Why are they addressing the RMT symptom instead of the deeper causes?

[Anova]

There are several issues preventing SE from pursuing these issues. The most prominent is that RMT is a cybercrime, and while it is possible to punish individuals within certain countries, pursuing them internationally is not always viable. The majority of RMT companies are located in China (and there are rumors of N.Korea having a special RMT military department to earn money). The main rationale is these countries have very lax laws concerning intellectual property. According to their laws, these companies may not be entirely clean, but the offense hardly warrants extradition or any possible punishment that would dissuade them from continuing business. It does not help that the relationship between Japan and the rest of East Asia is on par with the US relationship with the drug-addled countries of South America. There are trade agreements, but more force is needed to arrest a criminal you know is hiding there.

As for targeting the buyers, while I think it is possible, the actual amount bought from an individual buyer is miniscule at best. I am not certain it would be worth the cost for SE to pursue the case, much less prove financial damage resulting from the actions of an individual buyer. It's much cheaper to simply ban the buyer for breaking the EULA and hope the message gets out that if you buy, you are risking not only your own credit information but also risk losing access and progress to the game.

A second issue is the process of identifying gil farmers. Ironically though, the most fervent FFXIV players and SE's best customers look a lot like gil farmers. They have multiple accounts and multiple characters on the same server (because of myth cap, etc) and they utilize very complicated techniques to make gil and generally be the best at the game. It's not easy to distinguish them apart. If your aim is to target the actual Lv.50 farmers, it is much safer to simply follow the trail of gil from the account that sends gil to a potential buyer. None of these require you to stop the RMT spam, although I am certain SE has some filters in place considering the RMT are encoding their advertisements. Still, it only takes a little testing for RMTs to identify the algorithm and rules of the spam filters and change the message appropriately.