Is buying crowns with gold no longer allowed?

GreySpectro

Friday the player [snip] bought a banker assistant for 4,400,000 gold, from a seller he met on a popular Discord server for crown trading, World Crown Exchange. Saturday he was banned for "engaging with a gold-selling account". He's a returning player, coming from a years long break. He's been playing since beta. This was his first time buying crowns.

Link to original post on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1gv9i0z/banned_for_crownsgold_trading/

No human being seems to have reviewed his ticket, as he keeps getting automated responses, some of which are VERY incorrect, like the one accusing him of buying 22 mil gold, when he in fact bought 4k crowns with 4,4 mil gold. Or the one accusing him of cheating. It seems like the automated system couldn't even decide why it was banning him. Can a real human being please review this? @ZOS_Kevin, @ZOS_GinaBruno

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Banning people for unknowingly buying crowns from someone involved in RMT is... certainly a choice. I believe his account was automatically flagged because he is a returning player. So, inactive account suddenly becoming active and sending gold to a fraudulent account. I can see why the system would flag that. But this raises a series of concerns.

A new player coming to the game might not be able to tell a legitimate crown seller from a fraudulent one dealing with RMT. A returning player coming from a long break might remember a time when buying crowns was safe, and might not know about the RMT epidemic. A regular active player who has never bought crowns before might not be familiar with RMT and won't be able to tell an account is suspicious. I know I had to google what RMT means when crown gifting was disabled last year, and I had bought crowns with gold many times.

Now, to quote another user:

- Gold selling account asks for permission to be able to sell crowns.

- Customer support approves their account to sell crowns based on their new non-transparent criteria. In other words, it is completely at their discretion.

- You then trade crowns with the APPROVED ACCOUNT in a roundabout mailing system, because the developers have not provided a safe in game way to trade crowns for gold.

- The ZOS approved account in question is found to be selling gold against the Terms of Service.

- Finally, you are held at fault and banned for trading with the account they chose to approve.

Why even allow gifting crowns at all if, without a moment's notice, we can be banned for trusting ZOS's judgement that an account was safe and fit to gift? How are we players supposed to know the account ZOS approved was fraudulent?

Some people think a built in system for crown/gold trade similar to the one Guild Wars 2 has could help, but I have no experience with that game so I wouldn't know. I do know something needs to be done, though. Banning innocent players over a measly 4 mil gold for an assistant is not fair at all. Absolutely nothing about this decision "reflects the extent and scale of the violation".

[Edit for Naming and Shaming.]

TitanEidolon

Well. I guess that helps answer the question on whether or not now is a good time to come back to the game. Rather not get reinvested if arbitrary bans like this are cropping up

EF321

This is just crazy, how can one player be responsible for what another person did with gold they got?

hana1015

I'm very worried when I saw the post today. I also want to know if gold/crown trading is now a valid reason to get banned, even when you have no idea whether you were engaging with a gold seller in the first place.

Veinblood1965

It's due to being associated with an account that sells gold for cash. Online game companies have had the ability to track in-game transactions for 20 years now. The ban was not for trading gold for a bankers assistant.

These gold sellers are the ones who run the bots in-game which are increasing daily and also from getting gold from things like this. Being associated with them at all is a risk.

I hope he gets his account back though.

GreySpectro

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

It's due to being associated with an account that sells gold for cash. The ban was not for trading gold for a bankers assistant.

Except the extent of his association with the account that sells gold for cash was sending 4,4 mil gold to it. He didn't play together or sent a friend request to the account, he just sent the gold through mail. So the ban was indeed for trading gold for the banker.

Also, they have banned people who sell carries before, because the buyer of the carry was paying with gold purchased through RMT. So the system online game companies have used to track in-game transactions for 20 years is very much liable to failure.

GreySpectro

hana1015 wrote: »

I also want to know if gold/crown trading is now a valid reason to get banned

You can see that the automated responses were all over the place.

The system initially accused him of cheating??

Then accused him of buying 22 mil gold???

Then finally accused him of sending 4,4 mil gold to a gold seller's account.

I don't believe a human being reviewed his account and wrote those discombobulated responses to his ticket.

I really hope this is not a case of AI banning people... Because this doesn't bode well for the many of us who buy crowns with gold we earned honestly in game.

sarahthes

He sent the gold to one account and a different account gifted him the crown items, so he didn't sent his gold to an "approved" gifting account. That likely didn't help his case.

GreySpectro

sarahthes wrote: »

He sent the gold to one account and a different account gifted him the crown items, so he didn't sent his gold to an "approved" gifting account. That likely didn't help his case.

Yes, and that is indeed one of the tells of a RMT crown seller. They use multiple accounts, which you can't always know until the transaction is well underway. People who are not familiar with how to buy crowns with gold won't know this. This was his first time buying crowns.

I've seen multiple people on Reddit and Discord that are now worried because they unknowingly bought crowns from the same seller.

Crown buyers like myself are already at risk of being scammed, since we usually send the gold first. Now we have the added risk of being banned.

I don't have the disposable income to afford ESO+ or buying crowns with money. I wouldn't even play ESO if I couldn't buy the DLCs with in game gold. I wish ZOS would implement a system that allows us to trade gold per crowns safely, like some other MMOs do.

aleksandr_ESO

GreySpectro wrote: »

I wish ZOS would implement a system that allows us to trade gold per crowns safely

How naive people can be sometimes. This is a business, and you're asking a business to legally deprive itself of a part of the most important source of money

Necrotech_Master

aleksandr_ESO wrote: »

GreySpectro wrote: »

I wish ZOS would implement a system that allows us to trade gold per crowns safely

How naive people can be sometimes. This is a business, and you're asking a business to legally deprive itself of a part of the most important source of money

crown-gold trades dont deprive money because someone still spent money on crowns in the first place

all people are asking for is a legitimate interface than relying purely on "buyer/seller trust" and hope the transaction goes through, and if its through a legit interface instead of just a random trade without context it might not result in inadvertent bannings such as the one in this thread

GreySpectro

aleksandr_ESO wrote: »

GreySpectro wrote: »

I wish ZOS would implement a system that allows us to trade gold per crowns safely

How naive people can be sometimes. This is a business, and you're asking a business to legally deprive itself of a part of the most important source of money

I guess Activision Blizzard and NC Soft don't know how to run their business then, since both WOW and GW2 have systems that do this, and both are more popular than ESO (and WOW is certainly more profitable too).

Now what's really profitable is banning your long time returning players, as well as banning your oblivious new players for unknowingly buying crowns from RMTers.

Crowns would still have to be bought by paid players to trade for gold with F2P players, how would ZOS be losing money, exactly?

Bammlschwamml

"After a thorough re-evaluation of the account's activity..."

Haha. Why does this make me want to laugh and cry at the same time? It's not like they had "CSI Tamriel" working on this case, or any other ban...

I am honestly afraid to log in and play at the moment.

ZOS_GregoryV

Greetings all,

After review, we have decided it best to close this thread due to Discussing Disciplinary Actions. Discussing Disciplinary Actions is a violation of the Community Rules, and is stated as follows:

• Discussing Disciplinary Actions: If you ever have questions or concerns about a disciplinary action or decision we have made on the ESO forums, or wish to appeal a forum warning or infraction you’ve received, we ask that you please contact https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/ to do so (please specify that you are contacting about a forum-related inquiry or appeal). We are happy to discuss and review specific moderation-related actions with you, but we do not allow discussion of any moderation actions or decisions on our forums. If you have questions or concerns about an in-game disciplinary action, please contact https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/ to ask about a suspension or ban, and any other support-related feedback. We cannot assist with in-game violations on the forums.

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-Greg-