Can breaking ToS on an Alt result in a ban on a main account

Flaaklypa

Just curious if someone buys a second eso account for 5 euros and then breaks ToS by doing following:
Scamming
Gold selling
Profanity
Maybe even account selling? (Idk)

Can this result in a ban on your main? It seems this isnt the case, and is a low risk, high reward scenario and if only the smurf accounts gets a ban then the system is flawed.

Nairinhe

How do you prove that it's the same player?

Flaaklypa

Nairinhe wrote: »

How do you prove that it's the same player?

You buy a smurf, scam people for all its worth, move the gold to ur main then done deal.

priestnall.andrewrwb17_ESO

While working for another mainstream MMORPG I was surprised at how little privacy players have - none. Basically assume every move you make is logged.

AyaDark

I say it before:
Game price of 5$ was not healthy for the game price.

I buy it 10 times more price before.

And i did not see bots and etc.

If game cost is < cheaters proffit they will exist in such system.

It even can be a player with no main account, to start with.

If they do ESO + cheaper it would be good solution. But not the main game for 5$.

Cheaters do not buy eso+, they buy just base version of the game.

And peoples with low money will not take such expensive ESO+.

So it was bad solution.

RedMuse

Flaaklypa wrote: »

Just curious if someone buys a second eso account for 5 euros and then breaks ToS by doing following:
Scamming
Gold selling
Profanity
Maybe even account selling? (Idk)

Can this result in a ban on your main? It seems this isnt the case, and is a low risk, high reward scenario and if only the smurf accounts gets a ban then the system is flawed.

Can it? Sure. You broke the TOS, doesn't matter that you did it on another account. Will it? Maybe not, they'd need to be reasonably sure that both accounts were yours.

bmnoble

Nairinhe wrote: »

How do you prove that it's the same player?

I would assume they could check the payment method used to identify multiple accounts. Or in some cases when someone uses the same email address for multiple accounts, I would assume support is capable of putting two and two together.

But they would have to be motivated to do that, far easier for them to punish the offending account and get that person to buy another copy of the game.


To me the idea of creating throw away accounts seems like a real waste of time compared to actually just playing the game, if you have that kinda time to spare you can easily make enough gold for your needs.

As for selling gold or accounts for real life money surely doing an actual job would earn you more money.

Basaz

I've played MMOs for over 20 years and I've seen it all. You can most likely get banned for it, but the chances are minuscule on the best of days. If you want to be safe, don't do it.

Danikat

I'm not sure if ZOS always check for other accounts used by the same player when banning someone, but it wouldn't surprise me if they do sometimes, especially for things like botting where it's likely they're running more than one account. But either way the best thing you can do is report anyone you see breaking the rules and let ZOS sort it out.

bmnoble wrote: »

To me the idea of creating throw away accounts seems like a real waste of time compared to actually just playing the game, if you have that kinda time to spare you can easily make enough gold for your needs.

As for selling gold or accounts for real life money surely doing an actual job would earn you more money.

This isn't usually something real players do as a way of making money, it's done by gold sellers as a job and on an industrial scale. I'm not sure about ESO but in the past gold sellers in other games have been found to be operating 'factories' with tens of people running bots on hundreds of computers all farming gold and funnelling it into 'main' accounts to be sent out to customers. One bot might not make much in an hour, probably less than genuine players can make doing the kind of farming bots can't manage, but with a hundred bots running 24/7 it adds up.

As for whether it's profitable as a business again it depends. Often the farmers are based in countries with very low wages and cost of living, but selling to well off customers in richer countries so they can get comparatively high prices for their labour (although the people actually doing the work see almost none of that, it's the people in charge who get the profits). It's the same principal which makes sweat shops producing real life goods for incredibly cheap prices profitable.

But there's also been times when making the most profit isn't as important to the farmers as having an income stream which is largely invisible to the authorities, some gold sellers who did get investigated have been found to have ties to organised crime, with the money going into funding other ventures.

If you're curious there's lots of articles about it online, although many of the more detailed ones are relatively old now, from back when gold selling wasn't explicitly banned by most MMOs and some even openly encouraged it, and there was a lot of debate among players about the pros and cons.

Rasoma

I am pretty sure that the powers that be behind the scenes are able to track and trace which accounts a banned account offloaded items or gold to.Whether they do investigate, flag or otherwise deal with those additional accounts is something us players cannot tell you.

barney2525

bmnoble wrote: »

Nairinhe wrote: »

How do you prove that it's the same player?

I would assume they could check the payment method used to identify multiple accounts. Or in some cases when someone uses the same email address for multiple accounts, I would assume support is capable of putting two and two together.

But they would have to be motivated to do that, far easier for them to punish the offending account and get that person to buy another copy of the game.


To me the idea of creating throw away accounts seems like a real waste of time compared to actually just playing the game, if you have that kinda time to spare you can easily make enough gold for your needs.

As for selling gold or accounts for real life money surely doing an actual job would earn you more money.

I don't think you Can get multiple accounts on one single email. I thought the edress is the basis for identifying the specific the account. A login name is for simplicity, but it is still tied to that specific email account.

I have 3 accounts. They all required a different email.

Josira

bmnoble wrote: »

Nairinhe wrote: »

How do you prove that it's the same player?

I would assume they could check the payment method used to identify multiple accounts. Or in some cases when someone uses the same email address for multiple accounts, I would assume support is capable of putting two and two together.

But they would have to be motivated to do that, far easier for them to punish the offending account and get that person to buy another copy of the game.


To me the idea of creating throw away accounts seems like a real waste of time compared to actually just playing the game, if you have that kinda time to spare you can easily make enough gold for your needs.

As for selling gold or accounts for real life money surely doing an actual job would earn you more money.

Getting a job? In this economy?


Laugh. Now. It is required of you.

etchedpixels

barney2525 wrote: »

I don't think you Can get multiple accounts on one single email. I thought the edress is the basis for identifying the specific the account. A login name is for simplicity, but it is still tied to that specific email account.

I have 3 accounts. They all required a different email.

Never done it for games but doing forensics for other stuff believe me it's not hard to work out all the related accounts, activities and behaviour of a typical user across multiple accounts and services. Unless you are religiously using different virtual machines or PCs, each on a different network (or 100% on differing VPNs) and never moving an asset between them it's not usually terribly hard. If it's criminal then even the VPNs won't help you because their logs can be obtained by law enforcement.

Danikat

barney2525 wrote: »

bmnoble wrote: »

Nairinhe wrote: »

How do you prove that it's the same player?

I would assume they could check the payment method used to identify multiple accounts. Or in some cases when someone uses the same email address for multiple accounts, I would assume support is capable of putting two and two together.

But they would have to be motivated to do that, far easier for them to punish the offending account and get that person to buy another copy of the game.


To me the idea of creating throw away accounts seems like a real waste of time compared to actually just playing the game, if you have that kinda time to spare you can easily make enough gold for your needs.

As for selling gold or accounts for real life money surely doing an actual job would earn you more money.

I don't think you Can get multiple accounts on one single email. I thought the edress is the basis for identifying the specific the account. A login name is for simplicity, but it is still tied to that specific email account.

I have 3 accounts. They all required a different email.

Some email accounts allow you to add bits to the address, effectively creating a second email address that goes to the same inbox.

In another game I've got two accounts with one using myemail@gmail.com and the other using myemail+second@gmail.com. The game treats it as two separate email addresses, but the registration emails and everything go to the same inbox and I think it would be obvious to any of their staff looking at it that they're both owned by the same person.

VaranisArano

ZOS can and has tracked down gold transfers, such as when the PC/EU guild bid multiication glitches happened. They've also taken away gold from players who were (apparently unwittingly) trading "laundered" gold.

So certainly, if your main account is involved in the shady dealings, it can be subject to discipline.

Viewsfrom6ix

You can be IP banned and they can track down which accounts logged in using that IP.

Sylvermynx

Danikat wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

bmnoble wrote: »

Nairinhe wrote: »

How do you prove that it's the same player?

I would assume they could check the payment method used to identify multiple accounts. Or in some cases when someone uses the same email address for multiple accounts, I would assume support is capable of putting two and two together.

But they would have to be motivated to do that, far easier for them to punish the offending account and get that person to buy another copy of the game.


To me the idea of creating throw away accounts seems like a real waste of time compared to actually just playing the game, if you have that kinda time to spare you can easily make enough gold for your needs.

As for selling gold or accounts for real life money surely doing an actual job would earn you more money.

I don't think you Can get multiple accounts on one single email. I thought the edress is the basis for identifying the specific the account. A login name is for simplicity, but it is still tied to that specific email account.

I have 3 accounts. They all required a different email.

Some email accounts allow you to add bits to the address, effectively creating a second email address that goes to the same inbox.

In another game I've got two accounts with one using myemail@gmail.com and the other using myemail+second@gmail.com. The game treats it as two separate email addresses, but the registration emails and everything go to the same inbox and I think it would be obvious to any of their staff looking at it that they're both owned by the same person.

Or like me, I have separate emails for both accounts, but I have gmail forward them both to my main gmail account. It's going to be very obvious that they're both "me". In fact, I have a half-dozen other emails all forwarded to my main gmail account. That's from when I had several business irons in the fire.... I probably should delete those - I bet I haven't got an email on any of them in years now.

Tandor

Sylvermynx wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

bmnoble wrote: »

Nairinhe wrote: »

How do you prove that it's the same player?

I would assume they could check the payment method used to identify multiple accounts. Or in some cases when someone uses the same email address for multiple accounts, I would assume support is capable of putting two and two together.

But they would have to be motivated to do that, far easier for them to punish the offending account and get that person to buy another copy of the game.


To me the idea of creating throw away accounts seems like a real waste of time compared to actually just playing the game, if you have that kinda time to spare you can easily make enough gold for your needs.

As for selling gold or accounts for real life money surely doing an actual job would earn you more money.

I don't think you Can get multiple accounts on one single email. I thought the edress is the basis for identifying the specific the account. A login name is for simplicity, but it is still tied to that specific email account.

I have 3 accounts. They all required a different email.

Some email accounts allow you to add bits to the address, effectively creating a second email address that goes to the same inbox.

In another game I've got two accounts with one using myemail@gmail.com and the other using myemail+second@gmail.com. The game treats it as two separate email addresses, but the registration emails and everything go to the same inbox and I think it would be obvious to any of their staff looking at it that they're both owned by the same person.

Or like me, I have separate emails for both accounts, but I have gmail forward them both to my main gmail account. It's going to be very obvious that they're both "me". In fact, I have a half-dozen other emails all forwarded to my main gmail account. That's from when I had several business irons in the fire.... I probably should delete those - I bet I haven't got an email on any of them in years now.

You might need them for all those extra ESO accounts you haven't got - yet !

Sylvermynx

Tandor wrote: »

Sylvermynx wrote: »

/quote]

Or like me, I have separate emails for both accounts, but I have gmail forward them both to my main gmail account. It's going to be very obvious that they're both "me". In fact, I have a half-dozen other emails all forwarded to my main gmail account. That's from when I had several business irons in the fire.... I probably should delete those - I bet I haven't got an email on any of them in years now.

You might need them for all those extra ESO accounts you haven't got - yet !

*laughing* Actually, I've got a third gmail addy already waiting for when I set up a third account!

DreamsUnderStars

I think the only time ZOS is going to be at all interested in your accounts is if you do something against the TOS. It seems like, in general only the account with the infringement gets the ban... though I don't really know.

Do we even have gold sellers in this game? I never see them spamming.

Starlock

DreamsUnderStars wrote: »

I think the only time ZOS is going to be at all interested in your accounts is if you do something against the TOS. It seems like, in general only the account with the infringement gets the ban... though I don't really know.

Do we even have gold sellers in this game? I never see them spamming.

A couple years ago or so it was a huge problem on xbox NA. There were gold selling bots spamming in zone chat all over the place. That incident was one of the few times we got any sort of official forum acknowledgement of these sorts of problems and Gina coming in with a massive ban hammer. Lots of proverbial account heads rolled.

Danikat

I haven't seen gold sellers spamming in-game since the first year of the game, but then I hardly ever see them in Guild Wars 2 any more either, and they used to be everywhere in that game.

I'm not sure if both games have gotten better at shutting them down or if they've just given up on advertising so obviously because it was getting too many of their accounts reported and banned.

WrathOfInnos

My understanding is that ZOS bans accounts for breaking ToS, not players. I think there have even been statements in the past about how people are welcome to start a new account and play by the rules after a ban. IP address bans and identification by credit card doesn’t really work anyway, bots and scammers can get around it easily, while it hurts innocent people playing in the same household (like couples or siblings).

That’s not to say things like gold selling can’t get multiple accounts banned. If you’re passing things between multiple accounts that is all traceable, and they may all be breaking the ToS.

MasterSpatula

"Asking for a friend."

deleted221106-002999

MasterSpatula wrote: »

"Asking for a friend."

LMAO

Another major coffee-spray but worth it. Thanks!

scorpius2k1

Flaaklypa wrote: »

Just curious if someone buys a second eso account for 5 euros and then breaks ToS by doing following:
Scamming
Gold selling
Profanity
Maybe even account selling? (Idk)

Can this result in a ban on your main? It seems this isnt the case, and is a low risk, high reward scenario and if only the smurf accounts gets a ban then the system is flawed.

I can't speak for ZOS here, but I would imagine they would start with the offending account and check if any others are associated with it. There really is no "main" game account as you or I would see it. If a person has multiple accounts, to the company they are all different customer accounts. Without going into specifics, there absolutely are many ways that ZOS could associate one or more accounts together and ban any or all of them for breaking TOS if they deem it proper to do so. I would have to guess it would depend on the severity of the situation at hand on how far ZOS would take it.

Toanis

Viewsfrom6ix wrote: »

You can be IP banned and they can track down which accounts logged in using that IP.

Sometimes whole regions are IP banned for market strategy or political reasons, but an individual IP is rarely specific to one person. Most IPs are assigned dynamically these days, when people with static IPs move or change ISPs, they get new IPs and the old ones are given to someone else. Also, internet accounts are often used by multiple people. Banning your sibling or spouse for what you did would be bad enough, but this could also affect whole campus dormitories or army installations.

Most of us could circumvent an IP ban simply by restarting our router. Much more reliable to identify the computer used by the offender, even easier when they use the same client installation for all accounts.

Girl_Number8

I guess if you’re really naughty it could happen. Since ZOS doesn’t talk about punishments publicly much, who really knows.

Though still two different accounts so not seeing it. Again, it would have to be something really above and beyond to warrant such a ban.

Flaaklypa

well this is starting to become a discussion of politics so i doubt the thread will remain open for long, but thank you all for great answers,

amapola76

Flaaklypa wrote: »

Nairinhe wrote: »

How do you prove that it's the same player?

You buy a smurf, scam people for all its worth, move the gold to ur main then done deal.

I will say this: if someone is engaging in hardcore prohibited behavior, and that account is banned, I would think they would at a minimum take a VERY hard look at the account of anyone to whom the gold is sent.

ZOS_ConnorG

Greetings all,

After review we have closed this thread as it seems to have run its course and to prevent the thread from devolving.

You are welcome to review the Community Rules here.