Bad Platinum and Sellers

[Almagnus1]

So I'm one of those guys on warframe.market that's selling rare mods and prime warframe sets, and I'm wondering if there's any way to verify if someone is giving me good or bad platinum.  Bad platinum, for those that done' know, is when someone either buys platinum with a bad credit card (so the transaction won't complete correctly), or through some other means where the platinum they have is going to be removed by DE from the game economy.

What I've been hearing is that sellers can get screwed over because if someone with bad platinum buys something, the seller must come up with the excess platinum or the seller gets screwed.

So, how much of this understanding is correct?

How can I protect myself from buyers with bad platinum?

[(XBOX)Blue Wyzerd]

Keep a record of all your transactions, don't spend the earned platinum for at least a week, only trade with higher MR players.  That's about all you can do to help mitigate the risks.  Keeping the record of your transactions in order to report people, etc.

[CrudShuzKong]

Yeah pretty much what Blue Wyzerd said. If you screenshot every trade you make you can just send the pictures to support and they will most likely restore your mods if you lost any platinum.

[LSG501]

Most of what you've written is basically correct from what I've seen on the forum etc.  I can't say what the outcome is after contacting DE however as I've been fortunate enough (primarily because I don't trade much) not to be affected

How can you protect against it... realistically we can't and this is where the issue lies because we have zero idea where the platinum of a person trading with us has come from. 

The best you can do is to pretty much look at the MR etc of the person you're trading with and make a judgement call but then it might not have been him who did a chargeback (can be up to 6 months iirc in some countries) on their plat, it could have been a person they traded with and so on down the line. 

 

DE really does need to fix this issue imo too because a lot of innocent parties can be screwed over, it's not even just a case of 'resetting' the bad trades to before the trades, its basically a hammer job where it basically seems that DE will take back the plat from everyone who has it and that's all they bother to do unless you get in touch so you not only lose the plat but you lose the item you were trading to (from what I've read at least).

Ideally DE would implement a 'cooldown' on plat before it's traded AND make it so plat purchases are non-refundable if it's been used (people can make mistakes it does happen) and/or there isn't enough plat 'to be returned' in the account it's attached to. 

 

Edited August 23, 2018 by LSG501

[Blade_Wolf_16]

il y a 1 minute, LSG501 a dit :

Ideally DE would implement a 'cooldown' on plat before it's traded 

This and probably an in game trade record with a list of all your trades (the stuff, the players, etc.) for those who don't have the reflex to take a screenshot of every trade and/or those who don't know about the issue (which means pretty much everybody who haven't heard/read about it on the Forums or ig).

[Pro3Display]

@LSG501

the thing is that only 2 things DE can do is allow person to play with negative balance or not take the refunded platinum out of the trade system.

dunno about first but second option devalues platinum and is unhealthy for the economic system we are in.

probably to solve this you can try and do what EVE does with PLEX but dunno how good it will live in warframe

[LSG501]

Just now, Pro3Display said:

@LSG501

the thing is that only 2 things DE can do is allow person to play with negative balance or not take the refunded platinum out of the trade system. 

dunno about first but second option devalues platinum and is unhealthy for the economic system we are in.

probably to solve this you can try and do what EVE does with PLEX but dunno how good it will live in warframe

I have no issue with them taking the plat back (although I'd prefer a preventative approach), it's the way they do it which is the issue.

DE could just roll back (obviously communicate with players) all the transactions to 'before' the issue arose which would remove the issue of neg plat and locking a player out of the game while also ensuring the player hasn't lost the item they sold.  Yes it's not an ideal system but its better than the current system which basically comes across as extortion to get back into the game in some players views after doing nothing but unfortunately trading with the wrong person. 

When you considering it's something a player has no control over (in most cases, there are obviously the ones that do it on purpose) the current 'sledgehammer' approach (they do like this approach sadly) to fixing things isn't really appropriate hence why I also gave options/suggestions on how to limit the issue in the first place, DE doesn't even seem to be considering anything to limit the issue occurring hence why we seem to be getting more and more of these types of threads.

[Naftal]

I'm pretty sure there's no "bad plat".

The plat is removed when the credit card owner gets a chargeback from the plat purchase.

All plat is legit, until it doesn't exist anymore.

[scourge213]

Ever since i've returned to warframe, at the spring of last year, i've been a regular trader in all possible 'sites'(the ingame chat, and various web sites).

I never kept track of my trades as they are now in the thousands, but i did keep track of my platinum. I never noticed any platinum to be missing.

So a 'seller' to be screwed because of 'bad' platinum, even if could happen, is rare as hell and would have little to no impact on the seller's trading.

Edit: I also want to point out that I've had some pretty 'questionable' deals, people trading at ridiculously low prices. Something akin to what i remember from WoW as account-steal selling(though one can't tell for sure, as it always was 1 or 2 items, it looks suspicious when it happens). Still, never had missing platinum.

Edited August 23, 2018 by scourge213

[Almagnus1]

3 hours ago, (XB1)Blue Wyzerd said:

Keep a record of all your transactions, don't spend the earned platinum for at least a week, only trade with higher MR players.  That's about all you can do to help mitigate the risks.  Keeping the record of your transactions in order to report people, etc.

Yeah, it's a little late for the record part, as I can complete over a hundred trades in a week if I'm really heavily into trading.  For the mast part, I've got enough extra platinum that I'm not terribly worried about going under the amount, but every now and again when I do a trade for multiple primed warframes I'd like some way to validate that I'm not getting stuff ripped off.

2 hours ago, Blade_Wolf_16 said:

This and probably an in game trade record with a list of all your trades (the stuff, the players, etc.) for those who don't have the reflex to take a screenshot of every trade and/or those who don't know about the issue (which means pretty much everybody who haven't heard/read about it on the Forums or ig).

A trade ledger would be an awesome improvement.

2 hours ago, Pro3Display said:

@LSG501

the thing is that only 2 things DE can do is allow person to play with negative balance or not take the refunded platinum out of the trade system.

dunno about first but second option devalues platinum and is unhealthy for the economic system we are in.

probably to solve this you can try and do what EVE does with PLEX but dunno how good it will live in warframe

Only thing I can think of that's PLEX-like would be boosters stronger than anything we've got, or something else like that.  I really can't think of something other than a booster that makes sense within Warframe's game that you would want to keep running.

[CoreXCZ]

What I began to do back in 2017 is that I am keeping a record of every transaction that involves Platina (yes, even ones made with game itself like Market or buying Platina).

What I keep recorded in my private google spreadsheet is:

• Date
• Platina (Gain/Loss and current state after trade) - Tells me if I was buying or selling, of course. Using (N) in case it was Item/Item exchange.
• Item (Mod/Weapon/Etc.)
• Who was the other player or what part of in-game system was used (Market/Foundry/Etc.)

This gives me not just info about my past transaction, review how I was doing in past years, but I am also keeping there my goodies available for selling, updating after each run if something of sellable value popped out (like Ayatan Sculpture or some really demanded Mod).

I can recommend this, if not to keep info about transactions stored then to learn how to do basics because having evidence is something necessary these days, at least for me. You can always link it to DE if they will be willing to hear you out and since Google is neutral side here and docs keep a record of changes in documents, they can easily check if it was forged quickly or is valid proof of your activity and information (since they can cross-check with game records).

Edited August 24, 2018 by CoreXCZ

[(PSN)aiptekfanboy]

If the buyer is offering ridiculous amounts of plat then its a red flag that the plat maybe from a stolen card so caveat emptor.

[Ninjacalypse]

On 2018-08-24 at 1:01 AM, CrudShuzKong said:

Yeah pretty much what Blue Wyzerd said. If you screenshot every trade you make you can just send the pictures to support and they will most likely restore your mods if you lost any platinum.

How is that DE can flag your account for a bad transaction because of someone else but at the same time has no record of your transaction? That makes no sense.

[Umbranoir]

The burning question on my mind is why does this need to be addressed at all? Quite frankly, It is the poor Tenno who is sadly unaware that platinum could even be 'bad' platinum to begin with that I feel for most.

Honestly, just place the account who made the bad payment on a temporary lock until they pay the amount for the platinum that was promised.

[Umbranoir]

Double posted:f

Edited August 25, 2018 by Umbranoir
Double posted

[.Re-light.]

On 2018-08-23 at 6:56 PM, scourge213 said:

Ever since i've returned to warframe, at the spring of last year, i've been a regular trader in all possible 'sites'(the ingame chat, and various web sites).

I never kept track of my trades as they are now in the thousands, but i did keep track of my platinum. I never noticed any platinum to be missing.

So a 'seller' to be screwed because of 'bad' platinum, even if could happen, is rare as hell and would have little to no impact on the seller's trading.

Edit: I also want to point out that I've had some pretty 'questionable' deals, people trading at ridiculously low prices. Something akin to what i remember from WoW as account-steal selling(though one can't tell for sure, as it always was 1 or 2 items, it looks suspicious when it happens). Still, never had missing platinum.

You get in a problem if you trade with a person and the amount of traded platinum is over what you already have. So when they remove "negative" platinum, you end up with banned account because there is no legit way to have negative platinum. Then you have to buy platinum in excess of your minus (you can check your platinum amount on first page of official warframe site), before which you can't play. You also don't get your riven back, or maybe you do, I am not sure..

 

    I did hundred of trades by now, and pretty sure it never happened to me, but I saw other people who weren't that fortunate. So to keep safe, never do a trade selling a riven for more plat then you already have in account or you could be screwed big time.. 

[(PSN)aiptekfanboy]

I do not get how you can have negative plat?

I sell syndicate weapons for 25p every day plus max [Primed mods for 290p each so i have an ok amount of plat ?

Heres the thing if a seller get a thousand plat per riven then why is the account not at least at ten thousand plat ?

And if the riven seller account is at five thousand plat to ten thousand plat then a minus thousand plat from a bad trade is still a viable account with thousands of plat .

A negative plat account sounds fishy as if the seller just goes on stupid daily shopping spree for no reason ?

[llamabrown]

On 2018-08-23 at 11:52 AM, (XB1)Blue Wyzerd said:

Keep a record of all your transactions, don't spend the earned platinum for at least a week, only trade with higher MR players.  That's about all you can do to help mitigate the risks.  Keeping the record of your transactions in order to report people, etc.

What is the definition of higher MR players?  I'm an MR 8 player who needs a fleeting expertise. Am I going to be out of luck? 

[Calistin]

On 2018-08-23 at 12:04 PM, LSG501 said:

....snip....

 

DE really does need to fix this issue imo too because a lot of innocent parties can be screwed over, it's not even just a case of 'resetting' the bad trades to before the trades, its basically a hammer job where it basically seems that DE will take back the plat from everyone who has it and that's all they bother to do unless you get in touch so you not only lose the plat but you lose the item you were trading to (from what I've read at least).

Ideally DE would implement a 'cooldown' on plat before it's traded AND make it so plat purchases are non-refundable if it's been used (people can make mistakes it does happen) and/or there isn't enough plat 'to be returned' in the account it's attached to. 

 

This here. 

Plat is DE's RLM currency in game and they sell plat so it should really be up to them to verify that people are not using stolen credit cards or doing charge backs which should not be happening.  It's really DE's responsibility.... not the sellers in game to check this out.

 

Like others have said DE should put a short timer on all plat, on plat they sell, to make sure they are not accepting stolen credit cards and it's up to them to contest bad charge backs and if any get through it should be on them for not doing their jobs properly.

It's really that simple, I am not sure how they are getting away with holding people, that got scammed in game, responsible for their lack of security on credit card plat purchases.

 

Edited August 30, 2018 by Calistin

[(XBOX)Blue Wyzerd]

On 2018-08-30 at 1:37 PM, llamabrown said:

What is the definition of higher MR players?  I'm an MR 8 player who needs a fleeting expertise. Am I going to be out of luck? 

That's going to be subjective for every person.  I have my own personal reasons to believe that a player with a higher MR, is invested in the game and would potentially lose too much by taking a risk to partake in shady transactions.  Just my own belief.  I'm sure you'll have no problem finding a seller.

[Ryim_Drykeon]

The best solution would be for the legal system to get off it's dead backside and make "chargebacks" from credit card companies illegal. The CC companies make enough on the interest rates to make up for the times they'll get bit. That way, all purchases that were authorized (which most online transactions require), will always pay to the recipient.

Unfortunately, most legal systems are stuck in the dark ages and only have the bare beginnings of laws pertaining to digital crimes. They get hung up on illegal pr0n and such and don't want to be bothered with the ones that will require thought to process.

What confuses me is why this is happening. I mean, to get rid of a large sum of "bad" Platinum, the criminal would have to purchase something like a high end Riven, for example. Transfer of that Riven from account to account should be relatively easy for DE to track, so it's not like the criminal can take the goods and run and hide. Why can't DE simply reverse the trade, giving the mods/weapons/frames/whatever back to the seller, and transfer the negative balance Platinum to the buyers account? (or whichever account the purchased item was transferred to) That way it's all on the person that purchased the Platinum to make a "good" purchase to bring their account back into the black.

Since DE can track the "bad Platinum" they should be able to track both sides of the trade and accomplish this with about the same workload as they are doing now.....and without punishing those trying to do legit trades.

*tosses two pennies on the table*

[Fleuria]

I am wondering how much of this is story telling (each time a story gets relayed, it changes slightly), And how much of it is events...

I can easily imagine how come DE would be doing this (plat farming / out-of-game plat sales), and I can imagine various shenanigans where the repercussions would hit regular players (both from the DE side of thing and the farming side of things). And, I can easily imagine unhappy farmers / farmers customers trying to get people upset about DE's cracking down on them. And, I can easily imagine other people relaying variations on those stories. So that is my current idea of what I am hearing here.

But that would mean it would be difficult to find people who actually had this happen to them. (Either because they are professionals and don't want the attention, or because they got the attention).

So... I am wondering... 

[(XBOX)Terreflare]

I had no idea DE would be crazy enough to repossess platinum that was traded away from accounts that charged back the purchase, it sounds hard to believe, but if that is true it explains the reports I have heard about randomly missing platinum in people's accounts. It sounds like a horrible plan to recoup their losses, if people lose faith in the currency then trades will dwindle and legit plat sales along with it once players stop trying to sell anything old or valuable and players spend anything they do earn fast to avoid getting swindled.  The obvious solution would just be to give the player who's payment failed or got charged back a negative plat balance equal to what they purchased and make any plat they still had, receive from trades, or get from future (completed) purchases increase the balance until they return to a positive number and can spend or trade plat again. That way if they were trying to trade for rare items, charging back the plat and then selling the items to earn legit plat to sell for cash on the grey market they would lose all the profits unless they traded the items away to a different account and even then it would force them to make tons of new accounts and DE could probably detect accounts that all share the same payment method charging back plat and just ban the email, bank cards, or IPs of the scammers.

DE should not be eroding the confidence of sellers in Warframe because that will really come back to bite them hurting the market and turning off players who feel cheated from playing a game that wasted their time they spent grinding for stuff to sell. Reversing the trades is likely impossible because even if good records were kept players might abuse it to try duplicating rivens and such or it could return items a player sold before they unvaulted after they have now been unvaulted and worth much less etc and players would need notified if a rare item returns so they could know to sell it again and even that would be annoying if they spent a while trying to sell it in the first place. Also what happens if you traded a veiled riven for bad plat and they opened it to find a rare riven and sold it for thousands? Should it give you a veiled riven back or the rare (or perhaps junk) riven they opened? Would that take back the rare riven the last guy paid a ton for or re-rolled and would the scammer keep the thousands of legit plat he made from the last sale? If you reverse all the trades what happens if an item was traded several dozen times and was involved in trades with multiple items a few times? How do you calculate the value that item had in a trade involving several items on each side or must all of those items now be returned? Reversing trades would be impossible if a player used a prime part to build something or changed an item in some way after a trade. 

The easiest solution is to just let plat that was traded continue to exist as real plat unless there is evidence a player is trading lots of plat from several scam accounts for worthless junk into a central 'bank' account which in that case all scammer accounts should be banned and/or drained after careful investigation of those sketchy trades and players that bought plat on the grey market from sketchy websites getting caught up in that mess would be their own fault and help put a stop to the grey markets as well once players know that getting involved could be dangerous for their accounts. Using the negative balances to force players who made a real mistake to just buy more or trade for enough to be positive again should erase any accidental charge back issues causing chaos and for players trying to abuse the system they could add timers to wait for payments to be processed in certain countries or regions that seem to have high rates of abuse or laws that make it easy to charge back payments. I think most legit players would not mind a payment failure making them have negative plat for a while, I for one would be horrified if my card got declined somehow and everyone I had traded with recently got robbed due to my mistake because it is clearly only my fault or DE's if my payment fails and no one else should be involved. Honestly it might even be a breach of privacy of some sort telling players a guy they traded with got declined and is likely poor or in debt since they now lost the plat from that trade, it would be a stretch to claim that, but with so many information privacy laws it might cause an issue somewhere.

Lucky for me I have never heard of this issue on the Xbox1 where I usually play and the reports I see are mostly on PC, perhaps the xbox marketplace is harder to abuse or perhaps console players are more used to paying for things since PC is a better gaming platform for hackers, bots, and unscrupulous types looking to farm game currencies to sell for cash in general. Nothing against PC of course, my PC is way better than my Xbox1x, but anyone who has played any MMOs on PC knows that people in typically low income countries love to create grey markets and grind out game currencies for a living and DE should be anticipating this and finding solutions that do not hurt the entire community. I am hoping all of this is just from a few mistakes and DE is not really making "bad plat" an official policy because if this is happening and someone shows proof in a stream or something it could cause massive damage to the trade marketplace and peoples' trust in DE. As Warframe grows the attention they will get from scammers looking to make a living off of the game will grow as well and any policy that does not hurt them and puts the burden on the whole community is only going to attract more abusers and upset everybody whether or not they lose plat. DE has to know that so I genuinely hope this is all just rumors and paranoia. Obviously enough people believe this is happening that DE should probably address the rumors even if it is not what they are doing and caused by players accidentally or forgetting about spending plat or some bug. A bug like that could create a panic too though.... 

[WildcardMoo]

On 2018-08-23 at 6:34 PM, Naftal said:

I'm pretty sure there's no "bad plat".

I thought "bad platinum" resulted from the good old "stereotypic chinese gold farmer" issue?

- Farm platinum through in game means (run fissures, sell prime parts, play the market)
- Accumulate a large amount of platinum
- Sell platinum for real life money to another player
- Do this long enough and on a large enough scale that it's being detected by DE

-> The platinum you have sold to other players has become "bad"

Edited September 6, 2018 by WildcardMoo

[(XBOX)Terreflare]

@WildcardMoo I am not sure that would explain people losing platinum they got from trades randomly. If they bought from a foreign plat farmer it would probably be against the terms of service and might get their account banned or have the platinum removed if they get caught, but they would need to prove the players exchanged money online somewhere first since they would not be able to tell what trades are bought just from game logs unless the seller advertised in the game. There is a good chance DE might not care so much in those cases because the platinum the grey market farmer accumulated and sold was presumably purchased at some point by the players they traded items with and the player who buys it is likely to spend it on stuff or trade it away again so ultimately DE profits as long as platinum was originally bought by someone and eventually spent by someone and those farmers are just possibly spoiling a customer who might have bought more new platinum to add into the market. It would cost them a little cash possibly from a lost sale, but if the player spends any of the plat on cosmetics it removes some from the marketplace which ultimately increases demand for plat and thus plat sales increase as the plat buying power rises. That would not hurt the market much because those types of farming operations rely on someone originally buying the plat at some point as opposed to the bot farming of unlimited in-game currencies that ruin many other online game economies. Basically all a "Chinese Farmer" would achieve is helping the in game demand for plat a bit increasing plat sales, hurting new plat sales a bit by stealing a few brave customers, and devaluing in game items by providing players willing to grind them constantly to trade. It would balance out to fairly neutral effects on how much money DE makes from plat and the devaluing of in game items might not be seen as a big enough issue for DE to spend too much effort stopping those sorts of farmers aside from maybe trying to shut down their websites that grow too big. It is not like DE does not devalue their own items anyway such as with twitch prime drops, and why should they care too much when they can strategically increase item values with methods like vaulting sets that have become common or tweaking drop tables? 

What they call "bad plat" would be like if you bought 4000 platinum in a sale, traded it all for valuable stuff, and then you canceled your payment or credit card before it had processed or used some law that requires companies to refund accidental purchases etc. This leaves DE with the option to let all that plat flow into the market when now no one paid for it, or take it away hurting every player that is unfortunate enough to trade for it not knowing it was not paid for before it is removed. If they leave it then people could create tons of accounts and trade the plat into bank accounts before canceling payments and deleting the old accounts and then sell all the plat they stored up on those websites dirt cheap since it was free for them, but if they remove it every player can no longer trust that the plat they made from trading is real and will not vanish in a few days for no good reason. I suppose the only really perfect option is to not let players trade plat until it is irreversibly paid for and force them to only buy cosmetics and regular marketplace items until then, but some might not buy plat if the wait before trading is too long and that might hurt profits more than letting a few scammers abuse the system.

Of course, I don't know if this is really an issue at all in the first place. Perhaps it is only a tiny minority of players who are having issues due to scammers and it is small scale enough that they would rather just take the plat to flush it out of scammers and then wait to see who sends in a ticket so they can look up the records and reimburse fairly legit trades or ban them if it is clearly a scammer or accomplice trying to recover thousands of scammed plat they traded an ammo case mod for. Maybe players are just accidentally buying things, forgetting how much they had before logging out, or maybe some are getting too drunk to remember buying 20 mod packs and this is all paranoia. I would really like to see some good proof before fingers start pointing but if this is an issue DE is having it seems important that they solve it in a way that does not hurt people's confidence in trading for plat and makes it not worth anyone's time to try abusing the system. 

[Guest]

Small scale or big scale, DE never returns plat, they only remove the so called excess. So if someone scams you and you prove it, best case scenario they remove that person's plat if he made any off of the transaction and put a trade ban on them. They openly state that they don't support nor take any responsibility for players' trading which is a scummy thing to do especially in combination with platinum still being a tradeable thing. I don't get why they don't remove platinum from tradeable items

 

They recently announced that they'd take measure against people who buy plat from third party vendors but since there's no logging of trades other than users taking screenshots there won't be a viable fix for scammers and third party vendors. It'd be best if platinum was a spend only currency it serves no purpose for DE at all to allow players to trade it and a lot of people get scammed not only by bad plat but also by people overpricing dirt cheap items and pretty much screwing over new players.