What legal issue is protecting the spammers?

[Noblesteel]

(EDIT: It turns out that the Aion Executive producer did address the Gold Spam issue. Viewable at http://na.aiononline.com/board/notic...?articleID=122 for those who haven't seen it yet. Unfortunately for me it was posted a few minutes before mine and I had not seen it yet. It helped answer some questions because basically up till that point we were all in dark about what was happening behind the scenes and the efforts that were sincerely being taken.)
([EDIT #2] After reading the address a few times, I am sorry to say that there are some questions that remain. A lot of the posters before bring up some really good insights (even the ones I disagree with). So please read on and comment.)

The Aion developers do not need more suggestions on fighting spammers. They know them all. They must even have some workable ideas of their own. A year of testing in Korea has had to have taught something. So that leaves only one question:

What legality exactly is protecting the spammers from simply having their account keys blocked?, or at least suspended?

So lets assume the people engineering have learned enough to actually stop the illegal gold and power leveling spammers. Obviously what must be stopping them has to come from higher up the NC Soft corporate ladder: The legal department. It has to. Look all great suggestions that have come up and yet still weeks later the spam has actually gotten worse.

If I were being an in-game jackass, you can well bet I would be suspended. Say I decided to create a toon named Bignyerk and started sexually harassing all the female characters and making offensive comments in General Chat. How long do you think till I was busted and received at least a twenty four hour suspension? My guess is two hours at very most. So my question is:

Why, when I would quickly get a several hour ban for being severely offensive, is an illegal advertiser allowed to take over our Look For Group channel all day long?

Once again, please people, do not waste time and space with "What NC Soft should do about spammers". A billion suggestions already exist. So the conclusion has to be that NC Soft can not or will not do anything to stop the illegal spamming done by gold selling and power leveling advertisers. In the EULA rule #4 section K it states:

Originally Posted by http://us.ncsoft.com/en/legal/user-agreements/aion-user-agreement.html

(k) In the Game, in-game characters have the privilege of sending server wide messages called 'Global Chat.' With this privilege comes a high level of responsibility on the part of the user. Due to the fact that this communication channel has the ability to impact every player on the server, NC Interactive will not tolerate any inappropriate behavior of any sort in this chat channel. This includes but is not limited to: inappropriate language of any sort or any attempt to escape the profanity filter, inappropriate or vulgar content of any sort, repeated 'spamming,' or 'flooding' of the global chat channel, or any other conduct determined to be inappropriate by NC Interactive Support, in its sole discretion. Any violation of this term or rules of conduct may, in the sole discretion of NC Interactive, lead to the temporary removal of the character's ability to communicate, the Account being suspended for a set period of time, or lead to permanent Account closure. We may record or monitor the chat to assist us in this process.

So what is the problem? Is it some Russian Mafia connection like the one rumored to behind all the non-stop nyerk enlargement email spam? The above rules state violation of rules of conduct may, in the sole discretion of NC Interactive, lead to the temporary removal of the character's ability to communicate, the Account being suspended for a set period of time, or lead to permanent Account closure.

If any of us real players were being a jackass, would we get suspended? Yes.
Are the spammers being suspended? No
Are the spammers using trial accounts? No

Let me emphasize: There are no trial accounts. Someone is paying $50.00 and being allowed unchecked to harass the rest of us who have paid $50 to $70 to actually play the game. You block one spammer. That spammer creates more characters. I have no doubt all the character key garbage in the LFG channel is adding to the lag.

NC Soft must really be out of touch with the players if they think we are going to put up with this forever. We can put up with the technical issues and shortage of customer support, but does NC Soft really believe the spam clogged channels and direct harassment is not going to drive us back to our old MMO or to other MMO's just to get some relief?

Here's what I want to tell NC Soft corporate if they actually read this:

Ultimately, either the spammers go or we go.

If the spammers are somehow legally protected then it's not more GM's that are needed, it's more lawyers.

[Melos]

Maybe they figure they make more money like that? Some people like to buy ingame currency, and organizations will spend 1000's of dollars on accounts in order to fulfill their demand? As long as the amount given to NC by kinah sellers exceeds the amount money lost by disgruntled players that quit they make profit.

I think this actual site takes a positivity stance towards gold sellers..just look at the recent thread on it moved to "the Graveyard"..no trolling just some negativity the site could do without.

[osMoz]

OK, I think it is time to tell you the truth...

The gold spammers work for NCsoft Asia. That's it.

(Think about it, they can raise as much kinah as they want...)

It is the BEST product ever, 100% margin, NO COST

[Melos]

I don't think it goes that far, but I wonder why a company that obviously has plenty of resources chooses to ignore this problem. There is of course a vested interest in what the gold sellers do, as long as they don't spoil the image of the game.

[chupy]

They're not paying for their accounts. I don't know why I'm repeating this for the billionth time btw.

[Fyuryus]

That's like asking why the government can't just stop all theft by putting all theives in jail immediately.

How do they judge who is a theif and who isn't? What if they jail somebody who isn't really a theif? Do they have to abide by the legal process in jailing these alleged theives? Can they even round up all the theives fast enough to keep the population under control? If they round up all the theives, won't new ones just pop up to take their place?

It's not a legal issue, it's an implementation issue and a manpower issue. That, and they can't/won't ban ALL the gold farmers any more than the government can/will stop ALL illicit drug sales -- it's just the way of the world.

But yeah, they really need to get it under control. And I have faith that they will, just give them a couple of weeks. Remember, the game JUST came out 3 weeks ago.

[Noblesteel]

Originally Posted by chupy

They're not paying for their accounts. I don't know why I'm repeating this for the billionth time btw.

Well, we're talking about legal motivations here. So please tell us here how (please pardon doing it for the billionth and one time) the gold spammers are not paying for their accounts. If that is so, then that is a major issue.

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Originally Posted by Fyuryus

That's like asking why the government can't just stop all theft by putting all theives in jail immediately.

How do they judge who is a theif and who isn't? What if they jail somebody who isn't really a theif? Do they have to abide by the legal process in jailing these alleged theives? Can they even round up all the theives fast enough to keep the population under control? If they round up all the theives, won't new ones just pop up to take their place?

I had no idea it was such a "balance of justice" and "due process of law" issue. Many of us here simply feel that "martial law" should be implemented and, like an unscrupulous looter, any spammer who even mentions a website should be shot on sight (figuratively speaking).

[Morgawr]

Originally Posted by Noblesteel

Well, we're talking about legal motivations here. So please tell us here how (please pardon doing it for the billionth and one time) the gold spammers are not paying for their accounts. If that is so, then that is a major issue.

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I had no idea it was such a "balance of justice" and "due process of law" issue. Many of us here simply feel that "martial law" should be implemented and, like an unscrupulous looter, any spammer who even mentions a website should be shot on sight (figuratively speaking).

I'd like to know this as well...

[Xard]

Originally Posted by Fyuryus

That's like asking why the government can't just stop all theft by putting all theives in jail immediately.

How do they judge who is a theif and who isn't? What if they jail somebody who isn't really a theif? Do they have to abide by the legal process in jailing these alleged theives? Can they even round up all the theives fast enough to keep the population under control? If they round up all the theives, won't new ones just pop up to take their place?

It's not a legal issue, it's an implementation issue and a manpower issue. That, and they can't/won't ban ALL the gold farmers any more than the government can/will stop ALL illicit drug sales -- it's just the way of the world.

But yeah, they really need to get it under control. And I have faith that they will, just give them a couple of weeks. Remember, the game JUST came out 3 weeks ago.

In this situation its watching the thief with all his identity out no hoodie, ID on him, and fingerprints all over, stab someone on the street and saying, **** you!

Spammers aren't hidden. There right there ready to suspend...

EDIT: It's good for NCsoft for new ones to go in, more retail buys, more subs, more bans over and over

[Darkfaith]

Official word on NCSoft's stance on gold spamming and intended direction in stopping it.

[Neb]

It's not a legal issue...

It's an issue of impossibility. Even if they had GMs working 24/7, which regardless of this topic I agree should be in place, you will still have gold spam.

They don't pay for accounts, in reality NCSoft actually pays for it via chargeback fines.

YouTube - How do secondary markets (RMT) really impact games?

YouTube - How do secondary markets (RMT) really impact games?

[Moleman]

Even more curious to me is how some of them are able to create names outside the new western naming rules. I've seen some names in my spam tells which have multiple caps or caps in the middle of names. Like "DGF" and "sDaf".

Seriously how do they do this?

[chupy]

Originally Posted by Noblesteel

So please tell us here how (please pardon doing it for the billionth and one time) the gold spammers are not paying for their accounts. If that is so, then that is a major issue.

chargebacks

SoE: Station Exchange Service Transition to Live Gamer

It isn't just issues of game balance and gold farming, Smedley says. "We're seeing a lot of stolen credit cards. Say you buy gold from a service in China -- you may not know it's in China, but you give them your credit card and buy gold only once. They use these credit card numbers to set up new accounts in these games. They buy an EverQuest account key, farm for a month, and then charge it back to the stolen credit card."

And this isn't just damaging to the consumer. "What happens is that over time, as that rate of chargebacks rises, we start getting fined. We have been fined over a million dollars since June. That's not the chargebacks themselves -- just the chargeback fine. It's brutal; it's the dirty little secret of the industry."



Also, Ayase confirmed this at the time, can't be bothered to find the actual link where he said that, some mod deleted it yesterday, no clue why:

The longer answer: Every bot in an online game carries large expenses for any developer in the form of withdrawn subscription money, lost revenue from potential players and additional charge-back fees. There is absolutely nothing good coming from their existence, for anyone involved. Let's assume that one miraculously gets a positive income from a bot owner who forgets to do a chargeback or falls into coma for half a year. This income would be infinitely easier to obtain from an honest customer who could very well have been there if it wasn't for this bot. We don't support botting one bit, but as any developer, it's a tough battle to be fought with many similarities to a cold war. Systems such as the one in this thread are not supreme solutions, but they're part of a much larger series of efforts in which we do everything that we can to get to terms with the RMT-business problems and their contraband. You have seen these efforts in the past, you are seeing another one now, and you will see more in the future. We're discussing more ways of tackling the problem here at NCsoft West for our future launch of the game. And as I have stated before: Wait for the game to first release and then let's talk with that playfield on our hands. We will be open to constructive criticism and good discussion, because we want Aion to succeed more than anything. After all, our jobs depend on it.
__________________
Sebastian Streiffert
Community Coordinator - Aion
NCsoft West

[Wraten]

Originally Posted by Moleman

Even more curious to me is how some of them are able to create names outside the new western naming rules. I've seen some names in my spam tells which have multiple caps or caps in the middle of names. Like "DGF" and "sDaf".

Seriously how do they do this?

Asian keyboard translation. They are not doing it. The keyboard characters are differing and dont translate.

[chupy]

The issue isn't chargebacks btw, although that's how they do it, it's still a completely valid and necessary system. I WANT to be able to chargeback my purchase if a company rips me off. SoE tried to change this but failed, luckily, since chargebacks are the last line of defense against criminal companies or services.

The issue is with the spammers themselves and how the games work, not with the system.

There's even an argument in favor of the spammers, since their reason to chargeback is legit, they got robbed of a service, this might sound controversial, but that's one of the issues chargebacks are supposed to protect you from. What they did was bot and they got kicked out of the game....the rest of the playtime should be refunded then..it's not..they chargeback..it's fair.

The fact that some are using stolen credit cards is another issue, and you can't condone that, but the chargeback is working like it should.