How to reduce the incidence of platinum scam? Suggestion: "Hot Platinum" and "Cool Platinum"

[BrazilianJoe]

Context: 

I am NOT complaining at the forums. I have a ticket open and am already resolving the issue. I am posting constructive feedback and a proposal for improvement. 

 

The History below is representative of many others, and I replicate it NOT as a compleint, but as an example of the problem, to which I will propose an improvement: 

Recently - as in today - my account was suspended due to negative platinum balance. I was very  surprised, being a veteran played with a very old account.

Last week I sold a bunch of Warframe Prime sets, around 4 of them more or less, to make plat for the Garuda full set, as a way to reward DE for the update. 

I also purchased a few other minor items - the new sentinel, a 3x forma set, and 3x riven slot. Maybe something else. 

Today my acount was suspended due to negative platinum balance. I immediately opened a ticket, checked my balance, explained the situation to support. In good faith of the resolution, I also purchased some plat so put my account back in the black. I am still awaiting a response from support. 

--

What happened is that the other player had rotten platinum - maybe he is a scammer, but he could also be a victim. But I have no way to verify this. The removal of his platinum trickled back to me and put me in the negative. 

Scenario of a shady platinum business: 

User AScammer steals a Warframe account from AVictim. 

Ascammer passes on plat from Avictim to himself. 

Ascammer buys stuff from BVictim. 

Bvictim unknowingly has stolen plat. 

Bvictim Buys stuff from Cvictim with stolen platinum - unknowingly!

When the scam is detected and the platinum trades are reversed: 

Avictim gets its plat restored. GOOD!

Ascammer gets his account suspended. GOOD!

Bvictim and Cvictim may get their accounts suspended if their plat balance goes negative, even if they are innocent and acted in good faith! BAD!

How to improve this scenario? 

 

My proposal is: HOT PLAT and COOL PLAT. 

HOT PLAT cannot be used on the store or traded. 

COOL plat can be used in all the ways we currently use them. buy and trade. All platinum currently is cool.

SIMPLE CONCEPT. 

Q: How to make platinum hot? 

A:

1) Any account change - password, email, username - makes 100% of the user's platinum HOT for 2 weeks. This is to mitigate plat steal from hijacked accounts. 

2) Any traded platinum becomes HOT for 1 week. This gives a large window for any scammed user to open a ticked and get its platinum back, making much less likely the Bvictim and Cvictim from getting their plat balance negative as well, because plat must cool down before it can be used.

HOT PLATINUM gives a 14 day window for trade scams to be identified before they can propagate throughout the community and do lasting damage to more users. The long waiting period is also a deterrent for would-be scammers, making scams less desirable, also resulting in less work for support. 

My other wish is that rolled back platinum trades also remove inventory items from the trader. it would be bad to have a lopsided restoration where the platinum goes back, but the user gets to keep the traded item. 

Edited November 15, 2018 by BrazilianJoe

[Kuestenjung]

vor 20 Minuten schrieb BrazilianJoe:

I am posting constructive feedback and a proposal for improvement. 

Making a thread in general discussion. Great feedback.

And btw, there is no such thing as scamming in warframe. You have to agree 2 times if you wanna do the trade.

[Ethorin]

3 minutes ago, Kuestenjung said:

And btw, there is no such thing as scamming in warframe. You have to agree 2 times if you wanna do the trade.

...you literally didn't read his post lol.

 

my only issue with this is how it impacts people trading for plat in order to get slots, personally I very rarely actually realize "oh hey I need more slots" until I have something actively building in the Foundry that I am excited to play with, occasionally when it's something I'm building for MR I literally don't realize I have no slots left until I try to pull it.

[Autongnosis]

It might work tbh, just to be sure: you're not advocating for hot plat to not be tradeable for 2 weeks, right? It's just a measure for support to better manage rollbacks, correct? 

[(PSN)drpunk-yo]

We personally have absolutely no idea how bad an issue "dirty" platinum is. If there's not that much of it then locking out ALL platinum made in trades for 14 days is going a tad overboard and would have serious consequences on trading.

There's nothing stopping people themselves imposing a 14 day ban spending traded platinum. It's probably what you should have done yourself. Either that or you make sure you've got spare platinum to cover the cost of whatever it is you are buying.

Sometimes we gotta look after ourselves.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

31 minutes ago, BrazilianJoe said:

Q: How to make platinum hot? 

A:

1) Any account change - password, email, username - makes 100% of the user's platinum HOT for 2 weeks. This is to mitigate plat steal from hijacked accounts. 

2) Any traded platinum becomes HOT for 2 weeks. This gives a large window for any scammed user to open a ticked and get its platinum back, making much less likely the Bvictim and Cvictim from getting their plat balance negative as well, because plat must cool down before it can be used.

HOT PLATINUM gives a 14 day window for trade scams to be identified before they can propagate throughout the community and do lasting damage to more users. The long waiting period is also a deterrent for would-be scammers, making scams less desirable, also resulting in less work for support. 

My other wish is that rolled back platinum trades also remove inventory items from the trader. it would be bad to have a lopsided restoration where the platinum goes back, but the user gets to keep the traded item. 

Uh... That means that plat you got in trade wouldn't be usable for 2 weeks. So new frame drops, you want it, you sell prime stuff, you make more than enough plat and you still can't buy the items for at least 2 weeks. That's not going to go down well with a lot of the folks who play our free to play game for free, just saying. 

And it really doesn't address the other way that people on PC get their bogus plat. 

 

11 minutes ago, Kuestenjung said:

Making a thread in general discussion. Great feedback.

And btw, there is no such thing as scamming in warframe. You have to agree 2 times if you wanna do the trade.

Like Ethorin said, you should definitely have at least read what you were responding to, especially if you intended to use such a silly absolute. 

[Wyrmius_Prime]

As long as it is possible for a victim to get banned for something that somebody else did, the system is absolutely terrible.

 

17 minutes ago, Kuestenjung said:

Making a thread in general discussion. Great feedback.

And btw, there is no such thing as scamming in warframe. You have to agree 2 times if you wanna do the trade.

You should start by actually reading the post. Negative plat balance isn't something that happens through regular trading.

Edited November 15, 2018 by Wyrmius_Prime

[BrazilianJoe]

Steam imposes 2-week trade ban on account changes. 

Perhaps 2 weeks cooldown on plat trades is a bit overboard, but 7 days would be just enough. 

[Chappie]

51 minutes ago, BrazilianJoe said:

..... but 7 days would be just enough. 

Source?  Data?  Assumption based upon personal beliefs and biases?

[(XBOX)motionROTATION]

Is negative platinum a PC only problem? I do agree that they should just undo your purchases and take the platinum back. No need to force them negative though. If they can track the platinum then they should be able to track everything else too

[bleubleu]

Do not trade expensive stuff to low MR accounts, ever.

Do not trade for more than double your plat reserves, ever.

[DoomFruit]

I remember reading that buying plat normally and then cancelling the payment with their credit card provider is another cause of negative plat, and have a vague recollection of some kind of shady third-party plat selling websites also resulting in this. While OP's idea would help with account hijacking issues, the other two causes would need to be fixed by some other method.

[trst]

Unless I'm misunderstanding something here there is no such thing as "trading dirty plat", plat only becomes "dirty" once the person files a chargeback. And a chargeback for most, if not all cards/services, can be preformed well after two weeks time.

The other issue with why innocent players get caught up in this is because any leniency DE allows in the system will also allow for more people to get away with fraud, and the more you're able to get away with it the more people will attempt it leading to substantially more issues that before. Also for anyone who doesn't know a charge back is not a refund, a charge back comes with fees that DE needs to pay out of their pocket that make the entire situation ultimately costs more than the initial purchase itself.

 

What would be nice is if DE tracked purchase history and rollback every purchase necessary to put the player back to a positive balance, however, this doesn't fix the issue of plat getting moves between several different parties before becoming "dirty". Rolling back an entire chain/web of player trades would end up with a lot of players more confused and angry than they get now.

[peterc3]

4 hours ago, trst said:

What would be nice is if DE tracked purchase history and rollback every purchase necessary to put the player back to a positive balance, however, this doesn't fix the issue of plat getting moves between several different parties before becoming "dirty". Rolling back an entire chain/web of player trades would end up with a lot of players more confused and angry than they get now.

How do you rollback the buying and use of a booster?

[SenariousNex]

19 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

How do you rollback the buying and use of a booster?

Cancel All boosters + apply a debuff opposite of booster that is only active during mission times.

[peterc3]

2 minutes ago, SenariousNex said:

Cancel All boosters + apply a debuff opposite of booster that is only active during mission times.

Someone has already used the Affinity Booster to level things. Someone got the parts to build something with the double resource booster. How do you undo that?

[GnarlsDarkley]

10 hours ago, BrazilianJoe said:

Q: How to make platinum hot? 

A:

1) Any account change - password, email, username - makes 100% of the user's platinum HOT for 2 weeks. This is to mitigate plat steal from hijacked accounts. 

2) Any traded platinum becomes HOT for 1 week. This gives a large window for any scammed user to open a ticked and get its platinum back, making much less likely the Bvictim and Cvictim from getting their plat balance negative as well, because plat must cool down before it can be used.

HOT PLATINUM gives a 14 day window for trade scams to be identified before they can propagate throughout the community and do lasting damage to more users. The long waiting period is also a deterrent for would-be scammers, making scams less desirable, also resulting in less work for support. 

Nothing of this sounds appealing.

I take screenshots of trades exceeding 100p ot if sth smells fishy (low MR who wants to purchase some of my high value stuff = 500+ or funny names like 20897302) and keep a record of my current plat.

If I see plat is missing I check the screenshots to find the corresponding ones. I then file a ticket stating which items I traded with whom by giving them the screenshot(s). 

The plat will be lost in any case, but your items will be restored, so always stay in the black like @bleubleu said.

 

10 hours ago, BrazilianJoe said:

My other wish is that rolled back platinum trades also remove inventory items from the trader.

If someone uses a chargeback and already "got rid" of their "bad" plat this user will be permabanned without hesitation

[SenariousNex]

27 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Someone has already used the Affinity Booster to level things. Someone got the parts to build something with the double resource booster. How do you undo that?

Affinity debuff for future exp, resource debuff for future resources seems god enough, system that would track down every single little action to undo everything is going to be too complicated to be worth it.

[Spectre-8]

12 hours ago, BrazilianJoe said:

1) Any account change - password, email, username - makes 100% of the user's platinum HOT for 2 weeks. This is to mitigate plat steal from hijacked accounts. 

 

 

Not going to happen ever , good luck though.

[wtflag]

Inconvenience for 100% of the players to resolve a problem affecting 0.01% of the players.  

DE should just absorb the cost based on situation. (Ie as long as Bvictim is not actually Baccomplice) This can be deduced from the volume of trade and equality of value of goods exchanged.

[BladeRambler]

So long as DE accepts credit cards for plat purchases, there will be this problem. The only way around it is to have users write a check or physically hand over cash/money orders first, have the funds clear in DE's account, and then they issue the platinum. That is the only way to ensure that the total amount of platinum that is in circulation has been tied to actual money received by DE, and will forever be nonrefundable.

What I don't understand is that there isn't a way to track trades at all in the game. There are no statistics, or most-recent trades, or plat received from trades, nothing of any reference beyond what they can see on their servers and user screenshots. I believe a more transparent trading platform would help this a lot more than people realize. Let my trading partners look at my most recent 10 or 20 plat transactions, see that I'm a frequent buyer and seller, and then they can trade with me in confidence. If I'm trading with someone who just bought 10K plat, then 2 god-roll Lanka rivens, at MR5, I'm going to be suspicious to sell to them.

[Lordmotav]

With how long the game has been out I always feel like these stories are hilariously one sided and missing something. This sort of thing doesn't just happen out of nowhere.

[Nannoo]

Maybe DE should split plat from steam purchase, with plat through credit card purchase (or other means that can be charged back). 
I'm assuming this doesn't happen to console players because I read they buy with PS4 / XBOX points so any charge backs are handled by sony / microsoft rather than DE.

So I'm assuming purchases through steam would still be paid to DE and any charge backs is handled by steam.

 

If anything above if false just disregard this post ☺️

This stuff is the reason why I only sell low plat items.... gems, fishes. I don't sell prime sets... I sell the parts separately

It sucks, but what can you do

 

[SirKnum]

2 hours ago, Lordmotav said:

With how long the game has been out I always feel like these stories are hilariously one sided and missing something. This sort of thing doesn't just happen out of nowhere.

Obviously you need to trade in the first place to be affected by that. And you need to sell to someone who is either stupid or malicious. How are you supposed to see that? A large number of trades is literally contacting someone via copypasta from a trading site, sending or receiving an invite, trading, both sides saying "thanks" and that is it. Sometimes there is some haggling before but most of the time it is all over in a minute or so, that works the same for 5 plat trades as for 500 plat trades. And if you are the unlucky sod that happens to receive plat that is recalled later you might end up with negative plat through no fault of your own.

[Lordmotav]

2 hours ago, SirKnum said:

Obviously you need to trade in the first place to be affected by that. And you need to sell to someone who is either stupid or malicious. How are you supposed to see that? A large number of trades is literally contacting someone via copypasta from a trading site, sending or receiving an invite, trading, both sides saying "thanks" and that is it. Sometimes there is some haggling before but most of the time it is all over in a minute or so, that works the same for 5 plat trades as for 500 plat trades. And if you are the unlucky sod that happens to receive plat that is recalled later you might end up with negative plat through no fault of your own.

Let me be more direct since you don't understand what I mean.

 

I mean someone is lying. And that someone is probably the op. Every time anyone gets banned in any game they always come right to the game's forum or subreddit with a half true story looking for pity. Its a tale as old as gaming.