MAJOR BUG: PC EU widespread False-Bans [Solution not yet found]

Blobsky · September 2021

For those who don't know me, I am the GM of 5 very large Trade-Guilds on PC EU, so I hear a lot when things go wrong in the trading world.

This morning, I woke up to find that a number of Top Traders across my trade guilds, friendly trade guilds AND rival trade guilds have all received 72 hour bans for 'Duping'. However, I know many of these players to be entirely honest, have more gold than they need already, and solely trade for fun. I should be clear at this point: I was not personally not banned, but have total trust in the members who informed me of this sudden issue.

A number of PC EU GMs are currently working together to try and find the cause of the false-bans, as we do not want further players inappropriately punished. To do so, we need to find a common position between the people who are banned. Obvious possibilities are:

1. Since the patch update, a trading addon (or other addon that those affected all have) has conflicted with the anti-cheat system (I will shortly form a group chat to see what they share)
2. A dupe DID occur, and the traders bought from the duper without realising, receiving a temporary ban whilst Zenimax review the issue
3. The traders are being banned for having 'excessively high' sales (Most of those affected sell over 20-30m per guild per week) - However, a few were smaller sellers (1-3m per guild per week)
4. Some other issue (I will edit the post as ideas arrise, so that I can work with those affected to find the cause).

If you, or somebody you know was affected, please let me know. Myself and other PC EU GMs are forming a large discord group chat with those affected, to try and find the cause. The more people we have, the easier it will be to find a common cause.

In addition, if you have any ideas for further causes, please post.

Finally, if you have any further comments, they are all welcome. This false-ban bug does not just affect the people who were banned, but could affect the entire economy. Many of the traders who got false-banned are providing a very large percentage of the materials (and other items) that reach top guild stores, and there is a high chance that their inappropriate bans could result in a very sudden and very large inflation - So please do your best to spread this information and protect your friends!

JN_Slevin · September 2021

I can confirm this, a number of cases did show up in the last few hours where people got banned for "duplicating gold".

Im not saying ignore it, im saying please investigate this! This needs human monitoring, since i strongly suspect it was an error in the automatic system.

What should we do now? Stop trading? Please ZOS look at this..

essi2 · September 2021

72 hour ban seems short if they are banned while the issue is under review.

Is ZOS aware of the issue in the first place, could be automatic bans.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_KaiSchober @ZOS_Kevin

xeniasvoid · September 2021

I hope they look into this quickly.

Parasaurolophus · September 2021

The traders are being banned for having 'excessively high' sales (Most of those affected sell over 20-30m per guild per week

20-30kk per week sounds unrealistic. Are you sure there was no cheating here? I have no idea how you can make that kind of money. What are they selling? Speculation? Rampant motive farming?

JN_Slevin · September 2021

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

show previous quotes

The traders are being banned for having 'excessively high' sales (Most of those affected sell over 20-30m per guild per week

20-30kk per week sounds unrealistic. Are you sure there was no cheating here? I have no idea how you can make that kind of money. What are they selling? Speculation? Rampant motive farming?

If you know what you are doing 20-30m per week is very much realistic. Mind you that doesnt mean they make 20-30m profit they just sell that much

Fandriil · September 2021

Im selling 1 - 2 m per week and im also banned for duplicating Gold.

Parasaurolophus · September 2021

JN_Slevin wrote: »

show previous quotes

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

The traders are being banned for having 'excessively high' sales (Most of those affected sell over 20-30m per guild per week

20-30kk per week sounds unrealistic. Are you sure there was no cheating here? I have no idea how you can make that kind of money. What are they selling? Speculation? Rampant motive farming?

If you know what you are doing 20-30m per week is very much realistic. Mind you that doesnt mean they make 20-30m profit they just sell that much

Okay, tell me then how is this possible?

JN_Slevin · September 2021

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

show previous quotes

JN_Slevin wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

The traders are being banned for having 'excessively high' sales (Most of those affected sell over 20-30m per guild per week

20-30kk per week sounds unrealistic. Are you sure there was no cheating here? I have no idea how you can make that kind of money. What are they selling? Speculation? Rampant motive farming?

If you know what you are doing 20-30m per week is very much realistic. Mind you that doesnt mean they make 20-30m profit they just sell that much

Okay, tell me then how is this possible?

Alright here it goes:

Buy expensive stuff
Put it for more in your trading guild
profit

Parasaurolophus · September 2021

JN_Slevin wrote: »

show previous quotes

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

JN_Slevin wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

The traders are being banned for having 'excessively high' sales (Most of those affected sell over 20-30m per guild per week

20-30kk per week sounds unrealistic. Are you sure there was no cheating here? I have no idea how you can make that kind of money. What are they selling? Speculation? Rampant motive farming?

If you know what you are doing 20-30m per week is very much realistic. Mind you that doesnt mean they make 20-30m profit they just sell that much

Okay, tell me then how is this possible?

Alright here it goes:
Buy expensive stuff

Put it for more in your trading guild

profit

In truth, this is what I expected. In truth, this is what I expected. I am not judging, just in my opinion, what would be to do 20-30kk per week, it is necessary to turn the game into work.

Blobsky · September 2021

Fandriil wrote: »

Im selling 1 - 2 m per week and im also banned for duplicating Gold.

Hi Fandril, please DM me your Discord ID so that I can invite you to the troubleshooting groupchat

Blobsky · September 2021

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

show previous quotes

JN_Slevin wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

JN_Slevin wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

The traders are being banned for having 'excessively high' sales (Most of those affected sell over 20-30m per guild per week

20-30kk per week sounds unrealistic. Are you sure there was no cheating here? I have no idea how you can make that kind of money. What are they selling? Speculation? Rampant motive farming?

If you know what you are doing 20-30m per week is very much realistic. Mind you that doesnt mean they make 20-30m profit they just sell that much

Okay, tell me then how is this possible?

Alright here it goes:
Buy expensive stuff

Put it for more in your trading guild

profit

In truth, this is what I expected. In truth, this is what I expected. I am not judging, just in my opinion, what would be to do 20-30kk per week, it is necessary to turn the game into work.

For many traders, Trading is the endgame. It is true of any MMO: Some people simply enjoy playing about in the Market, myself and most other trade GMs included.

TwinLamps · September 2021

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

show previous quotes

The traders are being banned for having 'excessively high' sales (Most of those affected sell over 20-30m per guild per week

20-30kk per week sounds unrealistic. Are you sure there was no cheating here? I have no idea how you can make that kind of money. What are they selling? Speculation? Rampant motive farming?

Its reselling items, not pure profit

starkerealm · September 2021

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

show previous quotes

JN_Slevin wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

JN_Slevin wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

The traders are being banned for having 'excessively high' sales (Most of those affected sell over 20-30m per guild per week

20-30kk per week sounds unrealistic. Are you sure there was no cheating here? I have no idea how you can make that kind of money. What are they selling? Speculation? Rampant motive farming?

If you know what you are doing 20-30m per week is very much realistic. Mind you that doesnt mean they make 20-30m profit they just sell that much

Okay, tell me then how is this possible?

Alright here it goes:
Buy expensive stuff

Put it for more in your trading guild

profit

In truth, this is what I expected. In truth, this is what I expected. I am not judging, just in my opinion, what would be to do 20-30kk per week, it is necessary to turn the game into work.

It's not that much time, TBH. I can think of a couple times when I've liquidated about 3 to 4 million gold worth of stuff (mostly crafting mats) in under an hour.

If you play the markets as your primary activity, then moving 20-30m is pretty plausible.

Bucky_13 · September 2021

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

show previous quotes

The traders are being banned for having 'excessively high' sales (Most of those affected sell over 20-30m per guild per week

20-30kk per week sounds unrealistic. Are you sure there was no cheating here? I have no idea how you can make that kind of money. What are they selling? Speculation? Rampant motive farming?

I tend to sell for 1-2 mil in the first day of the trade week, and that's just from my daily writs & PvP activities. If I started to flip items, while I almost never do it, getting 20-30 mil would be easy. It's 30 mil sold, not pure profit after all.

Troodon80 · September 2021

Doesn't Zenimax usually tell you what the thing was you did wrong when you contact them, e.g. in the case of a social ban they show you the chat log. Also, depending on the context of duping, I'm going to assume it means exactly what it is, dupe, and not an abbreviated for of duplicating.

Last time a spate of false bans occurred it was because of crown selling/brokering for crown sellers and their systems to catch (real money trading) RMT. Could it be related to that and "dupe" is just being used as a generic catch-all when mass bans go out? Did the people who got banned recently buy or sell any crowns (also noting a new Crown Crate season just launched)?

VaranisArano · September 2021

Good luck getting Support to look at these in a timely manner!

And for the players wondering "How is that possible? Could have been cheating?"

Sure. It's possible they really cheated.

But...

A. You can definitely trade that much in a week with a fair bit of playing the market. Buy low, sell high, and all that. Just because you might not enjoy that doesn't mean some folks don't.

B. The fact that these players are selling so much is an indication of where their gold comes from - it comes from other players buying. So they are far more likely to be receiving duped gold in exchange for their goods, and it's not like players can tell duped gold from good gold. We can't exactly bite the coin, you know?

C. ZOS has punished traders for getting problematic gold before...by removing the gold. Again, the traders themselves had no idea. The guild trader interface doesn't let you sell to specific people, and you have no way of knowing if you got good gold or duped gold.

It's worth considering those points before you jump to the conclusion that a bunch of traders were duping gold.

VaranisArano · September 2021

Troodon80 wrote: »

Doesn't Zenimax usually tell you what the thing was you did wrong when you contact them, e.g. in the case of a social ban they show you the chat log. Also, depending on the context of duping, I'm going to assume it means exactly what it is, dupe, and not an abbreviated for of duplicating.

Last time a spate of false bans occurred it was because of crown selling/brokering for crown sellers and their systems to catch (real money trading) RMT. Could it be related to that and "dupe" is just being used as a generic catch-all when mass bans go out? Did the people who got banned recently buy or sell any crowns (also noting a new Crown Crate season just launched)?

It's not clear here, but there's a Reddit post with the exact verbiage, and it's for Gold Duplication.

ZOS_Mika · September 2021

Hey folks,

We wanted to confirm that this was investigated by a specialized team, however because we are not able to discuss or assist with in-game disciplinary actions on our forums as stated in our rules we have decided to go ahead and close this discussion.

If you have questions or concerns about an in-game disciplinary action, please contact help.elderscrollsonline.com to ask about a suspension or ban, and any other support-related feedback.