Jump to content
Dante Unbound: Share Bug Reports and Feedback Here! ×

DE, implement a secure, verifiable Plat system, it's long overdue


True_Naeblis
 Share

Recommended Posts

Either that, or stop allowing Platinum to be directly traded within the game.

Long read ahead.

I'm not exactly enthused with the prospect of continuing to come on the forums or going to the subreddit and seeing newer players trying to understand why their account got banned because they were gifted items or conducted a trade, and even worse seeing veterans who have been playing for years suddenly locked out of their account for similar situations.The norm in the industry is for players to be able to purchase items themselves and place them on the in game market, to be able to gift those items to others, or to be able to gift the currency to other players, nothing else. This is one of the only games I've ever touched that allows players to directly trade a currency that remains tied to real world dollars and can be used to make purchases then have the cost refunded via charge backs. Worse still is that the offenders can do so maliciously on throwaway accounts and to my knowledge even using prepaid credit cards, leaving the innocent parties to be extorted out of money to cover the balance.

Difficult as it might be, server images and transaction logs exist just for incidences like this, so why the transactions are simply all rolled back I don't know. Yes, it's difficult, but it's a possibility and it's the right thing to do. Banning players from their accounts and forcing them to pay real cash for what they believed were legitimate transactions is not okay. Spending counterfeit bills without knowledge does not allow a business in the real world to go beyond recovering the merchandise purchased with it. They certainly don't lock unaware customers out of accounts and services until the balance is paid. Even excepting that, this whole issue is on you to begin with, DE, because you choose to continue allowing Platinum to be traded between players knowing how it's tied to real world cash. This is not the norm in the gaming industry at all for the very fact that things like charge backs exist, and it's a nightmare.

Worse still is that you don't do it to make things easier for us, you do it because keeping Platinum liquid and allowing its use for so many things makes it more enticing than players turning it directly into things like a specific prime item that may or may not retain value. It fuels the Riven trade and makes you money hand over fist, then when it doesn't work to your advantage you extort money from players to make of the difference for digital items. Digital items that I think it unlikely are of more worth than the goodwill from your customers that you lose every single time one of these "banned for negative plat balance" threads come up.

As to a solution, since using server logs and rollbacks to make things right isn't the method of choice difficult as it might be, there is at least one that you can do in house and has been brought up more than once: blockchain.

Purchases:

Player A buys Platinum through the DE website --> Your servers verify that this transaction is legit, with a number of servers/nodes of your choosing being necessary to confirm the transaction --> Player A's account is credited with the purchase --> If you so choose, the Platinum on their account can be consolidated to save space, though it shouldn't be an issue in terms of data either way

Trades:

Player A posts Platinum in trade interface --> Player B posts whatever item they're trading --> Multiple DE-owned servers acting as nodes verify that Player A's Platinum is legitimate --> Trade is carried out, Player A's balance is deducted and the chain is updated --> Player B's balance is credited, and again if you choose to do so, all Platinum is consolidated to a new single block with appropriate hashes detailing a total balance and all details of the preceding blocks

Illegitimate Trades:

Player C posts counterfeit Platinum in trade interface --> Player B posts whatever item they're trading --> DE-owned servers recognize that Platinum does not have the appropriate structure or hashes to be valid or is devoid of structure entirely --> DE logs player C's account information and forwards it to appropriate staff for investigation --> Players are notified that the trade cannot be completed and the interface is closed out, with Player B receiving a notification as to the reason and urging caution in trading with Player C until the issue is resolved

In this way players buying and trading Platinum legitimately are protected from having weeks worth of transactions reversed or worse still not getting items back due to too many subsequent trades after the fraudulent one. Players will no longer have to worry about being the recipients of fake Platinum and having their accounts banned until they charge more Plat to their accounts.

In house blockchain does not have to be the prettiest thing ever, it only has to serve its purpose, and that's to create a secure transaction system within your own server network. Any number of secure servers/PCs/nodes that you, DE, control can be used for this. You could even use an array like you keep in house as seen in the recent Warframe Docu. A number of dedicated computers just for this would not be a large expenditure by any means considering that they could be dedicated to that purpose and that purpose only and wouldn't require expensive hardware. Depending on how your entire network structure works, you could even incorporate offsite servers that you use for hosting, backups, etc., depending on how you allocate the data.

Blockchain can be coded in everything from a number of C-based core languages, to Python, to R, and to Java to allow easy movement between different OSes. Of course, there are other solutions to this, but I simply mention blockchain because:

  • your own team can implement it themselves in what should be a relatively short period of time
  • you can maintain it yourselves
  • it's not processing intensive
  • it's not data-heavy
  • it's secure
  • it's very difficult to compromise from the outside

Anyway, this is just my two cents. I do hope to see something from you in the near future to address this because it got out of hand long ago, and it's a certainty that these threads continually ending up at the top of the forums before being locked or making most upvoted on Reddit will cost a lot more in the long run than whatever "losses" you feel are recouped by forcing players to pay money to have their accounts unlocked. It costs a lot more to entice a new customer to your product than it does to retain the current ones, and the customer lifetime value of loyal players will on average far outweigh that of new players drifting in and out of the game. The people affected by this are the ones who stick around long enough to make the trades that keep Platinum moving into the game, they are not a loss that should be taken lightly with fingers pointed to policy when stonewalling them about the situation.

I enjoy your game, and I bought Plat several times when I first started playing, but I could never recommend doing so to anyone else so long as the current system remains in place, knowing that someone doing something nefarious can result in an account being lost until the defrauded party pays to unlock it.

I've tried to make sure that this is objective and as best I can focused on the facts as they lie when it comes to the faults with the current system. I more than welcome responses and criticism. I also know that I didn't lay out every single detail of what's needed to implement this for DE, but as I have no idea what their current verification channels look like there's really not much more that I can do other than a basic framework. Here's hoping that whatever choices are made going forward change is made for the better.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, True_Naeblis said:

Either that, or stop allowing Platinum to be directly traded within the game.

This has always been my thought, it sounds drastic and over the top sure, but at the end of the day platinum is not a safe currency as it currently stands.

Something has to change.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Punishing honest players, who commit to those trades in good faith, and who have absolutely no way of knowing (an assumption is not knowledge) that they are being handled "bad plat", is just incredibly insulting and flatout irresponsible. I am not going to shoulder someone else's bill. I'd rather quit and play something else.

This is not my problem. It's DE's.
They are the ones who fail to provide a safe environment for us to trade in.
What else are we supposed to do? Not trade at all?

Seriously, in no universe makes this kind of logic any sense.

Edited by Mana_Caldaria
Grammar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem with your idea OP is that your system doesn't look like it  can deal with charge backs... basically player buys plat from DE, uses it to get what they're after etc and does some 'moving around' afterwards and then contacts their bank to cancel said transaction.  Because it's gone through DE it looks legitimate until it's been cancelled at which point DE's scripts kick in and ban players.   I do agree however something needs to be done to stop 'false bans'. 

In a way what needs to be done is a revision to the way the current system is implemented, the current system is basically a 'guilty by association' type system when in fact the person trading their item for plat has no idea where the other persons plat came from. 

They could always implement a system where by the 'last person in the chain' is manually checked before being banned rather than requiring contact with support to 'hopefully' let you back into the game. 

I also find it totally unacceptable that we currently need to replace the plat which was illegally purchased and traded to us via real money rather than there being an automatic roll back system in place to reset an account to before the illegal plat was traded to us.  As it stands now a person who has done nothing wrong is actually being punished for the actions of another person and that's not really good enough imo. 

Edited by LSG501
Link to comment
Share on other sites

40 minutes ago, Wyrmius_Prime said:

They won't do sh1t3 until somebody deliberately abuses the system and gets hundreds of players banned doing it.

They just need to get Tactical Potato, Quite Shy, AGayGuyPlays and most important, Jim Sterling (especially him) banned for a Trade or Accepting Illegitimately purchased Gifts/Boosters, and THEN they'll do something about it. =w="

"Oh no! Jim, please! We never meant for this to happen to YOU!!!" *DE proceeds to fix everything so as to calm the wrath of Jim*

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@LSG501 You're right, it doesn't solve the issue of charge backs, it only covers fraudulently generated plat. There's no real way to fix the charge back issue because DE has decided to make Plat able to be traded directly in game. NCSoft, for instance, makes players turn their NCoin into a different type of currency in each of their games before trading it to other players for in game gold. If a charge back happens, action is only taken against the account doing the charge back. Any players that have traded with them are outside of the scope of fallout. At least that's how it works in Blade and Soul. Again, exactly why auction houses and the like are the norm in other titles, so that this isn't something that has a cascading effect where weeks worth of trades need to be gone back through and reversed to fix an issue.

@Tangent-Valley Someone actually suggested to a poster on Reddit today whose account was recently locked that they message Jim Sterling. It was sad to see someone very new to the game and even the online community as a whole in post after post just trying to figure out what they'd done wrong. You are right, though, if DE ends up catching one of those popular streamers/content creators up in some of this mess the fallout will be beyond anything I think they ever want to see.

Thanks for all the feedback so far.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, True_Naeblis said:

Player A buys Platinum through the DE website --> Your servers verify that this transaction is legit, with a number of servers/nodes of your choosing being necessary to confirm the transaction --> Player A's account is credited with the purchase --> If you so choose, the Platinum on their account can be consolidated to save space, though it shouldn't be an issue in terms of data either way

You don't have a good grasp on the situation.

There isn't random, illegitimate Plat being "generated" anywhere. People buy Plat with a credit card, buy/trade/sell things using the Plat and then they/the legit owner of the card does a chargeback and all the Plat they have is now poison. DE is out actual money and they cannot allow that Plat to circulate.

8 hours ago, True_Naeblis said:

In house blockchain does not have to be the prettiest thing ever, it only has to serve its purpose, and that's to create a secure transaction system within your own server network. Any number of secure servers/PCs/nodes that you, DE, control can be used for this. You could even use an array like you keep in house as seen in the recent Warframe Docu. A number of dedicated computers just for this would not be a large expenditure by any means considering that they could be dedicated to that purpose and that purpose only and wouldn't require expensive hardware. Depending on how your entire network structure works, you could even incorporate offsite servers that you use for hosting, backups, etc., depending on how you allocate the data.

Blockchain can be coded in everything from a number of C-based core languages, to Python, to R, and to Java to allow easy movement between different OSes. Of course, there are other solutions to this, but I simply mention blockchain because:

  • your own team can implement it themselves in what should be a relatively short period of time
  • you can maintain it yourselves
  • it's not processing intensive
  • it's not data-heavy
  • it's secure
  • it's very difficult to compromise from the outside

This is also true of literally any solution other than a blockchain. Why include this block of text?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, peterc3 said:

You don't have a good grasp on the situation.

There isn't random, illegitimate Plat being "generated" anywhere. People buy Plat with a credit card, buy/trade/sell things using the Plat and then they/the legit owner of the card does a chargeback and all the Plat they have is now poison. DE is out actual money and they cannot allow that Plat to circulate.

Actually there is. It is not just chargebacks. There are multiple cases that have come up where people were trading generated Plat unknowingly.

I will say this, however: in BDO, due to changes carried out in the cash shop a large wave of players instituted chargebacks to their accounts before leaving the game. PA/DAUM did not go back and remove all Pearl Shop items purchased by those players and put on the marketplace for sale then bought by others unaware of the situation. They also didn't lock player's accounts who'd purchased those items and extort them to purchase more Pearls from the shop in order to have their accounts restored. DE's practices are like nothing I've ever seen in any other games. They go right along with the heavy handed tactics like NCSoft failing to do thorough investigations before locking people's account in Blade and Soul, but even NC doesn't dangle people's accounts and tell them that if they'll only swipe they can get their accounts back. I will never see either as being a fair system, but DE's just boggles my mind.

You're never going to convince me that is okay, nor is someone's account being locked because of malicious gifting leaving them at an eventual negative balance or resulting in a ban simply for receiving something because they didn't opt out of all gifting, all of which have had many documented cases both here and on the subreddit.

Edited by True_Naeblis
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think what needs to happen is this.  If a player trades and receives bad plat from a malicious user, firstly the malicious user should be banned - then DE should deduct the plat value from the receiving account and return the items traded - essentially reversing the trade.  If any or all of the plat has been spent by the recipient, DE needs to man up and cut their losses...banning them is scummy and I've always felt that way.  Recipients should never lose platinum they had before the trade, and should never go into negative.  They're literally pulling $100 million gross profit a year, it's absurd they ban unknowing players for $5 in platinum.  

If they can't do that DE should man up and start going after these people scumming the system with legal action.   If somebody was committing fraud against me or my company, which is exactly what this is, I wouldn't sit there and take it and lash out at my playerbase, I'd use some of that company money to send authorities to the bank to collect information on the crime and file a civil suit against the fraudster.  I tell you, sue one guy and make it a high profile case, and then watch how few people want to do it afterwards. 

It really isn't hard from DE's end to prove what happened in a court of law, any business worth it's salt keeps logs of their transactions - whether the goods were provided, and since DE holds the accounts, they can literally prove this beyond all reasonable doubt.  If there's a chargeback, despite the goods being given, they can prove this is fraudulent activity. 
 

Edited by (PS4)lagrue
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Out of hand? far from it.

You see, there are countless trades everyday and only a handfull of them can be considered illegitimate, there aren't that many automated bans over negative platinum and support can sometimes revert purchases prior to that (this refer to market purchases that must exist in order to have negative platinum), altought in some cases the tools support has doesn't allow them to remove it, i guess it's one of the reasons reactors or formas are so cheap, to decrease the chances of a negative plat balance.

Forums dedicated to this practice have litle activity, many plat reselers have given up because while warframe has it's popularity, it not that huge to warrant countless hours of platinum farming (via selling riven mods for example) only to have 5$ done, i mean it sounds great until you need to live from those sales and warframe just isn't the game for that, the forums are often filled with topics with duzzens of bumps per topic, hoping that someone will buy platinum, when it happens they are often caught.

The current system is mainly to avoid any exploits, everyone gets banned by an automated system and trades rolled back, yes there are some inocent players that get caught and even a tinier fraction have no other option but to buy platinum because the items bought in the market can't be removed from the account.

The problem only gets maginfied when the seller is caught, meaning all logged trades will be checked and several buyers punished, that's when the highest chance exists of getting players automatically banned because there are so many buyers and trades to check out.

You can however help out, by simply reporting behavior that you find suspicious or better yet, reporting seller and buyers, may them be your "friends", clanmates or someone you know, support takes action and the problem is dealt with, plat reselers then have to brush off the negative complaints and eventually go away because they are just tired of bans, not getting buyers or getting negative feedback in the topics

The problem in my opinion has been decreasing, there is litle demand, to much at risk, to much of a cost to sell platinum, litle payout and to many sellers competing agaisnt eachothers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As long as credit cards and chargebacks exist, there's almost no way for DE to deal with platinum issues arising from resellers who illegitimately chargeback after sales.

Perhaps they can look into using other forms of payment such as cryptocurrencies which cannot be charged back.

 

If there are people who want to make money from this game, DE could implement a system which allows for transactions involving real money or other forms of currency provided they are given a cut of the sales (i.e. selling rivens in a riven marketplace)

Edited by VengefulMaelstrom
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, SO many of these threads are posted under the guise that there is somehow "counterfeit" platinum floating around. Where do any of you, at all, ever, get this idea? How would a person hack in fake plat? The plat is 100% legitimate when the trade is conducted. What makes it invalid is after the trade the one trading away the plat issues a chargeback after quickly laundering away the item that was traded for. How successful this laundering is is debatable. DE is following the law here by allowing plat to be chargebacked, they cant not do it without disallowing the purchase of plat to begin with. If plat can be purchased, it has to be able to be chargebacked, period.

Solving this problem is its own mess, but people really need to learn the actual cause of the problem before they go trying to suggest ways to fix it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's not chargebacks, players often sell the plat they have, if caught the plat is removed from the game regardless it is legit or not. Negative plat balance means the plat got removed because at some point a platinum black market seller sold said plat and was identified. DE doesn't care, as soon you try to make a profit for yourself they reverse, remove and let the automated systems to ban players. Players that want more info need to contact support and see if they can somehow remove purchased content like skins.

Actual black market traders often get punished, for example by not being able to trade for some time.

Chargebacks aren't an issue atm

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, KIREEK said:

It's not chargebacks, players often sell the plat they have, if caught the plat is removed from the game regardless it is legit or not. Negative plat balance means the plat got removed because at some point a platinum black market seller sold said plat and was identified. DE doesn't care, as soon you try to make a profit for yourself they reverse, remove and let the automated systems to ban players. Players that want more info need to contact support and see if they can somehow remove purchased content like skins.

Actual black market traders often get punished, for example by not being able to trade for some time.

Chargebacks aren't an issue atm

Yes, they are. Chargebacks are the majority of causes of the forum posts about negative plat, as the ones illegally buying plat know full well what they did and most don't post on the forums about it. Chargebacks are also easier to do compared to selling plat outright, as selling plat is often covered up, where chargebacks are often done with overpricing riven trades. Lastly, CHargebacks only require one person to do, where as selling plat requires multiple.

Also, support cannot remove purchased cosmetics, they state this quite often enough that it is easily searchable at this point. You would need one of the developers to go into your account to remove it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And the point of a chargeback is to do what exactly? Players are often aware that the strategy won't work and the best they can do is to anoy players who buy content after a trade (like skins).

Making a profit from plat is the actual issue and that is often dealt with. If you look at the right forums you can see the tears from banned players, it's only natural that sometimes, especially after weeks, players end up using the plat on the market. Chargebacks have a lifespan of days possibly. Plat sellers can sell for months before being detected. The chances of using the market greatly increase the longer the removal takes. As i stated chargebacks aren't the main reason for plat removal. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is one of the most important issues that they need to address sooner rather than later. I hope we can keep the pressure on them until they implement a better system. When you feel fear to trade at all, that's a problem. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chargebacks
If a top up to your wallet is reversed by your payment service provider (e.g. your bank, credit card provider or PayPal), known as a "chargeback", you will owe us a debt equal to the amount of the chargeback. We will suspend access to the PSN by your Account or console until that debt is repaid. We reserve the right to deduct funds from your wallet to pay any debt owed by you to us.

 

Cancellation Rights 
All purchases are non-refundable except as stated in these terms of service, the then current PlayStation®Store Cancellation Policy at www.playstation.com/store-cancellation-policy or as required by law. 

In-App Purchases
Please be aware that if you or your Child Family Members purchase or download a Product, including a free-to-use Product, it may include options to make in-app purchases of additional Products using the PSN wallet. You agree to pay for all purchases made.

Those are few from PSN rights, sorry for Copy/Paste. Until something like that will not be implemented into legal Plat resellers like Steam, PC traders will have problems because as @NeithanDiniemstated it's 100% Chargeback issue, where only solution is to not spend traded Plat immediately or to have enough Plat before trade to not hit Negative Plat issue, which is near to impossible because most of all are trading to immediately buy something.

 

Edited by (PS4)Onder6099
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Part of the problem is the chargebacks but another problem is to simply sell the platinum, these trades do not involve chargebacks.

The issue that happen with chargebacks is that they are used to make actual money, the strategy is as follow:

You never wondered why these platinum sellers sell the platinum at a value lower than any region?, they are not buying at 15$ to sell at 16$, that's not a worthwile profit, the strategy is to get stolen Credit cards for example, you sell platinum or dlc packs in warframe often via Pay pal family and friends (can't be refunded), from there they use your account, gift you the content or trade you the goods (may use dummy accounts for it), some sellers really prefer to use your account to buy the content at pretty much full price (region is almost irrelevant, it's not their money they are using).

Once the owner of the credit card is aware, several purchases may be outright removed from the game, inocent players and the buyer get screwed while the seller now has 10$ in his paypal account that will not be removed.

The sellers always win and the buyers are often stupid enough to believe that the content they bought will remain in the game forever.

How you solve this issue? How can DE be aware of a stolen credit card when it's used? How can DE be aware a trade for rare mods was actually a Real life money trade?

Yes chargebacks exist, but rivens open up a far easier way to obtain platinum and that's why many sellers are more into selling the plat they got from other users, because it's legit and has literally no expiration date, with stolen credit cards your services offering are more broad (i mean you can literally buy prime access), but have a relative short lifespan and chargebacks are always on the horizon.

I am trying not to teach these things, i am merely stating that at any point trades like these get reversed and culprits banned, it is never worth it. It is unfortunate inocent players being banned when the issue is resolved, but you can't solve complex problems with simple solutions.

The black market dealers have been giving up over time so i wouldn't consider it as a huge problem.

Edited by KIREEK
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I don't get is why the innocent person's plat balance is "corrected".
Like, the person who did the chargeback should be the one to end up with less/negative plat followed by a ban. Or am I missing something? You could say they remove "chargeback" plat from circulation but by banning the offender's acc they are also removing everything said person had from circulation, right?

It's honestly just confusing to me why exactly good faith legit seller/buyer has to deal with any sort of carp caused by troublemakers.

Edited by EvilChaosKnight
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Because sometimes the end receiver is the main account of the black market dealer, you see sometimes the idea is to use a dummy account that does all the shady stuff with credit cards, bought accounts, platinum deals,.... and then they use said plat to gift the main account the content, like cosmetics and stuff.

By banning the one who received the gifts, you are making sure the system can't be exploited, banning the dummy account serves nothing really because the main account can then play and use cosmetics that weren't really bought.

Same thing with actual deals with other players, if you ban the buyer, the system can't be exploited, banning a seller at MR2 with the name "dummy_account_00456" will serve you no good.

DE makes an effort to make sure you don't have cosmetics and content you didn't buy, however the automated system doesn't work correctly sometimes and inocent players pay the bill.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can have 2 accounts, but they can't interact, still some sellers do send gifts to buyers that are on the other side of the world, the system is in place to stop that, banning the seller means nothing as he can always make another account, the idea is to ban the buyer and the seller.

DE doesn't know if the gift receiver is a legit player, they will ban and ask questions later.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...