words:
Stormpeaks: "This negatively affects my experience when using this service."
SassyAssassin: "Well it doesn't affect MINE, so your bad experiences don't matter."

Pretty much says everything we need to know about you.

[Deveryn]

Corporations DO make major mistakes.
Square Enix made a few recently, that cost them money.

They badly underestimated the potential sales of Endwalker and had to stop selling the game while trying to upgrade the servers.
They let a major code bug through the QA tests and caused the first Housing Auction to be a disaster.
I can mention a few, minor, story flow errors in Endwalker that have left many streamers emotionally uninvested in *Spoiler Redacted*.

This is, IMHO, another such error. The anger here is a symptom of that mistake.

It's not looking like an error on their part, but a problem that picked up back in September when they originally announced they were suspending gifting. There was that huge breach elsewhere and a bunch of accounts managed to get compromised, which made more resources available for RMT. A lot of those accounts had saved payment info and you know what happens with that. There's plenty of user fault in this, especially with the people engaging in these transactions thinking they were safe.

[KremlinKOA]

It's not looking like an error on their part, but a problem that picked up back in September when they originally announced they were suspending gifting. There was that huge breach elsewhere and a bunch of accounts managed to get compromised, which made more resources available for RMT. A lot of those accounts had saved payment info and you know what happens with that. There's plenty of user fault in this, especially with the people engaging in these transactions thinking they were safe.

I am saying their error is choosing the wrong solution.

In this case. Consider instead simply restricting the ability to purchase gifts to those accounts that have had a OTP for at least 30 days.

Sure, new accounts are restricted from gifting. But the ability for Streamers, Content Creators, FC leaders and RP social hub operators to continue their prize systems, and other use of gifts, would continue unhindered.

It would also solve the 'account got hacked and used for RMT' issue

As OTP and 2FA have proven the single most effective defense against such things.

SE chose a poor solution that carries negative effects, both for them, and for the players.

[Havenchild]

So in other words:
Stormpeaks: "This negatively affects my experience when using this service."
SassyAssassin: "Well it doesn't affect MINE, so your bad experiences don't matter."

Pretty much says everything we need to know about you.

Except they aren't technically wrong. Your ability to "surprise" someone is in fact seperated from your ability to "gift" someone regardless of what you think it is. These two concepts do not run in tangent with each other. You can still gift someone something and you can still "surprise" them with a gift card. You can't surprise them specifically with a mount.

The entire conversation in this thread is being muddied by two seperate philosophies of people who are saying they can no longer buy someone a mount and others saying they can no longer gift friends period, which are both still technically untrue. You can provide a gift card and people can buy the item (or any item) if they want to.

So yes they are correct in stating that you can easily work around this. You can also say it can be an inconvenience to some. Both are equally right though. This isn't really that much of big deal and I highly doubt this will even be some super hot topic in the coming months. People will adjust to gift cards, for mount gifting specifically, its as simple as that.

[LianaThorne]

Except they aren't technically wrong. Your ability to "surprise" someone is in fact seperated from your ability to "gift" someone regardless of what you think it is. These two concepts do not run in tangent with each other. You can still gift someone something and you can still "surprise" them with a gift card. You can't surprise them specifically with a mount.

The entire conversation in this thread is being muddied by two seperate philosophies of people who are saying they can no longer buy someone a mount and others saying they can no longer gift friends period, which are both still technically untrue. You can provide a gift card and people can buy the item (or any item) if they want to.

So yes they are correct in stating that you can easily work around this. You can also say it can be an inconvenience to some. Both are equally right though. This isn't really that much of big deal and I highly doubt this will even be some super hot topic in the coming months. People will adjust to gift cards, for mount gifting specifically, its as simple as that.

It's not technically untrue, it's just false. You can gift someone a gift card and still have it be a surprise. In what world is someone not excited at being given something by a friend in general when they're not expecting it? They're still ultimately receiving the gift from you when they purchase it with the gift card you're giving. It's just one step longer in the process now than before.

It sounds more like an issue of ya'll don't trust your friends to actually spend the money on the thing rather than lack of gifting at all. I get that it's frustrating that they took away convenience and the ability to specifically pick out what you want to send but trying to say people won't be happy over getting *something* still is a stretch.

Side note: I'm aware it does make holiday related things like Secret Santa challenging and those people I do feel bad for. I hope new plans are able to be made to still enjoy the time with your FC.