Does Square intend to address Market botting?

[NamidaTekika]

Funny enough one of the bots recently put a comment in their search info with a name, that when looked up with FFXIV on it brings up old reddit and such of people accusing that name of being bot and them claiming to be just a person and their boyfriend with 4 accounts, yet that name crops up on JPN and ENG spots in looking and different servers as well.

So apparently we're seeing full botter fake lives too to try to legitimize themselves and that was a year or so ago with the name. Kinda weird.

And an interesting bit today, think I've started nailing down which ones are run by what people. 3 of the known bots all went offline at the same time, then came back on at the same time, while two of the others never did. They've been doing that like that the last few weeks all same time.

Curiouser and curiouser

[Kes13a]

Funny enough one of the bots recently put a comment in their search info with a name, that when looked up with FFXIV on it brings up old reddit and such of people accusing that name of being bot and them claiming to be just a person and their boyfriend with 4 accounts, yet that name crops up on JPN and ENG spots in looking and different servers as well.

So apparently we're seeing full botter fake lives too to try to legitimize themselves and that was a year or so ago with the name. Kinda weird.

And an interesting bit today, think I've started nailing down which ones are run by what people. 3 of the known bots all went offline at the same time, then came back on at the same time, while two of the others never did. They've been doing that like that the last few weeks all same time.

Curiouser and curiouser

what better way to throw things off? I mean its kind of telling that an 8 "member" FC is ranked number 7 on Zalera, with the FC leader the only one past 30 and the only one that isnt in a starter city. now, I realize that people can measure their worth by how much virtual money they have, thats awesome, but if you never do anything with it apparently, and never do anything else in the game... why "play"? The only thing I can imagine is RMT

I dont care how "life-like" they try and make themselves, cheating is still cheating and they should be perma banned (after all, they arent playing anyway)

[NamidaTekika]

what better way to throw things off? I mean its kind of telling that an 8 "member" FC is ranked number 7 on Zalera, with the FC leader the only one past 30 and the only one that isnt in a starter city. now, I realize that people can measure their worth by how much virtual money they have, thats awesome, but if you never do anything with it apparently, and never do anything else in the game... why "play"? The only thing I can imagine is RMT

I dont care how "life-like" they try and make themselves, cheating is still cheating and they should be perma banned (after all, they arent playing anyway)

Ya still cheating, still think they should be punished. Just kinda impressed how far they will go to try to "See I'm a real person! I just play on several servers and regions and give a real name out in search comment so you can google me and see I'm totally a real person!" (shame the results kinda prove its a sock puppet at best).

Or "We went offline, totally rested for 3 hours then all 3 came back online at the same time and back to gathering. Totally not bots see!"

[TheLoveJenovan]

We have to agree that people that make money like this aren't that sharp to begin with. Dumb behavior like you shared is interesting but not unexpected. Thanks for the post, and I hope I can find and read more about the bot you've posted.

Separately, I was thinking that this problem is too easy to not address--at least for the egregious cases discussed here. At this stage, I wouldn't be surprised if either SE got a cut from these companies, or SE was relying on the inflation in their economies to somehow bolster other sales.

I've never thought that SE was making a good faith effort with eliminating botting. Now, I'm more convinced that the botting system itself is allowed to continue in bad faith. From my experience with the in-game support, they'll readily address cases of harassment or phishing attempts. For bots, they're conspicuously silent. There is no way they don't know about the extent of this problem. They likely receive hundreds of reports for any given bot. Additionally, they likely carefully monitor how users interact with their product--all other software companies do. At this stage, they're not doing anything about it--including even acknowledging the problem--for a reason.