illegitimate plat problems still at hand.

[Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut]

During my 5 years of playing the game ive never witnessd this problem however i have talkd to many people who have

For those of you who dont know, due to hackers, purchasing plat from a 3rd party for any other resource (cryptocurrency, IRl money etc) basically any means that isnt through digital extremes or one of their acknowledged partners (steam etc) causes that plat to be markd as ether "illegal" or "illegitimate" plat  (after DE has acknowledged and found out that the plat was illegitimately sourced). 

Now, the fact that the people who illegitimately source the plat are punishd, banned etc is fine with me, however if those people who sourced plat end up trading with others who have no knowledge of the history of the plat, those who gaind that illegitimate plat through legitimate trades well have the illegitimately plat removed from their accounts after the sourcing of the illegitimate plat has been found by DE. Allthough this in itself is quite worrying seeing as these players who have done nothing wrong have lost some of their in game assets, i understand why this is done by DE, more importantly tho the problem that occours is that the removal of the illegitimate plat from the accounts of those who unknowingly attaind it can cause those who recieved it to be forced into negative plat depending on the account balance they have and the amount removed based on the illegitimate plat attaind unknowingly indipendant of that plat allready being spent. Once these unknowing victims are forced into negative plat their accounts will be suspended and from what i have heard they are required to pay up to $50 to regain access to their account even tho they did nothing wrong.

I will note that i do not know if ALL players that have this problem are forced to pay to regain their accounts or if the cost is the same for every situation, however I do know that this a suprisingly commen issue as multiple people i have known, clan members friends etc have had this happen to them and that there have been instances of this being reported on the forums previously with little to no response and no fix to the problem which is evident by the fact that this is still an issue.

I do acknowledge that DE have all rights to suspend, delete and remove plat from accounts, however i question the legality and reasoning behind the cost of real money to re access their accounts even tho they have no connection to the sourcing of the plat to begin with, although i am not a lawyer and havent read all of the TOS for a while so i do not know.

In conclusion i hope that DE fixes this problem possibly by not letting the plat of people other than the origional sourcer of the plat or close connections to them dip below 0, or simply look into the acoC***s of the accounts other than the sources of the plat in order to prove their innocence. My most reasonably proposal however would be temporarily removing access to trading for a duration after the removel of the plat, and have their accounts be markd in order to keep track of any suspicious activity. If nothing else i atleast hope a DE member responds to show that they have acknowledged and are working on a fix to the problem.

Sorry for my spelling and grammer, thank you for reading and please comment your experiances, opinions and suggestions down below 😄

Edit: ive noticed more people saying they had to pay to regain access to their account, for those of you who have had to or do have to do so, id recomend keeping evidense of your transaction just in case.

Edited November 17, 2019 by Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut

[taiiat]

it's a case by case basis - as quite some investigation and proof sourcing has to be done to prove you have no association with the Account that performed the chargeback.

[KnightKrawlur]

If the removal of the platinum makes your account go negative you cannot login so the only way to correct the balance is to purchase platinum from DE.

Have had this happen, this is why I no longer trade if at all possible.  Have been told if it happens again my account will be permanently banned.

 

[YUNoJump]

From what I can tell here and here, nobody should have to be paying money to unban their unfairly banned account if they're appealing it the right way.

Plat transactions are logged, so if, for example, you bought a rare mod or a market item with illegal plat and then the plat was removed, DE's support desk would be able to check that, and remove the item/mod from your inventory in order to offset the value of the removed plat. I've never had this happen to myself, but there seem to be a lot of other people online saying that's how it goes.

Bans are reviewed on a case-by-case basis apparently, so at the very least you should be able to discuss the issue with the support desk and get a response from a human being instead of an autoban robot.

[Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut]

29 minutes ago, taiiat said:

it's a case by case basis - as quite some investigation and proof sourcing has to be done to prove you have no association with the Account that performed the chargeback.

I completely agree and understand the trouble with it, but in my opinion i still dont think that warents the charging of up to $50 to regain access to your accounts, this is why i recomended possibly temporary trade bans and possbile tracking of those accounts (although i can understand that may also be an extionsion of more work for DE) so i welcome any other suggestions for solutions :D.

[Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut]

20 minutes ago, YUNoJump said:

From what I can tell here and here, nobody should have to be paying money to unban their unfairly banned account if they're appealing it the right way.

 

The first link given is verry intresting thank you for linking it, however given the amount of people that have had this problem in the past year i would say that ether the contense of that post is out of date, or as you said the people i have talkd to may have bit appeald in the apropriate way, however having to appeal in the first place is something i think is a bit problematic due to the fact that simply implimenting a proper system to deal with the situation would both save the time of pllayers effected and the DE staff (atleast in my opinion.

Given the second link all i can really say is that there have been cases of this problem within the past year possibly making these comments invalid, or simply that there may be specific conditions for the people i have talkd to about the situation that i do not know of.

The case considering the $50 charge to regain an account that i mentiond was within the past year and was an issiue experianced by somebody living in vietnam (which may be a reason behind it if there are different conditions depending on region) and i was informd they this contact support with a ticket, although even if they did not i find that fact that DE would take $50 from a person for the purposes of regaining an account after being suspended without looking into the situation to some extent first.

The comment on loggd transactions is fully true however the concept that so many people would have this problem even tho this is a posibilitie makes me question why DE dousnt make this more accessable due to the fact that in some cases i have heard that people were simply ignored and offerd no help in returning their accounts via the normal means of questioning, accessing trade history etc. which i would suggest might just be a worker problem depending on the person who recieves your support ticket.

[Jiminez_Burial]

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

it's a case by case basis - as quite some investigation and proof sourcing has to be done to prove you have no association with the Account that performed the chargeback.

You shouldn't have to provide evidence of your innocence, DE should have to provide evidence of your guilt.  A 'guilty until proven innocent' system is honestly BS.

[DerDzvero]

Why would anyone be asked to pay real life money if its account gets punished (unfair on top)?

Did anyone take that stupid platinum and brought it to real life somehow? Or did DE lose a cup of coffee?

Pretty much this story should mean one thing only - never ever spend money on that shady studio, they don't care of regular customers. F2P should be banned by law the same way as loot boxes, there's nothing for free and most of the time there's nothing good to play there too, apart from gambling.

Edited November 9, 2019 by DerDzvero

[Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut]

I wouldnt go that far... 

8 minutes ago, DerDzvero said:

Why would anyone be asked to pay real life money if its account gets punished (unfair on top)?

Did anyone take that stupid platinum and brought it to real life somehow? Or did DE lose a cup of coffee?

Pretty much this story should mean one thing only - never ever spend money on that shady studio, they don't care of regular customers. F2P should be banned by law the same way as loot boxes, there's nothing for free and most of the time there's nothing good to play there too, apart from gambling.

I wouldnt go that far... i fully disagree with this S#&$ty system they have but in general warframe is much better than other F2P games when it comes to forcing micro transactions onto you, i can see that warframe probably charges money to stop people from repeat offenses or to regian money lost from illegitimate plat, but its simply the fact that the wrong people are getting punishd and nothing is being done about it (as far as i know)

[DerDzvero]

They don't lose money if they catch the "illegal plat" and remove it from the game. Asking for real life payment on top is absolutely illegal in 3/4th of countries by any means and pure scam. How much better or worse is in comparison to other F2P casino simulators it's difficult to answer, but a game like GW2 seems like God blessings, compared to this ..game.

Edited November 9, 2019 by DerDzvero

[Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut]

yeah sorry was wrong about the DE losing money thing XD

[taiiat]

4 hours ago, Jiminez_Burial said:

You shouldn't have to provide evidence of your innocence, DE should have to provide evidence of your guilt.

normally i would agree, but untraceable Fraud is a fairly large problem for Businesses, the way it is currently handled is the only way to ensure that said Fraud cannot profit in the game in any way.
the sort of looser control over the problem you're looking for, allows Fraud to buy things in the game without negative repercussions. simply nullifying Plat down to a minimum of 0 as the Fraudulent Plat is reversed across the game, still allows for the Plat to purchase anything in the game, and therefore potentially move legitimate items into specific Accounts (a way to make money from nothing).
and that's on top of being out money to begin with because the chargeback still costs the receiving Company in Transaction fees, even if it gets reversed. all incoming Transactions have a fee, regardless of the end result.

i don't like it any more than the next person, but... i don't see any other options that still prevents Fraud from achieving anything as much as possible. except say, the game only allowing purchases via other Payment processors that take the liability, so restricting Warframe purchases to Steam/Paypal only, maybe a couple other middleman processors. and not accepting Credit/Debit at all, and no pre-paid Cards of any sort.
but that's definitely not a solution. Credit/Debit is where the majority of all money Businesses receive come from, and pre-paid Cards are massively popular in certain regions (for example, apparently 75% or greater of all Video Game related sales in Japan happen via Pre-paid Cards, quite interesting).

Edited November 9, 2019 by taiiat

[Jiminez_Burial]

12 hours ago, taiiat said:

normally i would agree, but untraceable Fraud is a fairly large problem for Businesses, the way it is currently handled is the only way to ensure that said Fraud cannot profit in the game in any way.
the sort of looser control over the problem you're looking for, allows Fraud to buy things in the game without negative repercussions. simply nullifying Plat down to a minimum of 0 as the Fraudulent Plat is reversed across the game, still allows for the Plat to purchase anything in the game, and therefore potentially move legitimate items into specific Accounts (a way to make money from nothing).
and that's on top of being out money to begin with because the chargeback still costs the receiving Company in Transaction fees, even if it gets reversed. all incoming Transactions have a fee, regardless of the end result.

i don't like it any more than the next person, but... i don't see any other options that still prevents Fraud from achieving anything as much as possible. except say, the game only allowing purchases via other Payment processors that take the liability, so restricting Warframe purchases to Steam/Paypal only, maybe a couple other middleman processors. and not accepting Credit/Debit at all, and no pre-paid Cards of any sort.
but that's definitely not a solution. Credit/Debit is where the majority of all money Businesses receive come from, and pre-paid Cards are massively popular in certain regions (for example, apparently 75% or greater of all Video Game related sales in Japan happen via Pre-paid Cards, quite interesting).

Yes but that's all something that a retailer/sales business opts into when they choose to go into business.  The consumer shouldn't be buggered over because a business can't do their due diligence and actually provide proof before dealing out the punishment.  No matter how reasonable it seems from certain perspectives, when innocent people are punished for crimes they had no knowledge of then the system is #*!%ed.

[Hobie-wan]

IMHO, don't buy rivens for ridiculous amounts like 1000+ plat and you're probably far less likely to encounter scum and scammers.

[Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut]

53 minutes ago, Hobie-wan said:

IMHO, don't buy rivens for ridiculous amounts like 1000+ plat and you're probably far less likely to encounter scum and scammers.

That is a good point, however i personally dont think it should be a problem in the first place causing people to resrict themselves from trading within the game.

[Hobie-wan]

2 hours ago, Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut said:

That is a good point, however i personally dont think it should be a problem in the first place causing people to resrict themselves from trading within the game.

Indeed, but scammers smell money whenever it collects in large amounts. This unfortunately applies to everything.

[Atsia]

I mean, what else would you have DE do? They can't let the fake plat stay within circulation, and they don't want to remove the items you bought with the plat, for issues like you using the plat to buy any of the boosters, then using what you get from the boosters (such as the resource boosters) to build something. You want them to remove fully built and forma-ed frames or weapons, or rivens that you used Kuva farmed off the illegal plat to roll? How do you propose DE recoups the loss that's now gonna be in their books? They're still a business that needs to make money.

[notlamprey]

23 hours ago, Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut said:

I do acknowledge that DE have all rights to suspend, delete and remove plat from accounts, however i question the legality and reasoning behind the cost of real money to re access their accounts even tho they have no connection to the sourcing of the plat to begin with, although i am not a lawyer and havent read all of the TOS for a while so i do not know.

I got really curious about this, so I asked four local practicing lawyers. For all who aren't interested in legal junk, I've spoilered that section below:

Spoiler

 

This is a hypothetical in U.S. contract law, and the four lawyers I asked were all very quick to point out that they have limited experience practicing contract law. Grain of salt, etc.

Mark R., Don B., Vivian J. and Vivian J. Jr. (father and son) all gave their thoughts and I've boiled it down as best I could:

This is a contract of adhesion and you shouldn't agree to it without first formally requesting that it be modified. The contract should include a formal process for this. If it doesn't, that would be a problem in court if someone were to challenge it. Practical difficulties of actually challenging it are another matter, but that's a frequent point of weakness with many game/service agreements.

If you have already agreed to the terms, then you can still request that the terms be altered but you are more likely to face resistance in the form of things like Mediation / Arbitration / Dispute Resolution clauses. At this point, your best card to play would be a lay person's ignorance. "I didn't realize the deal was like this, and I'd like some changes." You aren't likely to get anywhere using this strategy with a corporation, but it's still worth a shot as an alternative to litigation.

In the (unlikely and inadvisable) event that someone did initiate litigation against DE over something like this, it becomes a question of jurisdiction. Where can DE be hailed into court? Jurisdiction and the authoritative precedent therein would have a very big impact on the course of the case.

Most U.S. courts take a very negative interpretation of agreements like Warframe's ToS - the official fancy term of art is "highly disfavored." Since players are not a party to the negotiation of terms, the common practice for U.S. courts is to interpret any and all possible ambiguity or vagueness in favor of the party who did not prepare the contract. That's you.

Bottom Line & Takeaway:

Agreements like this one tend to be very unfair on purpose. You do have at least some opportunity, even if not stated in the agreement, to attempt to negotiate more favorable terms. Consensus among the legal practitioners I've spoken to is that you should always at least give it a shot. You never know what pleasant surprise you might get behind closed doors, for example a renegotiated ToS on condition that you not disclose its terms to any third party.

None of this is to be interpreted as free license to "stick it to the man," as some more litigious parties might suggest. Lawsuits are insanely expensive and destructive beyond what the average person imagines, and it really should never come to that over a video game account except in the most extreme outlier cases. Chances are that doesn't include you, or anyone you know. 

Sketchy plat will likely always be an issue with Warframe, and I have to confess I haven't given it enough thought to really offer anything I'd call a good possible solution.

Unfortunately the best advice I can really offer is what others have already pointed out - keep enough plat on hand to cover any surprise subtractions from at least the last 60 days' trading. If you've received 1000 plat in the last month, keep at least that amount on hand for another month to ensure that any fraudulent chargebacks will have already been dealt with by DE before you spend any of your platinum.

It's a pretty significant pain for most people to keep a detailed platinum ledger and a running reserve, but I really can't think of any better way to protect against surprise account lockouts due to negative platinum balances.

_{edit: technically Vivian and Gaines are two different lawyers, even if they're related and have very similar opinions :p}

Edited November 10, 2019 by notlamprey

[Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut]

26 minutes ago, Atsia said:

I mean, what else would you have DE do? They can't let the fake plat stay within circulation, and they don't want to remove the items you bought with the plat, for issues like you using the plat to buy any of the boosters, then using what you get from the boosters (such as the resource boosters) to build something. You want them to remove fully built and forma-ed frames or weapons, or rivens that you used Kuva farmed off the illegal plat to roll? How do you propose DE recoups the loss that's now gonna be in their books? They're still a business that needs to make money.

in theory they lose no tangible assets, however the recomendations i made at the end of the post are all ive thought of as solutons personally, in general i dont have a problem with them removing the plat, i simply have a problem with the removal of plat from people who unkowingly recieved the plat from somebody who illegitimatly sourced it causing these unkowing victims to have their account banned/suspended (i think the suspension is about 4 years? not sure) and then having them pay to return their accounts after doing nothing wrong in some cases.

Should unknowing players be punishd for another persons missdee?.

[Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut]

34 minutes ago, notlamprey said:

I got really curious about this, so I asked four local practicing lawyers. For all who aren't interested in legal junk, I've spoilered that section below:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

This is a hypothetical in U.S. contract law, and the four lawyers I asked were all very quick to point out that they have limited experience practicing contract law. Grain of salt, etc.

Mark R., Don B., Vivian J. and Vivian J. Jr. (father and son) all gave their thoughts and I've boiled it down as best I could:

This is a contract of adhesion and you shouldn't agree to it without first formally requesting that it be modified. The contract should include a formal process for this. If it doesn't, that would be a problem in court if someone were to challenge it. Practical difficulties of actually challenging it are another matter, but that's a frequent point of weakness with many game/service agreements.

If you have already agreed to the terms, then you can still request that the terms be altered but you are more likely to face resistance in the form of things like Mediation / Arbitration / Dispute Resolution clauses. At this point, your best card to play would be a lay person's ignorance. "I didn't realize the deal was like this, and I'd like some changes." You aren't likely to get anywhere using this strategy with a corporation, but it's still worth a shot as an alternative to litigation.

In the (unlikely and inadvisable) event that someone did initiate litigation against DE over something like this, it becomes a question of jurisdiction. Where can DE be hailed into court? Jurisdiction and the authoritative precedent therein would have a very big impact on the course of the case.

Most U.S. courts take a very negative interpretation of agreements like Warframe's ToS - the official fancy term of art is "highly disfavored." Since players are not a party to the negotiation of terms, the common practice for U.S. courts is to interpret any and all possible ambiguity or vagueness in favor of the party who did not prepare the contract. That's you.

Bottom Line & Takeaway:

Agreements like this one tend to be very unfair on purpose. You do have at least some opportunity, even if not stated in the agreement, to attempt to negotiate more favorable terms. Consensus among the legal practitioners I've spoken to is that you should always at least give it a shot. You never know what pleasant surprise you might get behind closed doors, for example a renegotiated ToS on condition that you not disclose its terms to any third party.

None of this is to be interpreted as free license to "stick it to the man," as some more litigious parties might suggest. Lawsuits are insanely expensive and destructive beyond what the average person imagines, and it really should never come to that over a video game account except in the most extreme outlier cases. Chances are that doesn't include you, or anyone you know. 

 

Dude thank you for the insight

[Atsia]

15 minutes ago, Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut said:

in theory they lose no tangible assets, however the recomendations i made at the end of the post are all ive thought of as solutons personally, in general i dont have a problem with them removing the plat, i simply have a problem with the removal of plat from people who unkowingly recieved the plat from somebody who illegitimatly sourced it causing these unkowing victims to have their account banned/suspended (i think the suspension is about 4 years? not sure) and then having them pay to return their accounts after doing nothing wrong in some cases.

Should unknowing players be punishd for another persons missdee?.

That's really an unfortunate circumstance of the trade system. Plat can spread between people quick, and DE can't let it stay in the game when they find out about it. They also can't really be as kind as they usual are for these kind of things, cause it hurts them financially, and any business is unlikely to willingly take on revenue loss.

Edited November 10, 2019 by Atsia

[Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut]

16 minutes ago, Atsia said:

That's really an unfortunate circumstance of the trade system. Plat can spread between people quick, and DE can't let it stay in the game when they find out about it. They also can't really be as kind as they usual are for these kind of things, cause it hurts them financially, and any business is unlikely to willingly take on revenue loss.

Agreed, i hope they can atleast acknowledge the problem and possibly make it easier for those effected to regain their accounts if nothing else although i do understand the trouble can and would have with the situation.

[BloodKitten]

the system is flawed, just like pets and AI navigations.

a player that sell and item should not loose the plat he got from trading, DE need to check where the plat came from first, then remove and put the progenitor account into a minus if they dont have enough, the other players should have the bad platinum removed, and replaced with non tradeable platinum and a message in email saying why it hapened.

[YUNoJump]

17 minutes ago, BloodKitten said:

the system is flawed, just like pets and AI navigations.

a player that sell and item should not loose the plat he got from trading, DE need to check where the plat came from first, then remove and put the progenitor account into a minus if they dont have enough, the other players should have the bad platinum removed, and replaced with non tradeable platinum and a message in email saying why it hapened.

That just creates an easy system for goldfarmers though, as long as their buyers understand that the plat isn't tradeable their business still runs perfectly. Even after the transaction is cancelled, buyers can just buy whatever they want on the Market, which is just as important to DE as trading because it's one of the only ways to actually take plat out of circulation. There are even a few things on the Market that could be traded with other players for real plat, eg the new Requiem Relic Pack. It's not just about punishing goldfarmers (they always create throwaway accounts anyway), it's about maintaining a legitimate plat economy.

[Thegreatgrandmarjuganaut]

15 hours ago, YUNoJump said:

That just creates an easy system for goldfarmers though, as long as their buyers understand that the plat isn't tradeable their business still runs perfectly. Even after the transaction is cancelled, buyers can just buy whatever they want on the Market, which is just as important to DE as trading because it's one of the only ways to actually take plat out of circulation. There are even a few things on the Market that could be traded with other players for real plat, eg the new Requiem Relic Pack. It's not just about punishing goldfarmers (they always create throwaway accounts anyway), it's about maintaining a legitimate plat economy.

Blood kittens idea may not be perfect but you have to admit that there should be a better way to deal with the issue, and i appreciate the input from both of you 😄