SE please care about CHEATING & BOTS!!!

[TheLoveJenovan]

SE will clearly never address the problem, and new solutions are needed. Banning buyers would be a good step forward.

Banning the sites themselves as they pop up could work too. Technically, RMT sites are conducting illegal activity from a civil perspective. Section 3.18 of the ICANN agreement requires registrars to register an 'abuse' email address or form. These can be found from the domain's whois record, for example:

https://www.godaddy.com/whois/result...main=5gold.com

From that example, the abuse email would be 'abuse@godaddy.com' or the form at: https://www.godaddy.com/help/reporting-abuse-27154

Examples of the types of abuse an RMT site conducts includes Copyright Infringement (email: copyrightcomplaints@godaddy.com), Trademark Abuse (email: trademarkclaims@godaddy.com) and illegal activity (violation of TOS, email: abuse@godaddy.com).

Even though we do not own the trademark, these websites clearly violate the trademark and copyright rules outlined by Square-Enix: https://support.na.square-enix.com/r...5382&tag=authc

Specifically, RMT sites violate the following: "You may not use the Materials for any sales or commercial use, meaning you cannot receive license fees or advertising revenue, except as part of the partner programs operated by YouTube, Twitch, or similar programs"

Finally, RMT sites will just register new domains, if they lose their domains through ICANN policies. However, RMT companies rely heavily on trust, and the persistence of their domain name is an important ingredient in that trust. RMT buyers will have a tougher time finding good, trustworthy RMT sites if their domain names change every few weeks.

(I would register these complaints with registrars and the ICANN myself, but I'm quitting FF14 in 4 days.)

[TheLoveJenovan]

I ended up typing a letter, which can be submitted here: https://support.na.square-enix.com/c...382&la=1&fty=1

Dear Square-Enix Legal,

I am a player of FFXIV and other products. My experience, and the experience of many others, is that gil or gold sellers (Real Money Trading, RMT) significantly disrupt the experience of your legitimate customers, like myself. Square-Enix's technical approach to this problem through the Special Task Force (STF) is very limited in its ability to identify and curtail RMT on its platforms.

I am emailing with a few suggestions that Square-Enix’s litigation department might make to more effectively address this problem. I believe that Square-Enix has a basis for legal action for at least 3 reasons:

1. Trademark Infringement. The trademark of ‘Final Fantasy XIV’, ‘Final Fantasy 14’, ‘FFXIV’ and ‘FF14’ are used in violation of your Materials Usage License by “us[ing] the Materials for any sales or commercial use, meaning you cannot receive license fees or advertising revenue.”

2. Copyright Infringement

3. Violation of Terms of Service (TOS). The activity of RMT is arguably causing material damages to Square-Enix through the loss of subscribers, like myself, and it could be the basis for civil litigation.

Considering the above violations, I suggest the following:

A. Sending Cease & Desist letters to the contacts of gil selling websites. The effectiveness of this approach is likely going to be limited since many of these companies are based in countries outside the United States.

B. Contacting US-based third party service vendors about the Trademark Infringement or other activities. Many third parties have policies against trademark violations and other illegal activities.

1. godaddy.com (US based registrar): https://www.godaddy.com/legal/agreem...t-infringement

2. namecheap.com (US based registrar): https://www.namecheap.com/legal/gene...mark-policies/

3. verisign.com (US based registrar): Email 'info@verisign-grs.com’ or https://www.verisign.com/en_US/compa...se/index.xhtml

4. cloudflare.com (CDN service): https://developers.cloudflare.com/fu.../report-abuse/

5. MasterCard (payment): https://www.mastercard.us/en-us/visi...cy-policy.html

6. Visa (payment): https://usa.visa.com/legal/report-brand-abuse.html

7. American Express (payment): https://www.americanexpress.com/cont...ct%202011w.pdf

8. Discover (payment): https://www.discover.com/company/our...ode-of-ethics/

[TheLoveJenovan]

9. PayPal (payment): https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/infringementrpt-full

10. Google Pay (payment): https://support.google.com/adspolicy.../2562124?hl=en


11. Intermediary secure payment services may be compelled to disallow RMT if their payment sources (see above) may be removed. These include ‘McAfee Secure’, ‘Privacy Safe’ and ‘Business Verified’


C. Contacting the ICANN for cases in which Square-Enix properties are used in the URLs. https://www.icann.org/resources/page...-2017-06-20-en

I have never used one of these RMT services. Based on a Google search, the following RMT companies and websites violate Square-Enix’s properties:

(list of websites)

Additionally, I would ask Square-Enix to more vigilantly litigate RMT companies since the “employees” that are used to accrue virtual assets are either poorly compensated or not compensated at all. It has been known for a long time that RMT promotes human rights abuses.

(See Guardian 'China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work')

[Boblawblah]

Hey, you put more effort into this that SE does into fighting bots, so...well done.

[Ivtrix]

It won't happen. For some reason banning people who float in spider clusters under the city all day every day is too hard.
God help you for mentioning them by name though. The cops are already on their way.

Bot banning happens generally in waves as to not tip off the bot makers to what bit of their script the devs can detect

Combatting botting is not as easy as it sounds and the devs in any game not just FFXIV are always one step minimum behjnd

[DragonFlyy]

there's literally flying bots on all worlds, none excluded, you see them tping in uldah gridania and limsa and even outside of these areas, the customer service for this game and their so called "task force" are both an absolute joke, it's been for months and months if not years that these bots are doing that, on top of that, you have those gil sellers trading people in /busy mode (usually low levels) in major cities and then teleporting away magically once they are done trading.

It's ok, maybe we just need to create a gofundme so they can get some actual people to work on banning bots/hackers, since apparently they are a small indie company

PS : if I was you I would remove the names, they will actually ban you for naming and shaming, it already happened multiple times, even tho they know those people are just bots, they will ban you anyway, because hey, they cant ban the bots themselves but they'll gladly ban the players trying to call them out

Just like every other MMO out there. Ban a bot, they just make a new one (most of those are stolen accounts so it's no loss to the botter.) Implement code to stop botters, they adjust to it within hours. It's something that has plagued MMOs since the early days of Everquest (probably even before that). Basically it's a part of the genre.

[Kes13a]

Just like every other MMO out there. Ban a bot, they just make a new one (most of those are stolen accounts so it's no loss to the botter.) Implement code to stop botters, they adjust to it within hours. It's something that has plagued MMOs since the early days of Everquest (probably even before that). Basically it's a part of the genre.

screw coding to stop the bots, we all know that will never work.

ban the buyers. a persons account has sentimental value, sunk cost value, time and effort value, of course bots make more bots, because its lucrative. a personal account... is far less throw away. come down hard on the buyers and the market for the bot generated gil... dries up

the only way top decrease the bots.. is to decrease the market they serve... no extra code needed at all

[KageTokage]

Just like every other MMO out there. Ban a bot, they just make a new one (most of those are stolen accounts so it's no loss to the botter.) Implement code to stop botters, they adjust to it within hours. It's something that has plagued MMOs since the early days of Everquest (probably even before that). Basically it's a part of the genre.

XIV has enough progression walls in place that it's comparatively difficult to get a meaningful bot of any sort up and running in the first place which makes keeping them in check easier.

The endgame DoH/L bots have to buy both a job and story skip then grind through the entire EW MSQ just to have access to what they want to farm, then they still need to level their non-combat jobs to an extent that lets them farm relevant items.

The only ones I'd actually consider unassailable are the mentioned ARR teleport bots because they rely on sheer numbers to actually get any significant gains.

[Ayche]

Surely all gil sold has been laundered before it appears in the hands of the buyer, thus there is no way to litigate it.

[Archeron]

Just look to the venues if you want to see gil laundering in action.