I wish to discuss the increasing amount of Gold Sellers on PC EU

NoticeMeArkay · July 2023

What you see here are pictures taken throughout this week, in different zones, during different times of the day of multiple and sometimes even the same Account advertising "Gold Swat".

"What's Gold Swat?"

Well, GoldSwat is a platform for online trading of in-game currencies, including gold, gears, and items in exchange for real money. Which, as every sane person can already tell, is strictly against TOS of every single online game imaginable. Including The Elderscrolls Online.

If you've spend time in any other MMO with a botting issue, you've heard of them. A lot. - They are collective of botters, settled in Hong Kong, which farm gold en mass to later sell it to players.
All those joyful bundles of sorcerers swarming starter areas and well-known farming regions? Yes, that's them.

I have censored the character names not to protect these accounts from getting banned, but because the forum rules demand so.

"Why should this concern me?"

It should concern every single one of you, because these folks are about to become the greatest threat in regards of the game's economy. The more gold they generate and pump into our system, the more things are starting to look like the current state of console ESO and worse. Far worse.

And as far as I can tell, a lot of you are rather disappointed with the current issue regarding "Gifting Crown Crates", right?
So have a little look at this: People spend less money on buying gold en mass from these guys, than they'd have to spend on crowns for the same value. Even in regions as turkey where crowns are known to be a lot cheaper. Then those players use their bought gold to buy crown crates.

There's a ban on gifting crown crates without the involvement of the ingame support and the most popular group of Botters/Gold Sellers has become cocky enough to openly crank up their advertisement in zone chat on PC servers. They wouldn't be doing so if there wasn't an open demand. If there weren't players who give in and actually pay them. Enough of them to make the risk of investing money into multiple accounts facing a possible ban pro post worth it. This is the current state of our ingame economy.

"What exactly am I supposed to do now?"

Report them.

Report every single post of these accounts. Simply put "Gold Seller" into the description so that the ticket AI can pick up on it and give your ticket the appropriate priority stamp.
Blending them out will make things only worse. Adding them to your addon's blacklist to have those messages disappear like guild advertisements will do nothing. And you'll also still get to see those messages because they are continously changing up their advertisements format in order to remain unseen to any ingame surveillance.

And just as important: Do NOT give them your money. Every single account that gets involved with this, is strictly acting against ToS and will be banned when caught.

"What do you expect Zos to do?"

Well, me and my guild members have reported the accounts pictured above multiple times. And yet, they are still posting. Those are the same exact character names and, after reporting them and taking a look at the block list, account names aswell!

I wish of ZoS to update the keywords for their ticket AI accordingly, so that actions against gold sellers can actually be taken. If they haven't done so already in regards of this.

The support can't tend to this problem, if they aren't notified by their own system and if us, the playerbase, doesn't send those tickets!

Túrin_Vidsmidr · July 2023

Don't worry I keep reporting them, hoping we still have a couple good years before the inevitable economic collapse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfyiE_tgVic

TX12001rwb17_ESO · July 2023

Here is the thing the gold sellers fail to realize, if people want to spend real money for gold they can always buy crowns and sell them or they can just keep the crowns because odds are they would of just used the brought gold to buy crowns from others anyway.

DragonRacer · July 2023

Yup, GoldSwat is on PS NA advertising every darn day with a new account of largely the same name, but different numbers and characters because they probably have to make a “new” account every other day as previous ones get banned.

Tandor · July 2023

I hate gold sellers, almost as much as I hate gold buyers, but let's be honest. The "game economy" only affects part of the playerbase, and even that part that represents buyers benefits from lowering of prices through bots and gold sellers. The only people that are really threatened by a weak economy are the serious traders and they have more millions in the bank than they know what to do with anyway.

That said, I have reported the only gold seller I saw in /say. I've never had Zone chat enabled, and as a result of this uptick in gold sellers I've also disabled Zone English.

So yes, if you want to report them then do so, and it would help if the means of doing so was simplified, otherwise the only real way to stop them is not to buy from them.

Wolfkeks · July 2023

I've been reporting them for weeks now but it seems they are growing in numbers considering the amount of accounts advertising the website.

Might also be a good call to tell other players to do the same and that buying gold is agains ToS as they tend to hang out in newbie zones . probably trying to catch new players.

demonology89 · July 2023

NoticeMeArkay wrote: »

What you see here are pictures taken throughout this week, in different zones, during different times of the day of multiple and sometimes even the same Account advertising "Gold Swat".

"What's Gold Swat?"

Well, GoldSwat is a platform for online trading of in-game currencies, including gold, gears, and items in exchange for real money. Which, as every sane person can already tell, is strictly against TOS of every single online game imaginable. Including The Elderscrolls Online.

If you've spend time in any other MMO with a botting issue, you've heard of them. A lot. - They are collective of botters, settled in Hong Kong, which farm gold en mass to later sell it to players.
All those joyful bundles of sorcerers swarming starter areas and well-known farming regions? Yes, that's them.

I have censored the character names not to protect these accounts from getting banned, but because the forum rules demand so.

"Why should this concern me?"

It should concern every single one of you, because these folks are about to become the greatest threat in regards of the game's economy. The more gold they generate and pump into our system, the more things are starting to look like the current state of console ESO and worse. Far worse.

And as far as I can tell, a lot of you are rather disappointed with the current issue regarding "Gifting Crown Crates", right?
So have a little look at this: People spend less money on buying gold en mass from these guys, than they'd have to spend on crowns for the same value. Even in regions as turkey where crowns are known to be a lot cheaper. Then those players use their bought gold to buy crown crates.

There's a ban on gifting crown crates without the involvement of the ingame support and the most popular group of Botters/Gold Sellers has become cocky enough to openly crank up their advertisement in zone chat on PC servers. They wouldn't be doing so if there wasn't an open demand. If there weren't players who give in and actually pay them. Enough of them to make the risk of investing money into multiple accounts facing a possible ban pro post worth it. This is the current state of our ingame economy.

"What exactly am I supposed to do now?"

Report them.

Report every single post of these accounts. Simply put "Gold Seller" into the description so that the ticket AI can pick up on it and give your ticket the appropriate priority stamp.
Blending them out will make things only worse. Adding them to your addon's blacklist to have those messages disappear like guild advertisements will do nothing. And you'll also still get to see those messages because they are continously changing up their advertisements format in order to remain unseen to any ingame surveillance.

And just as important: Do NOT give them your money. Every single account that gets involved with this, is strictly acting against ToS and will be banned when caught.

"What do you expect Zos to do?"

Well, me and my guild members have reported the accounts pictured above multiple times. And yet, they are still posting. Those are the same exact character names and, after reporting them and taking a look at the block list, account names aswell!

I wish of ZoS to update the keywords for their ticket AI accordingly, so that actions against gold sellers can actually be taken. If they haven't done so already in regards of this.

The support can't tend to this problem, if they aren't notified by their own system and if us, the playerbase, doesn't send those tickets!

Prepare to be flamed and accused as a conspiracy theorist for trying to correlate the problem of gold selling and the discontinuation of buying crown crates with gold.

Ankael07 · July 2023

Good luck causing any harm to them now that they have god knows how many free accounts from Epic Games

ZOS shouldnt have partnered with them

Ragnarok0130 · July 2023

OP you could have described the issue without giving the botters free advertising by naming the service and giving out the URL.

ZOS_Kevin · July 2023

Hi all. We know this situation is frustrating and are working with our teams to get rid of as many of these accounts as we can. As mentioned before, please continue to report and do so in-game. This is the best way for us to have an actionable path.

On the note of Epic, we are also working with them (as we do with all of our partners) to address issues like this. This is also why it is important to continue reporting in-game. To give all teams as much info as possible to remove bad actors.

Also as mentioned, please be carful when posting about this issue to not inadvertently spread information or potential access to their platforms. @NoticeMeArkay thank you for blocking out the seller names in the picture. If you have an unedited version of the picture, please DM it to me. We'll pass those names to customer service.

NoticeMeArkay · July 2023

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all. We know this situation is frustrating and are working with our teams to get rid of as many of these accounts as we can. As mentioned before, please continue to report and do so in-game. This is the best way for us to have an actionable path.

On the note of Epic, we are also working with them (as we do with all of our partners) to address issues like this. This is also why it is important to continue reporting in-game. To give all teams as much info as possible to remove bad actors.

Also as mentioned, please be carful when posting about this issue to not inadvertently spread information or potential access to their platforms. @NoticeMeArkay thank you for blocking out the seller names in the picture. If you have an unedited version of the picture, please DM it to me. We'll pass those names to customer service.

I will send it over right away, including a screenshot of two fresh account names so you may have a bit of an idea what these guys usually use as credentials. Thank you for reaching out!

HumbleThaumaturge · July 2023

For ZOS_Kevin: It might help if there were specific Reporting criteria for Gold Sellers. I have been reporting using: Ask For Help/Report Player/Bad Actions/Scamming. Is this appropriate? Or would other criteria be more helpful to ZOS?

In the past, was there not an option to attach a screenshot to Report Player? That does not seem to be there anymore. Since it is not, I have been typing in the entire Chat message into the Report for gold sellers.

Gold selling might be reduced in the game . . . if there was policing of Guild Stores for gold laundering. It is pretty easy to spot gold laundering in guild stores. In the past, I have reported players who are obviously gold laundering, but they continue week after week, month after month.

Necrotech_Master · July 2023

i see the same site being advertised on PC NA from time to time too

its the only gold spammer ive seen since lately (on and off for the last year or so), havent really seen it much at all since pre-one tamriel (it was way worse back then)

DragonRacer · July 2023

HumbleThaumaturge wrote: »

For ZOS_Kevin: It might help if there were specific Reporting criteria for Gold Sellers. I have been reporting using: Ask For Help/Report Player/Bad Actions/Scamming. Is this appropriate? Or would other criteria be more helpful to ZOS?

In the past, was there not an option to attach a screenshot to Report Player? That does not seem to be there anymore. Since it is not, I have been typing in the entire Chat message into the Report for gold sellers.

Gold selling might be reduced in the game . . . if there was policing of Guild Stores for gold laundering. It is pretty easy to spot gold laundering in guild stores. In the past, I have reported players who are obviously gold laundering, but they continue week after week, month after month.

When I send a report from in-game on PlayStation, I get that auto-generated acknowledgement email from the support team in the email inbox I have my account attached to. I just reply to that and attach my screenshots.

They do seem to get them that way. First time I reported ol’ Goldy and sent the screenshots, a human replied back thanking me for following up with evidence to help them process the case. I have received no such response email to the last few of Goldy’s alt accounts I have reported, which kinda made me just stop bothering because it seemed like support was maybe hit or miss about it.

And admittedly, never got any response back when I reported a guild trader seller who was obviously laundering gold with, like, one potato listed for 10 million, so…

I know results of cases aren’t reported. But acknowledging evidence was received is appreciated. Not seeing that after reporting the third or fourth alt for gold selling sent a bad message that I was wasting my time.

Gargath · July 2023

Why players have to report everything, aren't there any Gamemaster anymore visiting game in peak times, when those gold spammers are most active?
I play this game for years and only occassionaly see the loading screen about "don't be fooled by imposters". Yet I have never seen any real Gamemaster in game.