Crown, goldseller and power leveling

weberb16_ESO

First I would like to say that non of us have bought anything, but this discussion have been going on for a couple of days now.
I have been playing mmo's for many years, so have my friends. Some of them came across a site that sells both crowns, gold and power levelling and one of them insist this is legit. I am sure it isn't no matter how many reviews and how legit the site look.
Then we read this https://account.elderscrollsonline.com/code-of-conduct and it doesn't say anything about getting banned for buying



On the page they say

I have changed the name of the company/site to WE

WE is an intermediator for various selected sellers.
The sellers offer products in digital and virtual form.
Only the best buying opportunities of the sellers are presented to the buyers on the platform of WE
Buyers interested in one or more buying opportunities on the platform of WE inform WE of their buying desire by clicking on the button "order" at the end of the order process and thus making a legally binding offer for the respective product.
WE forwards the offer to the respective seller(s) who can accept it then. The order is forwarded within the context of the order process via the platform of WE before selecting the mode of payment via an interface to the seller(s). The checking of the offer by the seller(s) is visible for the client by a charge icon and the note "Waiting for confirmation by the seller".
If the seller(s) accept(s) the offer, they will stipulate the terms of payment and then the client can select the mode of payment and enter the correpsonding data on the site of the respective payment provider. At this point, it is reserved to the seller(s) to refuse certain modes of payment or accept or demand other modes of payment than the ones listed on the platform of WE
WE carries out the handling of payments and immediately informs the seller(s) about the receipt of payment.
The seller(s) deliver(s) the goods to the buyer. Until then WE is in attendance for customer service on behalf of the seller(s).
The seller(s) inform(s) WE about the successful delivery of the products to the buyer. After the successful delivery by the seller(s), WE pays out the received money minus the intermediation commission to the seller(s).


Service and delivery information

WE intermediate only selected sellers which deliver their products and services as fast and comfortable as possible to you with the high WE standards.

The following applies for our services:

- WE endeavor to intermediate your order as quickly as possible.

- All customer information is encrypted and only forwarded order related to the responsible supplier.

Gold: After receiving your payment, the gold will be delivered to your character via the chosen delivery type by the selected sellers. The gold has to be produced / played for after your order.

Powerleveling: During your order you provide all neccessary information. After receipt of payment the sellers will start the powerleveling within 12 hours.

Guides, CD-Key or Gamecards: After payment receipt those will be delivered within 5-10 minutes directly to your email address.



And this is how it is done

They often buy codes from companies in other regions. Pricing is often different based on how much people can pay in the region.

They then sell these cheaper codes to regions that typically charge higher and pocket the change.

The whole practice is very shady and disruptive in the game industry. The distributors think they are selling keys to people in poorer areas, when they are really just being used to buy the game cheaper and to be resold by a middleman for profit.

Ratzkifal

Half way through your post I got the feeling that you are mixing up a few things here.
If anyone reading this who knows this stuff better than I do and sees I made a mistake, please correct me!

Key-stores that sell the game validation keys are legally gray. It's not theft but technically it's smuggling. However no good is crossing any border since it's the internet and information (such as a code) is not exactly regarded as smuggling by the law. Game companies have to weigh their interests. Allow a minority to buy the game cheaper but having a playerbase around the globe or forcing everyone to pay the same higher/western price at the risk of bad sales in other countries.

Gold selling is generally viewed by the community as breaking the terms of use. The people selling are definitely breaking ZOS the terms of use. I don't remember whether the buyer is breaking the TOU, but supporting those that do is questionable.
However gold selling within the system ZOS set up is perfectly fine - aka trade gold for crownstore items ingame. In essence ZOS has become a gold seller themselves through this.
Similarly, buying crown store items with gold is legal and buying crowns from a keystore is gray. ZOS did sell the crowns in -say Mexico- normally and got their money, but the crowns found their way onto a British account. Even the state gets their tax revenue from that if it's a legit keystore. As long as the laws or terms of use don't change it's fine-ish.

There are ways for companies to make keys only usable in specific countries but legit key stores show where their keys are valid.

Powerleveling sounds like a rule violation. You agreed to not let anyone else use your account. Even though customer protection laws where I live say that you should be able to lend what you own to others.

weberb16_ESO

I just found it odd, that this is "sort of legit" when, for all the years I have been playing, all digital content have always belonged to the developing company (in game gold and crowns are digital content)

Is it the change of the company name to WE that is confusing? I could have chosen something different but it was a bit confusing following the discussion on TS while write the post and they had WE already standing in some places

yodased

First of all you didn't do anything in the way of protecting yourself from being banned from the forums for copy pasta that text into a post.

Literally just highlight any stretch of more than 7 words there and search on google for them, hell if you are on chrome you can highlight, right click and then search.

That being said, I doubt you'll get into trouble, but they will probably warn you not to do that again.

Why this is 100% not legit nor within the scope of TOS and rules of conduct.

1. Gold selling (The process of transferring in game currency in trade of actual government issue currency or bitcoin) is 100% against the terms of every single MMO. You are profiting using their IP by engaging in these sales.

2. None of the gray market sites are actually endorsed, supported or partnered with the company they are selling goods for. This means that they obtained access to systems using deceit ( presented themselves as gaming reviewers or influencers), theft or are manipulating currency fluctuation from country to country. If you buy these keys, they probably will work, but you take the risk of a purge from the developer of any non-supported keys that made accounts.

3. Any service in which you are charging someone real currency for in-game actions is against the service as you can not profit directly from their IP. Deltia tried to set up a system like this where he charged people to learn under his guidance, which is hilarious. That was shut down very fast.

4. If you search for the actual wording of the site you are trying to hide, it has exact match responses from at least 8 different domains with exactly the same setup. These are pump n dump sites that are setup in a wheel to maximize exposure and to mitigate the risks they take by having multiple sources of drip income.

tl;dr your friends have literally no idea how the market works for a game and are 100% incorrect, also they are taking a large risk of having their accounts and their IP blocked from future games if they engage in these practices.

weberb16_ESO

yodased wrote: »

First of all you didn't do anything in the way of protecting yourself from being banned from the forums for copy pasta that text into a post.

Literally just highlight any stretch of more than 7 words there and search on google for them, hell if you are on chrome you can highlight, right click and then search.

That being said, I doubt you'll get into trouble, but they will probably warn you not to do that again.

Why this is 100% not legit nor within the scope of TOS and rules of conduct.

1. Gold selling (The process of transferring in game currency in trade of actual government issue currency or bitcoin) is 100% against the terms of every single MMO. You are profiting using their IP by engaging in these sales.

2. None of the gray market sites are actually endorsed, supported or partnered with the company they are selling goods for. This means that they obtained access to systems using deceit ( presented themselves as gaming reviewers or influencers), theft or are manipulating currency fluctuation from country to country. If you buy these keys, they probably will work, but you take the risk of a purge from the developer of any non-supported keys that made accounts.

3. Any service in which you are charging someone real currency for in-game actions is against the service as you can not profit directly from their IP. Deltia tried to set up a system like this where he charged people to learn under his guidance, which is hilarious. That was shut down very fast.

4. If you search for the actual wording of the site you are trying to hide, it has exact match responses from at least 8 different domains with exactly the same setup. These are pump n dump sites that are setup in a wheel to maximize exposure and to mitigate the risks they take by having multiple sources of drip income.

tl;dr your friends have literally no idea how the market works for a game and are 100% incorrect, also they are taking a large risk of having their accounts and their IP blocked from future games if they engage in these practices.

Well I did what I could to "hide" what site it was, but thanks to you, now people know how to look it up.

therift

weberb16_ESO wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

First of all you didn't do anything in the way of protecting yourself from being banned from the forums for copy pasta that text into a post.

Literally just highlight any stretch of more than 7 words there and search on google for them, hell if you are on chrome you can highlight, right click and then search.

That being said, I doubt you'll get into trouble, but they will probably warn you not to do that again.

Why this is 100% not legit nor within the scope of TOS and rules of conduct.

1. Gold selling (The process of transferring in game currency in trade of actual government issue currency or bitcoin) is 100% against the terms of every single MMO. You are profiting using their IP by engaging in these sales.

2. None of the gray market sites are actually endorsed, supported or partnered with the company they are selling goods for. This means that they obtained access to systems using deceit ( presented themselves as gaming reviewers or influencers), theft or are manipulating currency fluctuation from country to country. If you buy these keys, they probably will work, but you take the risk of a purge from the developer of any non-supported keys that made accounts.

3. Any service in which you are charging someone real currency for in-game actions is against the service as you can not profit directly from their IP. Deltia tried to set up a system like this where he charged people to learn under his guidance, which is hilarious. That was shut down very fast.

4. If you search for the actual wording of the site you are trying to hide, it has exact match responses from at least 8 different domains with exactly the same setup. These are pump n dump sites that are setup in a wheel to maximize exposure and to mitigate the risks they take by having multiple sources of drip income.

tl;dr your friends have literally no idea how the market works for a game and are 100% incorrect, also they are taking a large risk of having their accounts and their IP blocked from future games if they engage in these practices.

Well I did what I could to "hide" what site it was, but thanks to you, now people know how to look it up.

Actually, you are the one who made it possible by starting a thread in which you state your friends found a gold-selling web site and then you posted a screen dump of that web site's front page.

I believe you when you say you did not intend to do so, but your thread closely mirrors one of the ways gold-selling web sites market their sites... by posting threads in player forums asking if such sites 'are legit' and including sufficient meta data to ensure the site can easily be found.

Veinblood1965

therift wrote: »

weberb16_ESO wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

First of all you didn't do anything in the way of protecting yourself from being banned from the forums for copy pasta that text into a post.

Literally just highlight any stretch of more than 7 words there and search on google for them, hell if you are on chrome you can highlight, right click and then search.

That being said, I doubt you'll get into trouble, but they will probably warn you not to do that again.

Why this is 100% not legit nor within the scope of TOS and rules of conduct.

1. Gold selling (The process of transferring in game currency in trade of actual government issue currency or bitcoin) is 100% against the terms of every single MMO. You are profiting using their IP by engaging in these sales.

2. None of the gray market sites are actually endorsed, supported or partnered with the company they are selling goods for. This means that they obtained access to systems using deceit ( presented themselves as gaming reviewers or influencers), theft or are manipulating currency fluctuation from country to country. If you buy these keys, they probably will work, but you take the risk of a purge from the developer of any non-supported keys that made accounts.

3. Any service in which you are charging someone real currency for in-game actions is against the service as you can not profit directly from their IP. Deltia tried to set up a system like this where he charged people to learn under his guidance, which is hilarious. That was shut down very fast.

4. If you search for the actual wording of the site you are trying to hide, it has exact match responses from at least 8 different domains with exactly the same setup. These are pump n dump sites that are setup in a wheel to maximize exposure and to mitigate the risks they take by having multiple sources of drip income.

tl;dr your friends have literally no idea how the market works for a game and are 100% incorrect, also they are taking a large risk of having their accounts and their IP blocked from future games if they engage in these practices.

Well I did what I could to "hide" what site it was, but thanks to you, now people know how to look it up.

Actually, you are the one who made it possible by starting a thread in which you state your friends found a gold-selling web site and then you posted a screen dump of that web site's front page.

I believe you when you say you did not intend to do so, but your thread closely mirrors one of the ways gold-selling web sites market their sites... by posting threads in player forums asking if such sites 'are legit' and including sufficient meta data to ensure the site can easily be found.

My thoughts exactly. This is a marketing ploy.