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Problem with the way Warframe Support is handling "the investigation of a known Platinum reseller"


VirtualViolet
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So, last week I posted a related thread regarding a message I received from Warframe Support:

 

Today, I received another message from support, this one worded much more harshly, but dated the same day that I received the first message:

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My problem with this is that I have no way of knowing who it was that I traded with or received a gift from that brought this scrutiny on my account. I sell Prime parts for platinum all the time, how can I know which buyers have legitimately purchased/traded for their plat and which have bought plat from a reseller? Why should I be held responsible for their misdeeds?

I've already submitted a support ticket asking these questions, but I am posting here to raise awareness and hopefully prevent others from having the same happen to them (if it is preventable at all).

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I have heard of this before but never seen a message posted about it...thats messed up.. I've traded with hundreds of random people for years and never had anything like this happen. I'm guessing there has to be a good reason for DE sending you this message.

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yea, i would not hope for a good resolution, warframe support is notoriously bad with stuff like this, they tend to go with he heavy handed option becasue it is a easier option and in the long run it will take less time and money to complete.

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What an obviously canned message copy and pasted from some template. Very unprofessional. Not to mention circumstantial evidence is not real evidence.

If there's no option to refuse a gift, there absolutely needs to be one if Support does these kinds of things.

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I don't think support will tell you the mechanisms behind it, that's like giving information to a hacker of what went wrong , if you give them a blank screen then they have no way of knowing what they need to change next.

It is likely that your trades were of dubious nature, maybe more than once, maybe the trades themselves raised an eyebrow, if he is a platinum seller then the large sum of platinum (that can be given in small ammounts at a time) would become suspicious even for an entire prime set.

Platinum sellers sell huge bulks of platinum, 1k - 5k, how in the world isn't a 5k platinum transfer dubious? That's visible a mile away even if you do like 20 trades to get it.

While it's true in the past some users gifted items on purpose to get inocent players banned, i doubt it's a common practice nowadays, who is going to waste time getting illegal platinum and then gift a player until the value of gifts surpasses the ammount the user has?

Support obviously has the fullstory, i'm not saying that you're lying, but you would be suprised how often that's the case when players get caught.

What evidences they have? those are kept for themselves, this way more users will obviously fall into the trap.

Note: From what i have read once, some platinum sellers will instead login into your account (yes your credentials will obviously be exposed) and make the purchases themselves, likely because it's cheaper to buy in whatever country they live in, they buy the plat for you as long they make a small profit. Obviously the suddent ip change, the fact that the platinum seller may be marked already are huge flaws, and those are taken advantage by the support team. Support may make mistakes, but they ain't stupid

Edited by KIREEK
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I have to disagree with this to a certain points. Just last year, i bougth around 3k platinum for a friend with my account since i picked up a 75% platinum discount.

 

Then he payed me that amount and i just gifted  the stuff he wanted ingame in the market and traded the rest.

 

By the Terms of Use/EULA this is an incorrect procedure, yet, nothing really fraudulent happened. Just 2 people being smart and using all the game systems to their advantage.

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31 minutes ago, KIREEK said:

I don't think support will tell you the mechanisms behind it, that's like giving information to a hacker of what went wrong , if you give them a blank screen then they have no way of knowing what they need to change next.

It is likely that your trades were of dubious nature, maybe more than once, maybe the trades themselves raised an eyebrow, if he is a platinum seller then the large sum of platinum (that can be given in small ammounts at a time) would become suspicious even for an entire prime set.

Platinum sellers sell huge bulks of platinum, 1k - 5k, how in the world isn't a 5k platinum transfer dubious? That's visible a mile away even if you do like 20 trades to get it.

Note this part of the canned message from Support: "several trades of Platinum and/or Gifts being sent to your account." It's a lazy catch-all.

I doubt that VirtualViolet would think that DE's own prices on Platinum are unreasonable to the point where they'd seek out a third party; there is proof in the screenshot that they're willing to drop cash on Tennogen, which can't be gifted or traded and isn't able to be discounted via login rewards.

This issue, along with scenarios of negative Platinum causing surprise bans, are things that should be at the top of DE's priority list for creating real solutions for, because ignoring these issues not only hurts their profits, it hurts their reputation, and reputation is everything for a free-to-play game with microtransactions (see also how easily negative Steam reviews can kill a game's potential influx of new players). The option to refuse a gift would be a good step to take to protect everybody's best interests.

I hope someone from DE notices this thread and shares their perspective.

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5 minutes ago, KirukaChan said:

I doubt that VirtualViolet would think that DE's own prices on Platinum are unreasonable to the point where they'd seek out a third party

You are not VirtualViolet so I would recommend not speaking for them, whether you're correct or not.

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I heard of the GIFTS Issue before.

One poor Lad got BAN for Accepting Gift which was canceled from the Sender who did not have enough Plat. Once you open the Sender Plat, and don't have enough, that Lad got BAN.

It got solve some Year later.

Lesson: DO NOT open Gift from anyone wihtout pre-cuations :|.

The day any ******* Items go rom 1,000 :platinum: to 10,000 :platinum: and IGNORE and Quit from Trade Chat/House (even if that happen) for the rest of my Experience. Take that to SALTS Lakes.

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19 minutes ago, Endrance said:

I have to disagree with this to a certain points. Just last year, i bougth around 3k platinum for a friend with my account since i picked up a 75% platinum discount.

 

Then he payed me that amount and i just gifted  the stuff he wanted ingame in the market and traded the rest.

 

By the Terms of Use/EULA this is an incorrect procedure, yet, nothing really fraudulent happened. Just 2 people being smart and using all the game systems to their advantage.

Likewise, I used to do this with my guild in ESO every week for weekly Crown Giveaways (for those not in know, Crowns are what Plat is to Warframe). You can't gift items or Crowns, however. You can purchase digital codes from a place, like Gamestop, of different Crown values. Some people started reporting this as me "taking real currency for in-game currency", but that was far from the truth (after being contacted by support as a result of those reports, I was forced to provide receipts as evidence to prove that I made the purchases and reflecting bank statements to matched times of transactions. The end result  prevented a perma and temp ban, but it was a headache and I had to stop the giveaways.

So, an action that did not violate the EULA and were also purchased through a legitimate retailer went under heavy scrutiny.

It's not just DE. Other companies have support teams that follow too closely to scripts over thoroughly investigating.

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I have never had more than about 1.5k platinum at any given time. The biggest trade I ever had was selling a Banshee Prime set for 400p the first week she was out (which I turned around and donated to be distributed as prizes to members of our clan who got high scores in Operation: The Pacifism Defect). None of my past trades were anything out of the ordinary. I have never purchased or knowingly received any platinum from a dubious source.

I received a two deluxe skins (on separate occasions) as unsolicited gifts quite a while ago, so maybe one of those had something to do with it, but other than that, the only reason I can think of that I would get a message like this is that I sold something for platinum to someone who had acquired said platinum from a reseller. Or maybe a reseller bought something from me directly so they could flip it and get more plat.

The point is, I don't know, and I have no way of knowing who is safe to trade with and who is not. And therefore, I don't think I should be penalized just for participating in the in-game economy. Having the platinum removed from my account (less than 200 from what I can tell - I don't keep a tally of my platinum totals) is one thing, but threatening to ban me when I haven't done anything wrong is over the top.

I've been playing this game for over three years, and I just want to be able to participate in the in-game economy without the fear of losing everything because I accidentally traded with the wrong person.

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3 hours ago, KirukaChan said:

I doubt that VirtualViolet would think that DE's own prices on Platinum are unreasonable to the point where they'd seek out a third party; there is proof in the screenshot that they're willing to drop cash on Tennogen, which can't be gifted or traded and isn't able to be discounted via login rewards.

I haven't bought platinum except for once when I first started playing (170p for $10, which I used to by a set of color palettes). I just got my second or third 75% off plat coupon for my login tribute the other day. If I wanted to buy plat for cash, I would have done it with one of those.

But I prefer to get my platinum by trading in-game items for it. It feels like I earned it, rather than "paying to win/skip the grind." I actually bought the Tennogen skin with Steam wallet cash I made by selling Steam trading cards and old TF2 weapons and crates.

Edited by VirtualViolet
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Well, the good news is that I just got a reply on my support ticket, and they apologized and said they've added the platinum back. So, crisis averted, I guess.

[EDIT: They said the trade in question was a sale of a Vauban Prime set of blueprints for 100p. They also said that they will be reviewing their procedures to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, so, mission accomplished.]

Edited by VirtualViolet
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4 hours ago, VirtualViolet said:

Well, the good news is that I just got a reply on my support ticket, and they apologized and said they've added the platinum back. So, crisis averted, I guess.

[EDIT: They said the trade in question was a sale of a Vauban Prime set of blueprints for 100p. They also said that they will be reviewing their procedures to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, so, mission accomplished.]

100p and it raised suspicion? I bought frost prime a long ago for 800p along with several weapon sets on the same day and didnt had any problems. I guess they really need to upgrade their search methods.

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12 hours ago, VirtualViolet said:

Well, the good news is that I just got a reply on my support ticket, and they apologized and said they've added the platinum back. So, crisis averted, I guess.

[EDIT: They said the trade in question was a sale of a Vauban Prime set of blueprints for 100p. They also said that they will be reviewing their procedures to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, so, mission accomplished.]

That's awesome! I'm glad it turned out well for you.

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  • 1 month later...

Hello, Today same happened with me, I'm threatened with account bann, but I'm totally innocent, did nothing wrong:

- I've more than enough plats, they must see I've no reason to buy illeagal plats, didn't even have any big transactions in the past weeks

- I can't protect myself if a player sells me illegal plats through trade console or sends me gift via liset market from illegal plats, how it can be expected?

Opened a support ticket, hopefully my situation can be clarified also. BR, T.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Necroing to post my experience.

 

I received the same message a while ago.  I buy plat only through Warframe (either when discounts are available or as a part of the Prime Access packs) and had been trading for parts a lot at the time.  What I really do not understand is why they do not call out specific trades.  I set up a notepad of missing items, buy them with plat from people listing the parts on warframe.market, and cross it off the list.  Then I come back later and find some parts missing that are not on the list of parts that I need.   If they give no information on what trades were at issue, I cannot show that the trades were market price trades of plat for parts.

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This is very very poor business practices by DE. They can't reasonably expect that players only trade with IRL friends, participation in the economy is part of the game considering the haphazardly random drop rates. (If every additional run to supply missing parts increased the rate at which those missing parts dropped for me by 10-20%, then economy wouldn't be as vital.)

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2 hours ago, (PS4)wildcats1369my said:

This why we need AH ingame we never know if we are trading with a plat reseller.

And that's the thing. I've had friends banned because of this same issue before. Support basically blames everyone involved but refuses to see that everyone else besides the plat seller are victims. The fact is that they know plat sellers make plat in game the same way we all do. Difference is that only DE knows who's selling the plat and the rest of us don't.

On 8/11/2017 at 2:23 PM, KIREEK said:

Platinum sellers sell huge bulks of platinum, 1k - 5k, how in the world isn't a 5k platinum transfer dubious? That's visible a mile away even if you do like 20 trades to get it.

Even this isn't an uncommon practice. Look at the arcanes market. Sets of energizer will run you at least a good 2k plat at this point. It's not like anyone can't save up to do those trades. It just takes a while. Heck, have you even seen the rivens market for the really crazy in demand rivens and for those perfect stats? I got an offer the other day for 1.5k for my cernos riven and I'm not even selling it.

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Yes, but you see, platinum sellers don't sell platinum once and they don't do just 100 plat transfers, they often get marked for suspicious activity, this can last for months, once they confirm that the user is a platinum seller, they check ALL trades and quickly dispose of the platinum in circulation

I don't mean trades involving 2000 platinum get marked, i mean trades where it's 2000 platinum and then like 3 prime parts and an ammo drum, that easily gets flagged, if they have access to all the trades, they can devise a system to flag dubious or unusual trades, then they check manually if things were done right.

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15 hours ago, KIREEK said:

Yes, but you see, platinum sellers don't sell platinum once and they don't do just 100 plat transfers, they often get marked for suspicious activity, this can last for months, once they confirm that the user is a platinum seller, they check ALL trades and quickly dispose of the platinum in circulation

I don't mean trades involving 2000 platinum get marked, i mean trades where it's 2000 platinum and then like 3 prime parts and an ammo drum, that easily gets flagged, if they have access to all the trades, they can devise a system to flag dubious or unusual trades, then they check manually if things were done right.

Problem with that is the rest of the trades they did to build up that plat to begin with. The prime parts they sold and anyone else they may have traded with are the ones being threatened or even banned while having no information or suggestion that they're trading with someone dubious to begin with. I actively report bots and other people actively advertising such plat sales and I've even been popped a couple of times for trades with those unknown parties. It's just a bad policy to blame everyone when we have no idea that the person we're trading with isn't legit to begin with. It's little more than blaming victims for being victims.

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4 hours ago, KIREEK said:

Sadly there is no other way, by default everyone is guilty of violating the rules, then the person must contact support to clear the name, the other way around of not punishing anyone would easily be exploited to no end.

There are plenty of other ways to handle this, DE just doesn't want to use them.

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