I received a reply that my ticket resulted in action being taken against a gold seller

SeaGtGruff · November 20

Amottica wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Stafford197 wrote: »

Honestly, I have very mixed feelings here.

On one hand, there was actual transparency about a bannable action being taken seriously by Support. That’s great - simple as that.

On the other hand, ZOS is still 100% fine with gold selling as long as we utilize the Crown Store as a middle man, so they can rake in money.

EX: Spend $1000 USD on Crowns, gift away your Crowns in exchange for Gold, and congrats. You have purchased Gold for real money the “correct” way. The difference is doing it the “bannable” way leads to a greater payout for your cash.
Simply put it is a Risk vs Reward situation, not a No Goldselling Allowed situation.

In the end I just roll my eyes at stuff like this. Gold selling will always be alive and well in this game, because it is fully allowed so long as we do it the TOS-approved way.

By extension of your argument, exchanging anything at all in the game for in-game gold could be deemed "gold selling."

Psst! Hey, you in the zone. Yes, you! Do you want gold? Lots of gold? Well, just mail me all of your purple and gold tempering mats, all of your Cornflower and Colombine, all of your Mundane Runes and Heartwood, and I'll send you GOLD! Lots and lots of GOLD!

And you don't even have to buy me anything from the Crown Store for it.

Except exchanging something for gold isn't "gold selling." Going to a third-party website, entering your credit card details, and forking over IRL funds (as well as probably opening yourself up to getting your credit card details stolen) in exchange for gold is considered "gold selling."

Exchanging in-game gold for an item from the Crown Store isn't considered "gold selling," whether or not the person gifting you with the requested Crown Store item had to spend IRL money to get the Crowns to buy you the gift with. As far as I know, that sort of thing used to be frowned upon-- and it might still be looked at suspiciously depending on the specifics, such as the amount of gold being exchanged and how frequently the person with the Crowns is "gifting" things to other players. If I'm not mistaken, people have been banned for that-- at least, judging by what they came to the forums and posted about it afterward-- presumably when it looked too shady and suspicious.

Even buying things from a Guild Store for outrageous amounts of gold can be suspicious, and may result in an investigation for possible "gold laundering" or whatever, and can lead to action against the account.

The issue is not the trading in the game. As you noted, paying real-world money for that gold is the issue. The red flag in the game is selling one purple upgrade mat or a single potion for 100k gold since that is clearly way off the going price.

What I find odd is how Zenimax justifies trading crowns for gold or other in-game items. They consider crowns (or the crown item) to be in-game items, even though this is directly tied to real-world money without question. I am surprised they have not created a direct conversion system similar to what GW2 has, as it does provide a cost to the trade but also keeps it clean trade without the risk of scammers.

I don't know that they "justify" it. It's actually a pretty tricky and sensitive topic, I think, because ZOS knows that players want to be able to use their Crowns to buy other players gifts from the Crown Store, but I think they also want to keep tabs on and control the situation to make sure it isn't being used improperly or illegally. Remember, Crown Store gifting was disabled for a while, presumably due to rampant abuse by "bad actors" (illegal gold sellers or whatever). And when gifting was reenabled, players needed to be cleared and approved before they could gift anything. So it's not exactly like ZOS is embracing and fully endorsing Crown Store gifting; it's more like they're tolerating it, but only as long as it isn't being abused.

Elsonso · November 20

Amottica wrote: »

What I find odd is how Zenimax justifies trading crowns for gold or other in-game items. They consider crowns (or the crown item) to be in-game items, even though this is directly tied to real-world money without question. I am surprised they have not created a direct conversion system similar to what GW2 has, as it does provide a cost to the trade but also keeps it clean trade without the risk of scammers.

What ZOS has does not have a direct exchange of cash to gold, and I think that is a good thing. It allows the exchange of in-game items, and the gifted item cannot be converted back into gold. This means that this process does not make gold or Crowns. The gold that players get from "selling Crowns" is already in the game. The Crowns come from real world transactions. The exchange is to something of no material value for something of no material value.

If they do a direct Gold-Crowns exchange in the game, they introduce a process where gold is generated that was not previously in the game or Crowns where no money was spent. I never paid attention to what GW2 does, but I think they use a transaction fee and place limits on the system to prevent too much creation of wealth. I am not sure if they have an actual resource pool that people draw gems or gold from. This adds complexity and overhead, and unless done right, generates gold and Crowns.

The ZOS way seems better for ZOS. In the end, they are the ones that front all of the effort and expense of doing it.

ZOS_Kevin · November 20

SilverBride wrote: »

I reported a gold seller that was spamming in zone chat and replied to the automatic email including a screenshot of the chat. Usually that is the last I hear, but this time I received a reply that they had been found to be in violation and action had been taken.

It's good to know that our concerns are being addressed and action being taken against these bad actors.

"Greetings,

Thank you for filing this report. We have reviewed your reported concern in ESO. After a thorough review of this report, it was determined that a violation of the ZeniMax Terms of Service or Code of Conduct did occur. As a result, we have taken appropriate action.

Thank you for your report and helping us maintain a healthier gaming community.

Respectfully,
The Elder Scrolls Online Team"

This is a new change where in some instances, we will let you know the general result of an action if an action occurs.

spartaxoxo · November 20

Quoted post has been removed.

ZOS being the one to receive the actual cash is both more profitable from ZOS and ensures that the cash from that transaction isn't being used for illicit activity such as money laundering and illegal gambling, both of which online game makers have stops to combat.

Crowns aren't real money. They have already made the real money useless in the real world the second they were generated.

This is why gold sellers usually operate by ignoring the official methods and instead have you give them the cash directly. Many of them also steal the victims credit card information also, which is not going to happen if it's ZOS that gets that information.

While I wouldn't be surprised if there is some way they can also exploit crowns, I haven't personally heard of such case but have heard of such groups targeting in-game currencies like gold. But, I'm far from an expert on such things.

The problem with gold selling isn't someone being able to convert real money to in-game items. The problem with it is the financial safety of the person buying and who is getting the cash. ZOS needs it to be them not only to make their profit but also to protect their customers.

spartaxoxo · November 20

Quoted post has been removed.

They disabled it to stop a serious exploit. And again, real money for gold is a massive difference. ZOS does not allow this both to protect their customers from financial crimes and to protect their own profits.

It is not purely a profit motive for ZOS. Crowns are not the same because crowns are not real money. Some may have managed to slip through the cracks with illicit crowns but ZOS disabled crown gifting and banned accounts specifically to combat that.

It is not the same thing at all. Most of that is happening from gold selling websites.

SilverBride · November 20

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I reported a gold seller that was spamming in zone chat and replied to the automatic email including a screenshot of the chat. Usually that is the last I hear, but this time I received a reply that they had been found to be in violation and action had been taken.

It's good to know that our concerns are being addressed and action being taken against these bad actors.

"Greetings,

Thank you for filing this report. We have reviewed your reported concern in ESO. After a thorough review of this report, it was determined that a violation of the ZeniMax Terms of Service or Code of Conduct did occur. As a result, we have taken appropriate action.

Thank you for your report and helping us maintain a healthier gaming community.

Respectfully,
The Elder Scrolls Online Team"

This is a new change where in some instances, we will let you know the general result of an action if an action occurs.

Thanks for the information. I thought it was new because I had never seen it before. Having it verified that action is being taken is is encouraging.

Ph1p · November 20

Quoted post has been removed.

Lol. If it’s so easy to fix, why haven’t the film and music industries already eradicated all illegal file-sharing already? Why is my spam folder still overflowing, if Outlook or Gmail could just set aside one employee to solve this? As if cease-and-desist letters were a magic bullet that automatically reforms criminals…

Amottica · November 21

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Stafford197 wrote: »

Honestly, I have very mixed feelings here.

On one hand, there was actual transparency about a bannable action being taken seriously by Support. That’s great - simple as that.

On the other hand, ZOS is still 100% fine with gold selling as long as we utilize the Crown Store as a middle man, so they can rake in money.

EX: Spend $1000 USD on Crowns, gift away your Crowns in exchange for Gold, and congrats. You have purchased Gold for real money the “correct” way. The difference is doing it the “bannable” way leads to a greater payout for your cash.
Simply put it is a Risk vs Reward situation, not a No Goldselling Allowed situation.

In the end I just roll my eyes at stuff like this. Gold selling will always be alive and well in this game, because it is fully allowed so long as we do it the TOS-approved way.

By extension of your argument, exchanging anything at all in the game for in-game gold could be deemed "gold selling."

Psst! Hey, you in the zone. Yes, you! Do you want gold? Lots of gold? Well, just mail me all of your purple and gold tempering mats, all of your Cornflower and Colombine, all of your Mundane Runes and Heartwood, and I'll send you GOLD! Lots and lots of GOLD!

And you don't even have to buy me anything from the Crown Store for it.

Except exchanging something for gold isn't "gold selling." Going to a third-party website, entering your credit card details, and forking over IRL funds (as well as probably opening yourself up to getting your credit card details stolen) in exchange for gold is considered "gold selling."

Exchanging in-game gold for an item from the Crown Store isn't considered "gold selling," whether or not the person gifting you with the requested Crown Store item had to spend IRL money to get the Crowns to buy you the gift with. As far as I know, that sort of thing used to be frowned upon-- and it might still be looked at suspiciously depending on the specifics, such as the amount of gold being exchanged and how frequently the person with the Crowns is "gifting" things to other players. If I'm not mistaken, people have been banned for that-- at least, judging by what they came to the forums and posted about it afterward-- presumably when it looked too shady and suspicious.

Even buying things from a Guild Store for outrageous amounts of gold can be suspicious, and may result in an investigation for possible "gold laundering" or whatever, and can lead to action against the account.

The issue is not the trading in the game. As you noted, paying real-world money for that gold is the issue. The red flag in the game is selling one purple upgrade mat or a single potion for 100k gold since that is clearly way off the going price.

What I find odd is how Zenimax justifies trading crowns for gold or other in-game items. They consider crowns (or the crown item) to be in-game items, even though this is directly tied to real-world money without question. I am surprised they have not created a direct conversion system similar to what GW2 has, as it does provide a cost to the trade but also keeps it clean trade without the risk of scammers.

I don't know that they "justify" it. It's actually a pretty tricky and sensitive topic, I think, because ZOS knows that players want to be able to use their Crowns to buy other players gifts from the Crown Store, but I think they also want to keep tabs on and control the situation to make sure it isn't being used improperly or illegally. Remember, Crown Store gifting was disabled for a while, presumably due to rampant abuse by "bad actors" (illegal gold sellers or whatever). And when gifting was reenabled, players needed to be cleared and approved before they could gift anything. So it's not exactly like ZOS is embracing and fully endorsing Crown Store gifting; it's more like they're tolerating it, but only as long as it isn't being abused.

But they did justify it.

And of course, Zenimax knows that players will gift items, and now that players trade guild for crowns, they like all of this because it generates revenue. Some of those trading their crowns are buying it for that purpose.

The crown store's disabling was due to a different issue, as there was exploit that needed to be fixed, and it is pertinent to how Zenimax has justified trading crowns for gold.

So Zenimax has fully embraced crown store gifting. They created the system for it and have permitted it outside of the exploits they needed to close. They could not embrace such things more.

ElderOfTamriel · November 21

Definitelly a good thing they are looking into this further now and actually taking actions.

On the other hand, ive seen a reddit post yesterday where someones account got permanently banned (with the note that this would be a final decision) for the reason the person was interacting and buying crowns for gold from an account which was determined to be a gold selling account and this is not ok with their code of conduct. But funny enough did they approve the account to be able to gift stuff and crown selling and gold selling is not the same at all.

If that would happen to me i would be actually furious. I buy crowns for gold from time to time, its definitelly not ok to take redditors account down just because he interacted with an account who MIGHT have sold gold (even tho in redditors post it was crown-gold trading which is perfectly fine after reading their code of conduct). beside redditors account is from beta.

i highly dislike actions like this as redditor couldnt know the account he was buying crowns from was determined as gold selling account and crown selling/buying is definitelly not against code of conduct from zos.

SeaGtGruff · November 21

Yeah, I saw a thread about that, and it isn't the first time something like that has happened.

Despite what a lot of people believe, I do not think ZOS fully supports or condones exchanging gold for "gifts" from the Crown Store. If they did fully support it, I think they would probably modify the Crown Store interface so players could directly purchase items for gold, removing the need for players to risk being scammed by other players. And considering how a lot of players are able to rapidly acquire hundreds of millions in gold through various means-- selling through guild traders, selling carries, doing crafting writs on multiple characters and multiple accounts each day, etc.-- I seriously doubt that ZOS will ever add an option like that to the Crown Store.

In the real world, a "gift" is usually given without expecting or demanding anything in return from the recipient. I think that is what ZOS intended Crown Store gifting to be from the start-- a way to let someone literally gift a Crown Store item to another player. The fact that a lot of players decided to turn the Crown Store gifting mechanism into some sort of Crowns-for-gold exchange mechanism is another matter entirely. That sort of thing might be tolerated as long as it stays "within reason" and doesn't involve gold-selling in any way, but tolerating something isn't the same thing as condoning and supporting it.