Selling gold for real cash is okay now?

Aideian

So I’m seeing so many people openly selling gold for real money and I’m confused I thought this was against the rules if I’m not mistaken? Yet I’m seeing hundreds of people selling gold or at least trying to sell gold, use to I never seen people selling it because they didn’t want to get banned.

Blacknight841

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

You might see it a lot, but what you're not seeing are the bans that handed out right and left for gold selling, or the amount of those that are scams. People get banned for it whenever it happens. And they get scammed.

Setting aside that it's really easy for either buyer or seller to report the other person, so it's not safe at all

What bans? There are people playing this game that have been buying from the bots and selling for 5 years straight ... still no ban.

Raudgrani

On Xbox EU I can remember hearing about it once. A guy who was quitting the game, was writing in a guild chat about selling his gold, but was met with only suspicion and negative reactions in general.

But of course, people do this in large scale - this is what the "bot farmers" are about. So obviously it's at least 100% ok to SELL gold, as this has been going on forever. Buying gold on the other hand, I'm not so sure. Reminds me of a certain weird Swedish legal standard.

Gythral

No
but you can exchange crowns for gold (symantics I know but it cuts out the RMT)...

RefLiberty

How is that even work lol.

Aideian

RefLiberty wrote: »

How is that even work lol.

What do you mean? You give them money through some payment system like PayPal or cash app and they give you gold. From what I’m seeing people are selling 1mil gold for around 30 US dollars.

lazywhiteseal

well you can legally buy gold using real money by selling crown

Aideian

lazywhiteseal wrote: »

well you can legally buy gold using real money by selling crown

True but zenimax still makes money from it so that’s okay, at least according to zenimax, but people selling gold they get nothing from it.

markulrich1966

they must have really bad jobs...

if I compare the time to make 1 mio gold (some evenings) with 30 Euro (<1 hour at work), this does not look attractive for me.

Maybe in countries with lower income rates or bot-farmers?

(on xbox EU and NA I have not seen this yet)

Aideian

markulrich1966 wrote: »

they must have really bad jobs...

if I compare the time to make 1 mio gold (some evenings) with 30 Euro (<1 hour at work), this does not look attractive for me.

Maybe in countries with lower income rates or bot-farmers?

(on xbox EU and NA I have not seen this yet)

If you use Band or Facebook or any source where people buy and sell you’ll see what I’m talking about, there’s tons of people selling gold for around that price range.

Ruder

markulrich1966 wrote: »

they must have really bad jobs...

if I compare the time to make 1 mio gold (some evenings) with 30 Euro (<1 hour at work), this does not look attractive for me.

Maybe in countries with lower income rates or bot-farmers?

(on xbox EU and NA I have not seen this yet)

There are A LOT poor countries in Europe(on the Balkans)
where 60%of the people work for 300 euro PER MONTH.

tsaescishoeshiner

You might see it a lot, but what you're not seeing are the bans that get handed out right and left for gold selling, or the amount of those that are scams. People get banned for it whenever it happens. And they get scammed.

Setting aside that it's really easy for either buyer or seller to report the other person, so it's not safe at all

Daemons_Bane

Anything that involves player a sending real money to player b is a bankable offense

Aideian

Blacknight841 wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

You might see it a lot, but what you're not seeing are the bans that handed out right and left for gold selling, or the amount of those that are scams. People get banned for it whenever it happens. And they get scammed.

Setting aside that it's really easy for either buyer or seller to report the other person, so it's not safe at all

What bans? There are people still playing this game that have been buying form the bots and selling for 5 years straight. No ban.

Exactly, the same people I’ve seen selling gold for months now are still selling it and they’re not banned. Unless they use alt accounts but most of the gold sellers I’ve seen have their official gt as their username.

[snip]

[Edited to remove Conspiracy/Misinformation]

Blacknight841

Aideian wrote: »

Blacknight841 wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

You might see it a lot, but what you're not seeing are the bans that handed out right and left for gold selling, or the amount of those that are scams. People get banned for it whenever it happens. And they get scammed.

Setting aside that it's really easy for either buyer or seller to report the other person, so it's not safe at all

What bans? There are people still playing this game that have been buying form the bots and selling for 5 years straight. No ban.

Exactly, the same people I’ve seen selling gold for months now are still selling it and they’re not banned. Unless they use alt accounts but most of the gold sellers I’ve seen have their official gt as their username.

Using an alt account is like the police taking down the info on a fake ID. If they wanted to fingerprint and get to the bottom of who the person was, they could easily do it. ESO is no different. The game logs all transactions, if they wanted to track down who owned what account and where the gold and mats came from and where they went, they could easily do it.

Of course more people are doing it. If they see someone getting away with it, why not them?

On that note, I even saw someone selling an unbound crown exclusive item today!

Aideian

[

Blacknight841 wrote: »

Aideian wrote: »

Blacknight841 wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

You might see it a lot, but what you're not seeing are the bans that handed out right and left for gold selling, or the amount of those that are scams. People get banned for it whenever it happens. And they get scammed.

Setting aside that it's really easy for either buyer or seller to report the other person, so it's not safe at all

What bans? There are people still playing this game that have been buying form the bots and selling for 5 years straight. No ban.

Exactly, the same people I’ve seen selling gold for months now are still selling it and they’re not banned. Unless they use alt accounts but most of the gold sellers I’ve seen have their official gt as their username.

Using an alt account is like the police taking down the info on a fake ID. If they wanted to fingerprint and get to the bottom of who the person was, they could easily do it. ESO is no different. The game logs all transactions, if they wanted to track down who owned what account and where the gold and mats came from and where they went, they could easily do it.

Of course more people are doing it. If you see someone walk into a bank and rob it, while walking out the door waving to the security guard, you start asking yourself, "why can't I do that". No example was set in the beginning, so if your friend can do it, why not you?

Then I guess we’ll just start seeing it get worse and worse until something is done about it, if anything ever does. Zenimax is losing out on a lot of money so I’m surprised their not banning people on this one.

Taleof2Cities

Aideian wrote: »

[

Blacknight841 wrote: »

Aideian wrote: »

Blacknight841 wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

You might see it a lot, but what you're not seeing are the bans that handed out right and left for gold selling, or the amount of those that are scams. People get banned for it whenever it happens. And they get scammed.

Setting aside that it's really easy for either buyer or seller to report the other person, so it's not safe at all

What bans? There are people still playing this game that have been buying form the bots and selling for 5 years straight. No ban.

Exactly, the same people I’ve seen selling gold for months now are still selling it and they’re not banned. Unless they use alt accounts but most of the gold sellers I’ve seen have their official gt as their username.

Using an alt account is like the police taking down the info on a fake ID. If they wanted to fingerprint and get to the bottom of who the person was, they could easily do it. ESO is no different. The game logs all transactions, if they wanted to track down who owned what account and where the gold and mats came from and where they went, they could easily do it.

Of course more people are doing it. If you see someone walk into a bank and rob it, while walking out the door waving to the security guard, you start asking yourself, "why can't I do that". No example was set in the beginning, so if your friend can do it, why not you?

Then I guess we’ll just start seeing it get worse and worse until something is done about it, if anything ever does. Zenimax is losing out on a lot of money so I’m surprised their not banning people on this one.

Did you actually report the gold seller players, @Aideian?

Or is this one of those "I'm delegating that responsibility to someone else ... in the meantime I'm gonna point fingers at ZOS."

finehair

Some of the crown sellers sell the gold they got from crowns for real money.
And buy crowns-rinse and repeat.
I'm guessing it's kind of a way to profit in real money.

rpa

finehair wrote: »

Some of the crown sellers sell the gold they got from crowns for real money.
And buy crowns-rinse and repeat.
I'm guessing it's kind of a way to profit in real money.

Profit is not necessary for money laundering.

Aideian

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Aideian wrote: »

[

Blacknight841 wrote: »

Aideian wrote: »

Blacknight841 wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

You might see it a lot, but what you're not seeing are the bans that handed out right and left for gold selling, or the amount of those that are scams. People get banned for it whenever it happens. And they get scammed.

Setting aside that it's really easy for either buyer or seller to report the other person, so it's not safe at all

What bans? There are people still playing this game that have been buying form the bots and selling for 5 years straight. No ban.

Exactly, the same people I’ve seen selling gold for months now are still selling it and they’re not banned. Unless they use alt accounts but most of the gold sellers I’ve seen have their official gt as their username.

Using an alt account is like the police taking down the info on a fake ID. If they wanted to fingerprint and get to the bottom of who the person was, they could easily do it. ESO is no different. The game logs all transactions, if they wanted to track down who owned what account and where the gold and mats came from and where they went, they could easily do it.

Of course more people are doing it. If you see someone walk into a bank and rob it, while walking out the door waving to the security guard, you start asking yourself, "why can't I do that". No example was set in the beginning, so if your friend can do it, why not you?

Then I guess we’ll just start seeing it get worse and worse until something is done about it, if anything ever does. Zenimax is losing out on a lot of money so I’m surprised their not banning people on this one.

Did you actually report the gold seller players, @Aideian?

Or is this one of those "I'm delegating that responsibility to someone else ... in the meantime I'm gonna point fingers at ZOS."

Did I report all 50 of them? No, but I did report the owners over the pages since they are also openly selling them and supporting it.

bharathitman

Yet I’m seeing hundreds of people selling gold or at least trying to sell gold,

A hyperbole at the best, I have been playing this game from 4 years and I am / have been in multiple discord servers over the years and I haven't even seen anyone approach me or any public post about gold selling.

There might be some who do sell, not going to deny that, but it's not as rampant as you claim it to be

Aideian

bharathitman wrote: »

Yet I’m seeing hundreds of people selling gold or at least trying to sell gold,

A hyperbole at the best, I have been playing this game from 4 years and I am / have been in multiple discord servers over the years and I haven't even seen anyone approach me or any public post about gold selling.

There might be some who do sell, not going to deny that, but it's not as rampant as you claim it to be

I beg to differ, download the band app look at trader pages and look for yourself If you want I’ll even pm you 2 pages and you’ll see tons of people selling it. Idk what platform you’re on but I’ve been playing over 4 years too and I’ve heard about it but not many people doing it until I wanted to get more into the market and seen how many was buying and selling.

zaria

Aideian wrote: »

lazywhiteseal wrote: »

well you can legally buy gold using real money by selling crown

True but zenimax still makes money from it so that’s okay, at least according to zenimax, but people selling gold they get nothing from it.

Yes the gifting crowns system is an win for Zenimax as it increases the purchases in the crown store.

Gold sellers exist in all popular MMO and many have systems like gifting crowns, many better systems too.
Say you could buy an 1000 crown certificate as an unbound item you could sell, trade or give away.
Receiver could then use it to gain 1000 crowns or sell it again.

Tsar_Gekkou

It's against ToS, but you just don't openly tell people about it or the sites you sell with. I know a few endgame people who do paid skin runs and sell a lot of the extra gold for real money. Making real cash while having fun playing the game seems cool.

tsaescishoeshiner

I've had guildies who got banned for buying gold and had to start a new account from scratch. I understand why people would want to buy gold, just not why anyone would risk their whole account buying gold from a stranger online

Of course gold sellers can create new alt accounts as long as it's cost-efficient, but they'll also say whatever they can online to make themselves seem trustworthy, especially when they're not. And they KNOW from experience how common bans are.

It sounds like the app's problem, and maybe ZoS can get on their case about it since it can be seen as interfering with their business. If you have screenshots with blocked out usernames (forum rules: no naming-and-shaming), maybe that could paint a picture of how commonplace it seems?

notyuu

gold for irl cash = agsaint ToS have fun getting permabanned
gold fro crowns = allowed

Firstmep

Zenimax doesnt stop anyone from "gitfting" crown store items to a "friend" and that "friend" then "gitfting" gold back.

JKorr

Firstmep wrote: »

Zenimax doesnt stop anyone from "gitfting" crown store items to a "friend" and that "friend" then "gitfting" gold back.

You missed the whole point of the discussion where it isn't "gold", it is real life money. Crown items exchanged for in-game gold is okay. Exchanging real world money outside of the game in return for in-game gold is not okay.

Pevey

There was a guy in one of my trade guilds who was in a group that did paid PvE runs and sold the gold in RMT. He got away with it for a LONG time. They were constantly advertising carries in zone (PC-NA). But I haven’t seen him for a while now. He either got banned or got bored. Or maybe now he plays with a different user name. Hard to say.

Thechuckage

JKorr wrote: »

Firstmep wrote: »

Zenimax doesnt stop anyone from "gitfting" crown store items to a "friend" and that "friend" then "gitfting" gold back.

You missed the whole point of the discussion where it isn't "gold", it is real life money. Crown items exchanged for in-game gold is okay. Exchanging real world money outside of the game in return for in-game gold is not okay.

How pray tell, does one get crowns without real world money?
Current system just gives ZoS their cut.

Blacknight841

The difference between crown to cash and gold to cash is that crown to cash requires a person to find enough people to gift the crowns to them. There has to be enough items in the crown store to have a demand, and you are not the only one dealing in crowns. On the other hand cash to gold jest requires you to find someone who has been playing enough that they have gold to sell, or more importantly use the gold from the sales in materials with bots. One facilitates further tos violations, while the other is limited by demand.

@Taleof2Cities as far as reports go. If I spend my time and and report someone who is clearly violating the TOS, then I see them the next day, then I see them the next month, then I see them still there 5 years later... Why would I ever waste my time with more reports. If you report a bot and they are there the next day, or even if by some miracle they do get banned and come back with new accounts. It is not my job to stand in the starting zones sending in tickets. That is what a gamester is supposed to do, monitor the activities of the game. If you have a problem with people breaking into a building because the door has a poor lock on it, the solution is not to replace the door, it is to get a more secure one.

It baffles me that they have not done more to prevent this issue. When people were able to cheat skins in the game in LoM, why did they patch the skin snipe? Why not just leave it there and ban people when they do get reported. That is the equivalent of how they are handling the bots, and gold buyers/sellers.

The bottom line is that this is not a new issue. This is an issue that has been part of this game for 5 years. If I bought a house with a leak in a pipe, I wouldn't set a bucket underneath it and "solve" the solution by emptying the bucket every few hours for 5 years straight... I would fix the leak.