Sony Goes After MMO Spammers and Farmers

[hennnry]

So basically, gaming companies finally learnt from these gold farmers that they can sell items themsevels and make money that way, on top of the monthly subscription service fee.

Nice... so it's like.. it's ok that companies do this, but not ok if free entreprenures do it.

Eventually, I guess there will be a class action lawsuit. Why? because there are poeple who want to play games but don't have time to do so. I'm one of them. I work about 12 hours a day, make a nice income, but can only play 1 hour per day. So if I want to enjoy an MMORG... the only real viable option is to buy through it.

Plus, do you guys REALLY think spending ungodly amount of time to achieve the highest level of an MMORPG is a great achievement? What about spending the time to build a career, make some ungodly amount of real money?

 

[jkflipflop98]

If you have only 1 free hour per day, there are far better ways to spend it than playing an MMO. Hell, you can't do ANYTHING in an MMO in an hour or under. By the time you find a good tank and healer, get your quest, then figure out where the heck you're going, you've already burned up 30 minutes or so.

 

[shoelessinsight]

The biggest problem with buying virtual money or items is that they rarely come through legitimate work. More often than not, the goods are stolen from another player through scams and key loggers.

Even understanding that these are just games and balancing one's life accordingly, these pastimes are still something one invests a fair amount of time in. It's extremely frustrating and disheartening to have everything one has worked for stolen away.

In other words, every time someone buys virtual goods through unofficial means (i.e. not serviced by the game's producers), he or she is providing the funds to have somebody else robbed.

 

[Guest]

The problem will continue as long as people are willing to pay for it. Sony should recognize that the times of "pay-to-play" MMOs are numbered. Many free MMOs have popped up that make their money solely off of having a virtual store where you can pay real money for enhancement items within the game. Sony should embrace this trend by lowering the acquisition price of their software as well as their monthly subscription rates. They should then open a virtual store that allows players to spend real money on items. By embracing the problem they can then regulate it, and even make more money via increased subscriptions and people who pay for enhancements.

 

[anamaniac]

I can't remember how many times in multiple MMOs I've reported bots and spammers...
They annoy the hell out of me...

Though I did attempt to sell one of my accounts. -_-

 

[fuser]

Sony does have a marketplace in EQ2 where you can spend real money to purchase virtual items. I'm fairly certain that's the only reason they're bothering to chase away the gold farmers. Before they opened the marketplace, spammers and gold farmers represented income. Now they represent competition for the subset of gamers who are willing to spend more money to get ahead in the game.

Sony has also implemented spam filters that work quite well. Spam used to get through all of the time, but now it's rare that a message gets past the filters.

 

[Andraxxus]

For some reason this nine-member covert group reminds me of the Ghosts
Never know what hit'em.

 

[knickle]

I’m going to avoid the whole moral part of the discussion and get right down to the facts. The gold spamming is a dirty business. I have no tolerance for anyone that supports them, and for those who do, you need a wake-up call.

While I can't speak for EQ2, WOW accounts get hacked all the time by these "gold sellers". Once they break into someone's account, they sell everything the player owns, mail the gold to one of their mules, and then delete the ALL of the characters just to rub it in. If that account has access to a guild bank, they will flush it out too, affecting an entire guild. Once the account is fully tapped out, the spammer will then create a new level 1 character and use that to start advertising. Eventually the account gets banned for spamming. The true account owner then has to go through hell to get the account reactivated, and hopefully get all their characters, items and gold restored. It can take anywhere from a few days to a month to get it sorted out.

Before someone here states that it's your own fault if your account gets hacked, it's not that cut and dry. On more than one occasion that I can recall, Flash Player (everyone has this browser plug-in) has had security holes. Guess who exploits these holes. Your AV won't protect you. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but I know people who have.

In the end this costs the MMO companies money as resources need to be allocated to deal with the fallout. It’s a pain in everyone’s side and someone needs to put an end to it.

 

[Kithzaru]

Dear Sony,

Thank you.

Kind regards,

me

 

[kentlowt]

What this article doesn't say is the stites they send you to are sometimes loaded with keyloggers and the such. Then a few days after your transaction with them you end up getting hacked and loose most of your stuff....which they then resell to someone else who falls prey to their advertising.

 

[grieve]

[citation][nom]NuclearShadow[/nom]I can understand stopping the spamming thing but I honestly couldn't care less about people who are dumb enough to spend their money on virtual money or items.[/citation]
I agree...

I have always thought the best way to counter farmers is for the developer to buy/sell in game currency and characters. Would you trust a black market dealer or Blizzard? (HINT: the correct answer is neither)

I think it be really cool if after 3 years of hunting your ass off and you finally wanted to quit if someone like Sony would purchase your Toon's. Even if you were paid "Sony Bucks" which you could move to a different Sony online game and distribute those same Sony Bucks" to get a quicker start.

I have bot a lot of online games and made a few bucks... I know these clowns wouldn't catch me. Sometimes it is just easier to build an account and sell it one time with the items.

 

[grieve]

[citation][nom]knickle[/nom]While I can't speak for EQ2, WOW accounts get hacked all the time by these "gold sellers". Once they break into someone's account, they sell everything the player owns, mail the gold to one of their mules, and then delete the ALL of the characters just to rub it in. If that account has access to a guild bank, they will flush it out too, affecting an entire guild.[/citation]
This article is about farmers, not ALL farmers are hackers... Some really just farm.
I am not defending anyone or saying it's OK to farm. I am saying you are generalizing saying farmers are hackers... while i am certain some are, i can assure you many aren't.

 

[hennnry]

[citation][nom]knickle[/nom]I’m going to avoid the whole moral part of the discussion and get right down to the facts. The gold spamming is a dirty business. I have no tolerance for anyone that supports them, and for those who do, you need a wake-up call.While I can't speak for EQ2, WOW accounts get hacked all the time by these "gold sellers". Once they break into someone's account, they sell everything the player owns, mail the gold to one of their mules, and then delete the ALL of the characters just to rub it in. If that account has access to a guild bank, they will flush it out too, affecting an entire guild. Once the account is fully tapped out, the spammer will then create a new level 1 character and use that to start advertising. Eventually the account gets banned for spamming. The true account owner then has to go through hell to get the account reactivated, and hopefully get all their characters, items and gold restored. It can take anywhere from a few days to a month to get it sorted out.Before someone here states that it's your own fault if your account gets hacked, it's not that cut and dry. On more than one occasion that I can recall, Flash Player (everyone has this browser plug-in) has had security holes. Guess who exploits these holes. Your AV won't protect you. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but I know people who have.In the end this costs the MMO companies money as resources need to be allocated to deal with the fallout. It’s a pain in everyone’s side and someone needs to put an end to it.[/citation]

As long as there's a market, this can't be killed. It's the same as cigarret or drugs.

Anything that can turn a profit can be used by bad poeple but also by good poeple. Yes, there are poeple who want to hack your account for quick bucks, but heck, there are people who hack into credit card companies and steal hundreds of thousands of credit card numbers.

So the practice of gold farming itself isn't wrong, it's the poeple who hack your account that's wrong. But there are lots of gold farmers who don't hack your accounts. Ever thought about that?

 

[kittle]

[citation][nom]ssalim[/nom]Dumb? when you have money and no time to play, I don't see it's bad to save your time and jump on the "fun"[/citation]
Im in the same boat. MMOs are fun - but putting hundreds of hours infront of the keyboard is not possible for everyone. I have bought virtual items with my RL $$ -- and it really DID make the game more fun.
Unfortunately im not the one dictatnig the terms of service in these games, so I dont buy stuff like that anymore.

But getting rid of in game spam and phishing emails and other annoyances will be a welcome change.

 

[HolyCrusader]

As an EVE Player, CCP has done a very good job keeping the spammers down to a minimum. Not only are they diligent in combating the spammers directly, they also hurt their own market with the concept of PLEX's.

PLEX's are 30 day account subscriptions that are purchased by other people with real-world currency, and then placed on the market by the players themselves at whatever they want (or more properly, what the market can support). This brilliant idea allows people (like me) whom have more in-game currency than RL-Currency to continue playing the game, while somebody else was able to spend some RL cash to get a good chunk of ISKies to buy whatever they want.

The few spammers I've seen advertising their wares (just before I petition them) don't even offer that good of rates compared to the legit in-game method. Now that's the way to kill-off a black market, by making it less profitable than the real-world market.

 

[Kami3k]

[citation][nom]hennnry[/nom]What's wrong with this practice? It doesn't make or break MMO. [/citation]

Really? Let's see EVE online once, maybe even recently, banned 2 or 3% of their accounts, and freed up around 30% of their servers CPU. Yea spammers can break a MMO by making it lag from the massive amount of spam they send.

 

[yamagiru]

One of the hardest things to deal with is the internal reasons of why sellers/farmers continue to infest our online communities. You can't remove them if employees of said MMO companies are feeeding them and in turn they won't bite the hand that feeds them.

One of the hardest things for myself is knowing who these employees are and not being able to post it due to FED and SEC regulations. I would love nothing more than to sink multiple GM's, DEV's, and an officer from Blizzard's ranks.

Sometimes it sucks handling a banking mainframe and seeing where money flows............

 

[belardo]

MMORPG are general life wasters anyways.

Spend hours, days whatever - constantly "building up" your character. Eventually, any person can get a high ranking character with a 10+ sword whatever.

Play a FPS, that requires some actual skills. Not just the ability to AIM, but to work as a team with others. And since most FPS are not MMORPG, you can jump in at anytime, play for 15mins, 1-2 hrs, whatever. Get killed a hundred times, doesn't matter.

Each their own, really thou. MMORPG have their place and glad people enjoy them.

 

[kooltime]

They are cheaters, stop trying to legitimize it any other way. A player gets items through 3rd party purchase, that they game maker did not intend for is cheating within the confines of that games design; period. Many games have ranking systems. If you obtain items that increase your rank value due to better gear / progress from 3rd party- means true game competitions are not legitimate ranks by player. They are characters made by multiple person farming to boost that player though means that character did outside of the game makers intetended mechanics. Buying gold or items so you can obtain better status or rank means you suck at game playing skills and the only way you can do good in competition is by cheating.

Yes buying items outside of the game from gold or loots traded outside of the game by 3rd party persons is cheating no mater how you slice it.

Try going to a gaming contest and ask if you can rtm before the competition starts and see how far that gets you. Then you will understand why its called cheating. Earn your stuff or cheat, most players cheat due to lack of skill, others cheat to make money.


Playing a game and selling it for cash - who wouldant want that type of job. Play computer games for a living and sell for cash what they farm ?? Play computer game for farming real cash as a job or flip burgers in a restaruant which would you choose as a job.

Competitive true game players hate it, as it does wreck true gaming skills competition. You cant win vs a guy whom has 20 farmers grabing every best item in a game for him, in 1/4 of the true time it takes a normal person to obatin a few of those things, due to him paying cash for workers.

On the farmer side, they dont care, to them its a game and they earn real cash. Making real cash any way someone can, they dont care what effect it has on other players, only their vested interest pocket book of loots / game currency for real cash. The gaming comunity is of no concern to them making a living paying their rent. Cheating or not, they want to eat and live on an MMO's game design. They dont care about your game competitions when they are cruising the street in a brand new car from suckers that buy it.

 

[kooltime]

They are cheaters, stop trying to legitimize it any other way. A player gets items through 3rd party purchase, that the game maker did not intend for is cheating within the confines of that games design; period.
Yes buying items outside of the game cash for gold or loots traded outside of the game by 3rd party persons is cheating no matter how you slice it.
Try going to a gaming contest and ask if you can RTM before the competition starts and see how far that gets you. Then you will understand why it’s called cheating. Earn your stuff or cheat, most players cheat due to lack of skill, others cheat to make money.
Playing a game and selling it for cash - who wouldn’t want that type of job. Play computer games for a living and sell for cash what they farm ?? Play computer game for farming real cash as a job or flip burgers in a restaurant which would you choose as a job.
Competitive true game players hate it, as it does wreck true gaming skills competition. You can’t win vs. a guy whom has 20 farmers grabbing every best item in a game for him, in 1/4 of the true time it takes a normal person to obtain a few of those things, due to him paying cash for workers.
On the farmer side, they don’t care, to them it’s a business and they earn real cash. Making real cash any way someone can, they don’t care what effect it has on other players, only their vested interest pocket book for real cash. The gaming community is of no concern to them making a living paying their rent. Cheating or not, they want to eat and live on an MMO's game design. They don’t care about your game competitions when they are cruise the street in a brand new car from suckers that buy it.