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About Platinum, Trading, and Scammers


NeoBahamut19

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15 minutes ago, Berzerkules said:

There is no clear solution where everyone wins. DE wants to make sales and encourage trading, they are a business after all.

I just feel that innocent people should not have their accounts banned and DE should take steps to resolve this long standing problem. Until then, we have to take steps to protect ourselves. 

I played a lot of Diablo 2 back in the day where duped items would poof from your inventory, I've been burned in trades more times than I can count. Maybe I'm just accepted the fact that no in game trade system is perfect. You will eventually get screwed but there are always ways to minimize the risk. 

Many people would not be ok with purchased plat being untradeable for days though. It's really a no win situation for everyone.

 

Then it sounds like the only acceptable answer is for DE to not punish unknowing victims.

 

8 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

Negative plat is pretty rare nowadays. DE support usually sends you a mail regarding the illegal plat and told you not to spend any plat while they do an audit of your account. If they found out you are innocent, the plat purchase and trade will be reversed. For example, if you trade an arcane energize for 1000p and you do not spend any of it you will get your energize back and platinum taken once they found out  you are the innocent party. If that plat you spend into market items DE will remove those purchased item.

But for safety measures, do this :

  • Take screenshot of the trade before accepting.
  • Do not spend the plat for at least one week.

 

Threads elsewhere state otherwise and I've tried to find official stances on the subject and most of it boils down to them placing all the blame on the victim.

 

Digital Extremes implemented the system, they watch over the system, they make the Platinum sales. We as consumers should be protected by them as well. Giving people negative Platinum balances and banning them is not protecting those consumers, it's actually quite the opposite. It's an openly hostile stance they've taken towards their very own customers.

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1 minute ago, NeoBahamut19 said:

Threads elsewhere state otherwise and I've tried to find official stances on the subject and most of it boils down to them placing all the blame on the victim.

 

Digital Extremes implemented the system, they watch over the system, they make the Platinum sales. We as consumers should be protected by them as well. Giving people negative Platinum balances and banning them is not protecting those consumers, it's actually quite the opposite. It's an openly hostile stance they've taken towards their very own customers.

When were those threads were posted? It might be old threads when they haven't implemented this system yet.

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1 hour ago, NeoBahamut19 said:

 

I shouldn't have to be protecting myself in THEIR store that THEY set up, and risk being punished if I am the one who receives illegal Platinum unknowingly. You miss the point entirely. Congrats.

 

 

TOS doesn't excuse shady decisions by DE.

Calm bro, trying to offer some friendly advice. 

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33 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

When were those threads were posted? It might be old threads when they haven't implemented this system yet.

Reddit, Steam, 2020, 2021, various threads. Even on here. Just do a google search on the topic.

7 minutes ago, (PSN)goonie4good said:

Calm bro, trying to offer some friendly advice. 

The CAPS is for emphasis on certain words, but yes, you did miss the point.

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1 hour ago, NeoBahamut19 said:

Either DE doesn't take away plat/items from players, says "we made a mistake allowing this transaction, sorry",

Lol

Except there was no mistake on DE's part. It's the people that do charge backs on their card's fault. All DE does is remove the plat that was charged back.

The best thing to do is 1. Not trade for large amounts of plat at a time or 2. Don't spend said platinum right away  

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5 minutes ago, NeoBahamut19 said:

Reddit, Steam, 2020, 2021, various threads. Even on here. Just do a google search on the topic.

The CAPS is for emphasis on certain words, but yes, you did miss the point.

It wasn't the caps, just the condescending sense I got from the reply. You seemed worried about a potential ban in the future, I simply offered one safe guard to cover you butt. I don't like the system and potential for fraudulent transactions either. That's all, no hard feelings. 

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11 minutes ago, (XBOX)Shodian said:

Lol

Except there was no mistake on DE's part. It's the people that do charge backs on their card's fault. All DE does is remove the plat that was charged back.

The best thing to do is 1. Not trade for large amounts of plat at a time or 2. Don't spend said platinum right away  

 

Except there is: They took the money from a fraudulent buyer and then punished an innocent customer who traded unknowingly with that fraudulent buyer.

Also, very little of this is likely due to chargebacks and it's almost entirely due to people scamming and using stolen CC information to make plat purchases.

So they use stolen CC information to purchase a product from DE, they then use that purchase in trading, and when caught, they are banned AND the people they traded with become victims that DE won't do anything about or may even ban outright.

That's like the cops arresting and jailing someone for unknowingly purchasing stolen goods. That doesn't fly in the real world and entire investigations are launched in the off chances that it does.

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5 minutes ago, NeoBahamut19 said:

Also, very little of this is likely due to chargebacks and it's almost entirely due to people scamming and using stolen CC information to make plat purchases.

Hence the charge backs, if a charge shows up on my card that I did not make the first thing I do is suspend the card the second is have my bank dispute the charge and that always leads to a charge back.

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Here's an argument for why DE should change the policy and "take it on the chin" so to speak, instead of passing the debt onto the innocent player:

yes, they do lose that platinum (which btw isn't real money as it cannot convert back), however their current policy also makes me Very Wary of spending large amounts of Plat in the first place.

Consider how much business is lost by reluctant players, verses the losses from Not Charging the player who got screwed over?

I would argue that more Profits would be gained Overall by having the Good PR, than what is gained from the penny pinching.

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9 minutes ago, Slayer-. said:

What I do is take screenshots of chat trades and I shadowplay the trade, if my plat stays the same for a while I'll then delete the little video file, haha when I remember.

 

And that's the problem, that players are being essentially encouraged to do that due to a lack of trade logs for players as well as protections for those players from negative balances and bans.

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25 minutes ago, NeoBahamut19 said:

They took the money from a fraudulent buyer and then punished an innocent customer who traded unknowingly with that fraudulent buyer

Negative Ghost Rider. The money was legit. But then the charge back happened. So the plat goes away. Because the plat associated with the charge is gone. Yes it sucks that the plat was traded away and then removed, but thats why I don't trade for large amounts of plat at a time. 

I suppose they could have a waiting period for when you could use the bought plat in a trade. That'd really be the only solution. 

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2 minutes ago, NeoBahamut19 said:

 

And that's the problem, that players are being essentially encouraged to do that due to a lack of trade logs for players as well as protections for those players from negative balances and bans.

For me it's like getting a receipt when you buy something in real life, if it goes bad then I'll take it back, my digital receipt is so I can show DE it wasn't my fault on my end and give me back my plat that was mine. Never needed to do it as I've never had a problem with trading all these years.

I think my video record is because I am what I am, for having a contingency plan.

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1 minute ago, (XBOX)Shodian said:

I suppose they could have a waiting period for when you could use the bought plat in a trade. That'd really be the only solution. 

This would be the route to go purchased plat can not be traded between players for 30days, that gives more than enough time for charges to show up on card statements

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8 minutes ago, (XBOX)Shodian said:

Negative Ghost Rider. The money was legit. But then the charge back happened. So the plat goes away. Because the plat associated with the charge is gone. Yes it sucks that the plat was traded away and then removed, but thats why I don't trade for large amounts of plat at a time. 

I suppose they could have a waiting period for when you could use the bought plat in a trade. That'd really be the only solution. 

 

It's not about if the money is legit, it's about if the transaction is legitimate. /facepalm

It's still on DE, not traders down the line, to bear the brunt of a bad transaction on their watch that has the potential to hurt their other customers down the line.

All the copium in the world can't mask this fact.

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Hello. What is your source for the exchanges that go down when a victim is scammed? This is slightly rhetorical, What I mean is, you mentioned various threads here, Reddit and Steam, but could the credibility of them be questionable, and could various degrees of nuance be lost? This question is sincere. I have seen similar sentiment as far as issues involving scams, and troubles with bans, but often some situations or accounts of events lack credible details, and the individual isn't being fully transparent or forthcoming. I've also seen sentiment where they may have been scammed, or unfairly punished in some way, get resolved in an easy going hassle free manner. 

I don't have any first hand experience with being scammed, so I have no idea of the ethics of how DE acts in such situations, and have to rely on other peoples experiences. I am probably at low risk as well, since, whilst I do sell items for Plat, I usually sell them cheaper than average. That being said, I would like to think that if someone did scam me with trading, DE would protect my interests, if I communicated with them/established dialogue. We should also clarify what constitutes a scam as well, because I often see sentiment from people claiming they were scammed, and in some ways they were, but they also weren't following the rules on Trading. They traded on promises or time/help, or they were themselves doing shady stuff with alts, and essentially violating ToS. Which can complicate things, especially depending on the degree and how communicative/forthcoming one is. 

If an individual is sincerely at no fault, takes the proper precautions, acts fairly, nothing is unusual or fishy with their interactions with others, but is scammed (like the plat they received from another user who was the culprit of the scheme disappears) leaving them in the negative, I think it would be unethical for DE to punish them. So I totally agree in that regard. Legally, I am not an expert here though, as far as specifics, I do have a little bit of some basic knowledge, in some countries. I do know that there are many laws in different countries that are shady/unethical though when it comes to business, so I can't agree with the idea this or worse doesn't happen elsewhere or about what and what doesn't fly. Cops in some/certain countries do a lot worse in the real world without investigations being launched.

So... assuming DE does implement such poor and unfriendly consumer rules, (which I am not sure of, so IF) I would agree thats quite a hostile stance to take with your fans. However, whilst I may personally be reluctant to support the company, if thats the case, unless it punishes them monetarily/financially, we can't really do much. Even the DE people we can communicate with/interact with, may in fact be obligated to act this way, for their livelihood/career, as in follow the company line. So you'd have to get a lot of the people playing Warframe and who could potentially play Warframe... to agree with us, and boycott the game... but eh, video game companies have done a lot more unethical things, and often people don't care... or you have to go the legal route, in which good luck. 

All that draws back to my first point though... do you have a legitimate, sincere, example of someone, thats demonstrably provable to have been completely innocent, knows the basic trade rules, being scammed legitimately, and then being punished by DE, without any positive resolution thereafter. Since we also have to remember its really easy to claim you were scammed, and that you are being punished for 'no reason'. 

My 2 cents. 

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7 hours ago, NeoBahamut19 said:

TOS doesn't excuse shady decisions by DE.

That's exactly what it does. Clients don't pay people like me to write stuff that doesn't excuse and protect them.

And to be clear, I don't like a number of DE's practices, how they handle trades with chargedback plat right up there on the list. I can whine about it, I can vote with my dollars, and I could stop playing the game if it really annoyed me, But what I don't have a prayer in the world of doing is claiming DE's done something legally actionable. If you just want to vent about how unfair the world is, I'll happily sympathize with you.

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22 hours ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

Hello. What is your source for the exchanges that go down when a victim is scammed? This is slightly rhetorical, What I mean is, you mentioned various threads here, Reddit and Steam, but could the credibility of them be questionable, and could various degrees of nuance be lost? This question is sincere. I have seen similar sentiment as far as issues involving scams, and troubles with bans, but often some situations or accounts of events lack credible details, and the individual isn't being fully transparent or forthcoming. I've also seen sentiment where they may have been scammed, or unfairly punished in some way, get resolved in an easy going hassle free manner. 

I don't have any first hand experience with being scammed, so I have no idea of the ethics of how DE acts in such situations, and have to rely on other peoples experiences. I am probably at low risk as well, since, whilst I do sell items for Plat, I usually sell them cheaper than average. That being said, I would like to think that if someone did scam me with trading, DE would protect my interests, if I communicated with them/established dialogue. We should also clarify what constitutes a scam as well, because I often see sentiment from people claiming they were scammed, and in some ways they were, but they also weren't following the rules on Trading. They traded on promises or time/help, or they were themselves doing shady stuff with alts, and essentially violating ToS. Which can complicate things, especially depending on the degree and how communicative/forthcoming one is. 

If an individual is sincerely at no fault, takes the proper precautions, acts fairly, nothing is unusual or fishy with their interactions with others, but is scammed (like the plat they received from another user who was the culprit of the scheme disappears) leaving them in the negative, I think it would be unethical for DE to punish them. So I totally agree in that regard. Legally, I am not an expert here though, as far as specifics, I do have a little bit of some basic knowledge, in some countries. I do know that there are many laws in different countries that are shady/unethical though when it comes to business, so I can't agree with the idea this or worse doesn't happen elsewhere or about what and what doesn't fly. Cops in some/certain countries do a lot worse in the real world without investigations being launched.

So... assuming DE does implement such poor and unfriendly consumer rules, (which I am not sure of, so IF) I would agree thats quite a hostile stance to take with your fans. However, whilst I may personally be reluctant to support the company, if thats the case, unless it punishes them monetarily/financially, we can't really do much. Even the DE people we can communicate with/interact with, may in fact be obligated to act this way, for their livelihood/career, as in follow the company line. So you'd have to get a lot of the people playing Warframe and who could potentially play Warframe... to agree with us, and boycott the game... but eh, video game companies have done a lot more unethical things, and often people don't care... or you have to go the legal route, in which good luck. 

All that draws back to my first point though... do you have a legitimate, sincere, example of someone, thats demonstrably provable to have been completely innocent, knows the basic trade rules, being scammed legitimately, and then being punished by DE, without any positive resolution thereafter. Since we also have to remember its really easy to claim you were scammed, and that you are being punished for 'no reason'. 

My 2 cents. 

 

Found the drone. There's threads everywhere, it's commonly known that this is an issue in the community. It's talked about in chat regularly (was just talked about in Council chat the other night). There's threads complaining about it on these forums, on Reddit, on Steam, everywhere. I'm not going to spend my afternoon looking up threads and independently verifying with them their personal information.

You did a wall of text to say "yeah, without sources, you must be lying". You're absolutely blind in your love of DE and dedication to protecting them.

Also, I'm not going to link the threads here as it's likely that it may flag a post as possible spam.

 

Valve doesn't ban people if they unknowingly trade with scammers using illegal funds, they reverse the transactions and issue apologies and sometimes take it on the chin, as it was THEIR market that THEY failed to properly oversee and it was their customers who ultimately got scammed. DE is insistent upon not just punishing the scammer, but the victim.

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17 hours ago, Battle.Mage said:

if you complain here with a wall of text, then it can't be a scammer.
otherwise you would report him in the game with one sentence and he is history.

lies have short legs.

I'm not complaining, I'm stating that DE is up to shady stuff by punishing those who are scammed. This is crap that I just found out recently after inquiring into my suddenly gone Plat, out of curiosity. Whether or not I personally got scammed is not the point, the point is that how DE handles those who get scammed is hugely problematic and unacceptable in any industry.

If you cannot see this issue, and you defend DE, then it's clear that your allegiance isn't with the customers but with the corporation and I have zero further to say to you,

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On 2021-06-24 at 9:07 AM, NeoBahamut19 said:

Recently I had around 70 platinum, used 35 for Forma, and came back a few hours to only 1 on my account... This caused me to go on a search to see what may have happened.

To my horror, I have found thread after thread (across here, Reddit, Steam, and other places) stating that if a scammer trades Platinum, the victim who is COMPLETELY UNAWARE the Platinum they got was not legit can not only LOSE that Platinum, but can also be banned if they accrue a negative balance and then is ENCOURAGED to spend cash to make up the difference to essentially buy themselves out of their ban. Some of these bans have been for balances into the negative thousands due to large trades for expensive items such as Riven Mods.

A couple notes here: Trading is not only allowed in-game by Digital Extremes, but is highly pushed by them as a HUGE aspect of their live market. Digital Extremes should be held wholly accountable, not legitimate consumers, for any fraudulent activity that happens in their storefronts (the trading posts they provide people in Dojos). You are required already to be MR2 & have 2FA enabled in order to trade.

Given this, why is it acceptable to ban someone, Digital Extremes, for using a system YOU implemented and YOU watch over when YOU fail to stop someone in time? Isn't it on YOUR (Digital Extreme's) head for not verifying someone is purchasing Platinum legitimately?

What gives YOU (Digital Extremes) the right to punish a customer in YOUR store that YOU set up because of YOUR failings at verifying sales properly?

How am I or any other player to be able to trust Digital Extremes won't abuse us, ban our accounts with hundreds to thousands of hours, all because of one trade with someone who may have been using stolen information to purchase Platinum. It's not on US (the players) to verify the purchases that other players make. Are you expecting me to ask every vendor for their number, identification information, and all other information to verify WHO they are in order to protect myself on YOUR store?

Let's be real here, I keep calling Trading Posts YOUR (Digital Extremes) store because YOU (Digital Extremes) are the ones who not only implemented it but also allow the trading of Platinum, acknowledge the scamming issues that happen, and have put in some measly 2FA/MR2 requirements for trading. Here's the problem with those two methods:

2FA: It's called a burner phone, anyone can get one.

MR2: You can literally buy this with illegally obtained plat by getting a Mirage and a bunch of weapons and hitting up SO as fast as possible, if you even need to get that far to hit MR2.

 

You, Digital Extremes, designed this system that allows for US (the players) to be scammed. YOU, Digital Extremes, should be the one to pay the price for US getting scammed, NOT us.

 

The solutions are as follows:

Digital Extremes takes it on the chin when they fail to do their job verifying a purchase to be legitimate by NOT punishing the player through removal of Platinum/items.

OR

Remove the ability to trade Platinum. (We all know what their stance will be with that.)

 

I shouldn't feel like I'm putting my account into jeopardy just to trade some stuff for the currency I spend cash on in a system provided by you, the developer, in your game.

 

Imagine the following scanario: You go to a bar, someone from another table you don't know buys you a drink on their tab, they then do a dine n' dash. They also happened to do this to 2 or 3 other people as well who all took it as a gift from a random stranger. The server comes over to you and expects you to pay for the drink that they bought you. When you say "I'm not paying for it, I didn't ask for it, it's not on me", that server gets the bouncer to kick you out of the bar and ban you from coming back. Who is in the wrong here?

Answer: The scammer and the business.

 

/rant

A blue moon would've had to appear if DE changed anything about clans or trading lol

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2 minutes ago, (XBOX)NuclearSquiddy said:

A blue moon would've had to appear if DE changed anything about clans or trading lol

This isn't about changing the mechanics of trading any more than not punishing players who are victims of scammers using fraudulently bought Platinum. Digital Extremes has ignored this topic for long enough and needs to address it.

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Just now, (XBOX)NuclearSquiddy said:

That too would be rare

Very true, the only time I ever see DE interacting with the community or addressing "issues" is when it comes to anything preventing players from spending Plat or when it comes to providing more goods to sell to players. They'll gladly leave bugs in the game for years and years as long as it doesn't hit their bottom line.

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