Disabling crown gifting is a bad idea

RedrunnerFred

Damn. I have been farming tel var for over a month so I could get enough gold to make a guild house and trade for the expensive mundus stone furnishings. Guess that is not going to happen anymore. All my effort is now worthless.

Lags

Its crazy that they did this without any notice too. I dont feel bad for crown sellers but man id be pissed if i was sitting on a ridiculous amount of crowns to sell, and then had the rug pulled out with no notice or warning at all.

SilverBride

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

They aren't doing this because some players scammed others in game over crown sales. From what I understand it goes much deeper than that.

[snip]

Actually it is. Going state to state in the same country is one thing because the states all fall under the same federal jurisdiction. Going to a different country that has different economies and different laws concerning sales to and from other countries is something entirely different.

[edited to remove quote]

BardokRedSnow

SilverBride wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

They aren't doing this because some players scammed others in game over crown sales. From what I understand it goes much deeper than that.

[snip]

Actually it is. Going state to state in the same country is one thing because the states all fall under the same federal jurisdiction. Going to a different country that has different economies and different laws concerning sales to and from other countries is something entirely different.

SilverBride wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

They aren't doing this because some players scammed others in game over crown sales. From what I understand it goes much deeper than that.

[snip]

Actually it is. Going state to state in the same country is one thing because the states all fall under the same federal jurisdiction. Going to a different country that has different economies and different laws concerning sales to and from other countries is something entirely different.

Not at all. It’s legal in both cases, in many countries. Game developers are simply peeved about it because there’s no way to get around the legality of it. It’s not purchasing gold for cash. Even that is legal, just against terms of service. However there’s not been any terms of service statements covering purchases with in game gold and from where. However I’m sure now there will be.

Bottom line tho, Zos is still getting the money for the purchase, it’s just not as much as they’d like. That might seem fair to you, or even to most. But is it fair to the consumer. In the end these purchases are not the majority of purchases. Most people are not buying at 600:1 so whether or not you agree with what I am saying is irrelevant. What matters is, how many are sticking around to play this game when a major part of it that kept people playing was stripped away because some people use vpns to buy and sell crowns at Argentinian prices.

[edited to remove quote]

TX12001rwb17_ESO

Price sinks can be solved by making valuable items buyable from NPCs, the luxury vendor for instance could be selling more valuable items, every week we should have an expensive item worth at least 500,000 gold and what about a literal Gold Mat NPC? if you buy from them Gold goes to the Void and does not circulate like when dealing with other players.

SilverBride

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Bottom line tho, Zos is still getting the money for the purchase, it’s just not as much as they’d like. That might seem fair to you, or even to most. But is it fair to the consumer. In the end these purchases are not the majority of purchases. Most people are not buying at 600:1 so whether or not you agree with what I am saying is irrelevant. What matters is, how many are sticking around to play this game when a major part of it that kept people playing was stripped away because some people use vpns to buy and sell crowns at Argentinian prices.

Each country has their own laws governing the sale of goods. Bypassing these laws by using a vpn to buy at much lower prices in one country then selling in another may be the issue, but we don't know because we were not given details. But I do know that ZoS would not have paused gifting if they didn't have a very good reason.

Sythen88411

Well this sucks guess illl just build up gold selling 80 to 500 mill housing contracts and buy up housing mats till its fixed

myrdarkwood

You can tell the people who have no idea how laws and terms of service work and probably have access to mom's credit card. I took a 2-year break and came back to guild store prices skyrocketing because of Crown exchanges that were never meant to be used for gold exchange because if it was, you wouldn't have to risk one party just deciding not to follow through.

ZOS should be more transparent about the why because they were still making money from people selling Crowns, unless there is something deeper going on. I mean, you could always CashApp someone the money in exchange for in-game gold, which is about the same as what was happening before, so I'm unsure why folks are so upset.

SilverBride

myrdarkwood wrote: »

...you could always CashApp someone the money in exchange for in-game gold...

Which is very much against the ToS.

EF321

Just shutting down major feature of the game, and whole reason for many vet players to even play at all, is crazy.
Not announcing it even week prior, no time to prepare for that and buy what you were planning to buy later or sell crowns you were sitting on.

hiyde

code65536 wrote: »

. Buy crowns with stolen cards, sell those crowns in-game for gold, and then sell the gold for real money.

Ding Ding Ding. I don't think this is about "scammers" taking your gold and not gifting you the item(s).

If, in 6 months+, they haven't figured out a way to address the issue, I don't have a lot of confidence they ever will. And the terminology used in the official post pretty strongly suggests it won't happen any time soon. And no, I absolutely don't think this is some sort of evil plot by ZOS to force people to spend more money. Why would they care where the revenue (legally) comes from as long as they're getting it? The question isn't if revenue is going to go down, the question is by how much (imo). So they must have good reason?

I'm not saying they shouldn't have taken this step, they know what's best for the safety of their business.

Now that it's 100% disabled, some basic insight into what was happening and the implications might calm down some of the Pitchfork crowd. My bet is on the scenario quoted above.

Curious to see what the impact will be (fingers crossed for *nominal*) Feels like it might be a bumpy Fall & Winter...

ApoAlaia

EF321 wrote: »

Just shutting down major feature of the game, and whole reason for many vet players to even play at all, is crazy.
Not announcing it even week prior, no time to prepare for that and buy what you were planning to buy later or sell crowns you were sitting on.

Depending on the nature of this 'fraudulent behaviour' it is within the realm of possibility that they (ZOS) did not have a heads up either.

It could be that they received an ultimatum from a third party involved - for instance the company/es processing transactions - that either they plugged the hole or they would suspend their services.

'Fraudulent activity' is too wide a term without more context; in countries with common law the line that divides 'fraudulent activity' and 'activity that is not necessarily legal but is definitely profitable therefore worth pursuing' is more often than not tested in a court of law.

thehilanderb14a_ESO

SilverBride wrote: »

myrdarkwood wrote: »

...you could always CashApp someone the money in exchange for in-game gold...

Which is very much against the ToS.

Yes, it is against the terms of service - but it’s not something that ZoS would have any way to prevent unless someone was stupid enough to go around bragging about having done it.

His point was that people WILL find ways to turn real money into in game gold, no matter what a game developer tries to do to stop it. Better to channel that into things like crownselling, where at least they get their revenue from the person who buys the crowns to sell - rather than having people turn to third party sites or apps where ZoS has virtually no way of even knowing about it unless people are dumb enough to talk about it in game. And while they can - and should - try to stamp out this kind of activity when they can, it isn’t actually *illegal* in general.

Now, if the problem is ACTUAL fraud (I.e. stolen cards, money laundering, etc) rather than just people finding creative ways to get cheap crowns to sell, ZoS needs to take more definitive action. Maybe that is the case here, maybe not…but a blanket ban on gifting is basically “throwing the baby out with the bath water”, as the saying goes, especially if the ban goes on for an extended - and indefinite - period.

hiyde

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

FireBreathingNord wrote: »

...permanently banning all gifting still feels like an excessive sledgehammer approach...

It's not permanent.

Unless they provide an estimated time for a fix it effectively is.

Not to mention, it's been 6 months since the disabling of Crate-gifting on PCNA. I don't think they'd completely pulled the plug on all gifting today if a solution was anywhere on the horizon...

BardokRedSnow

Also state to state in the US is the

SilverBride wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Bottom line tho, Zos is still getting the money for the purchase, it’s just not as much as they’d like. That might seem fair to you, or even to most. But is it fair to the consumer. In the end these purchases are not the majority of purchases. Most people are not buying at 600:1 so whether or not you agree with what I am saying is irrelevant. What matters is, how many are sticking around to play this game when a major part of it that kept people playing was stripped away because some people use vpns to buy and sell crowns at Argentinian prices.

Each country has their own laws governing the sale of goods. Bypassing these laws by using a vpn to buy at much lower prices in one country then selling in another may be the issue, but we don't know because we were not given details. But I do know that ZoS would not have paused gifting if they didn't have a very good reason.

“Very good reason” is subjective. It’s a business. For them, the chance to squeeze out more money from the player base is a very good reason. Question is do they know their own game well enough to know how to do that in a way that won’t make them destroy their own player base. Personally their decisions over not even the years but this year specifically prove otherwise.

I won’t pretend to know the specific laws of vpn usage in every country in relation to the selling of in game currency, but I do know that there are many ways they could have gone about solving this issue that doesn’t require stripping away gifting as a feature and making gold for veteran players almost useless.

BardokRedSnow

myrdarkwood wrote: »

You can tell the people who have no idea how laws and terms of service work and probably have access to mom's credit card. I took a 2-year break and came back to guild store prices skyrocketing because of Crown exchanges that were never meant to be used for gold exchange because if it was, you wouldn't have to risk one party just deciding not to follow through.

ZOS should be more transparent about the why because they were still making money from people selling Crowns, unless there is something deeper going on. I mean, you could always CashApp someone the money in exchange for in-game gold, which is about the same as what was happening before, so I'm unsure why folks are so upset.

This post must be reflecting because the irony of stating people can use cash app to buy gold when you just said people don’t understand terms of service xD

Aside from that, the people using gold to buy crowns are the main ones from my observation who are upset. They wouldn’t care if they could just spend mommy’s money lol. Tho I would in a heartbeat if I could, that woman owes me big bucks lol.

hiyde

sarahthes wrote: »

React wrote: »

This comment aged well, eh?

You know very well the scammers just moved on to regular crowns for gold exchanges once crates were removed as an option.

When this first happened in March, my first thought was "why would they restrict ONLY Crown Crates?" How could the fraud not be happening with *any* giftable item? What surprised me about today is that it took 6 months.

FeedbackOnly

I wonder how long it will eventually take

BardokRedSnow

You know it’s bad when they’re not even bothering to delete posts and issue warnings left and right, too many threads and posts with unhappy fans I guess.

hiyde

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

Game developers are simply peeved about it because there’s no way to get around the legality of it...

Bottom line tho, Zos is still getting the money for the purchase, it’s just not as much as they’d like...

a major part of it that kept people playing was stripped away because some people use vpns to buy and sell crowns at Argentinian prices.

But this just doesn't make any sense. Why would they take such drastic action, inconvenience/annoy players and cut off ALL gifting revenue because some people used a VPN cheat to get cheaper crowns?

None of us know for sure, because ZOS isn't telling us. The scenario of stolen card + laundering the gold into USD makes the most sense. Tons of chargebacks could strain relationships with credit card companies. (customer service has to field the charge disputes, initiate chargebacks, etc. That costs the credit card companies $$ to manage).

And/or perhaps it's a numbers thing. Perhaps ZOS has come to a point where they feel whatever revenue is left with gifting disabled is more and/or less headache than what they're netting after all the chargebacks.

Again, I don't think this is some evil plot (or temper tantrum because a few people got cheap crowns via vpn) on the part of ZOS. At the end of the day, it's about revenue, why would they kill a substantial source of it (and do harm to customer relations) unless they felt it was absolutely necessary?

Frustration/disappointment I understand. Some of these outlier theories not so much.

BardokRedSnow

Why do they do anything.

To make more money.

I don’t think it’s some grand conspiracy, or them being evil. I just think they’re mismanaging their product as they have been for years, and don’t understand their game or why people play it. That’s pretty consistent with their actions of the past,

Trundik

[snip] I want my statues. And if you want to prevent fraudulent behavior, don't behave fraudulent yourself. There is enough mindpower to punish innocent players as i see. Why there is no care about player needs? Again, Septmber crown store items will be gone while you temporarily looking for solution. Maybe (and probably) not just September. [snip]

[edited for bashing]

Amottica

Zezin wrote: »

More and more it seems the game is doing everything it can to alienate the end game community, we have nothing to do with the gold we get at end game, now more than ever the pul to play something else grows bigger and bigger.

Fraud and exploitation does much more to alienate the end game community than shutting down crown gifting until they figure out a better path forward.

As such it is a fabulous idea to terminate crown gifting at this time.

The end-game community somehow made it before crown gifting was a thing and will miraculously pull through this hiatus from crown gifting. Even more so since most of the gold is held by the end-game community.

Aleris

really disappointed

Trundik

Amottica wrote: »

Zezin wrote: »

More and more it seems the game is doing everything it can to alienate the end game community, we have nothing to do with the gold we get at end game, now more than ever the pul to play something else grows bigger and bigger.

Fraud and exploitation does much more to alienate the end game community than shutting down crown gifting until they figure out a better path forward.

As such it is a fabulous idea to terminate crown gifting at this time.

The end-game community somehow made it before crown gifting was a thing and will miraculously pull through this hiatus from crown gifting. Even more so since most of the gold is held by the end-game community.

Honestly bro i don't care about fraud. Never impacted my gameplay. Literally never. But this devs... they impact my gameplay almost every month with something bad -_-

BardokRedSnow

wilykcat wrote: »

I'm very disappointed that there is not a single ounce of moderation in this thread and dozens of rules being violated including the use of very offensive language (profanity). Where are the moderators? we need them here. I've reported so many posts and nothing is being done

Also I wish we could have a larger ignore list on the forums so I can block anyone who uses profanity and bashes the company.

Edited my response to this to adhere to forum rules. All Ima say is wow.

wilykcat

Edited comment:
It does take a little bit of time for moderators to come and remove posts. (patience is key). We do need the moderators on the forums because they make sure the forums are safe, fun, and enjoyable for everyone. I respect the moderators and appreciate their hard work.

Thank you moderators.

wilykcat

Retyped comment:
I honestly think by temporary disabling the crown gifting is a smart move and I also see the downside of it (thanks to these recent forum posts). The good thing is that they are currently investigating the issue and are working on resolving it. They know how important this feature is to the player base so they are going to make it available as soon as possible. Its ok if they don't know the exact amount of time it will take. Once they know they will announce it.

Everything is going to be ok.

Groterdan

Only reason i bougth gems is to trade and gift stuff . Gold I return to use for mats and stuff cuz got more money then free time. No reason whatsoever now to buy crowns

RoxyPhoenix

how come the crown/gold trading websites knew about this week before it was announced? Towns were flooded with advertisements for 500k+ crown sales, no one holds that many crowns on them unless ur an online gold trading company.