I am a scammer - Account locked?

And meanwhile I am sitting there, miscalculated the chaos stacks once before a trade and my face was burning of the shame.

I generally don't like scammers, because they lead to trust issues.

For example I asked in global if someone need a guide trough the atziri map for the challange (actually lot ppl can't kill her and I had nothing else to do), just in a perma alloc party, everyone gets what gets allocated to them and no1 believed me.

Nothing personal, but if it was because of the full workday scamming, then you deserved it.

"

Gary_GGG wrote:

Players can be and have been permanently banned from the game in the past for scamming.

:) Thank you.


-VG-

"

Xavderion wrote:

"

Gary_GGG wrote:

We can't comment on specific players or instances that have happened previously. The accounts team does however look into accusations of scamming. My post was made in regards to people wanting to know if they or other people can get banned if they engage in scamming.

We need to know what counts as scamming though. I made a couple of nice deals™ this league, some people would call that scamming. We need clear rules here.

It can't be that hard to understand, can it? If you promise something and then go back on that, keeping the goods, that's a scam. If you deliberately mislead the "buyer," you're scamming them. Just don't do things like this and you should be fine.


-VG-

Lesson for today kids:

"If you want to scam - go high and bail out"

Lightwood scammed players for thousends of exalts and he is FINE. As long as you support the game and rip off ppl, scam them, cheat on them with "bro deals 10 necropolies" its ALL FINE if you buy next supporter pack and ask for account change.

Works exacly the same as politics in RL.

"

Lesson for today kids:

"If you want to scam - go high and bail out"

Lightwood scammed players for thousends of exalts and he is FINE. As long as you support the game and rip off ppl, scam them, cheat on them with "bro deals 10 necropolies" its ALL FINE if you buy next supporter pack and ask for account change.

Works exacly the same as politics in RL.

No lessons yet mate although i see the point your trying to make :)

Again i haven't been banned and please notice the ambiguity from any sort of ggg response in regards to the point blank question is scamming allowed.Scammers have been banned in the past (apparently) Scammers have definatley been dealt with leniently in the past (100percent as there are threads regarding this)

I just again want to know why the lock out - regardless of why, it shouldn't take 4 days for a reply along the lines of XXX is why your locked out.Investigation will take some time.

I'm adult enough to cop the punishment if necessary the lack of transparency and communication is the frustration.

18 pages later and still no clear answer.

I dont forum much is GGG_Gary a dev or just a good old forum mod?

"

Xavderion wrote:

"

Gary_GGG wrote:

We can't comment on specific players or instances that have happened previously. The accounts team does however look into accusations of scamming. My post was made in regards to people wanting to know if they or other people can get banned if they engage in scamming.

We need to know what counts as scamming though. I made a couple of nice deals™ this league, some people would call that scamming. We need clear rules here.

If you seriously can't tell the difference between a scam and a "ty for scam" scam then you probably wouldn't be able to commit a real scam.

"Ty for scam" scam, is selling/buying an item for either higher value or lower value than it's market value, you however are still paying the person for the item as it's a deal they made, it would be their own fault for inevitably not knowing market value.

However a Scam is using someones trust/good nature to get your "pay day" without holding up your end of the bargain.

ex1: Someone wants to buy a 20/20 non-corrupted gem, you go to sell it to them then you cancel trade and re-trade a 20/20 corrupted gem instead, that is a scam. Should this directly be bannable? Probably not on the first instance of doing it however if this person does it 50-60 times in a week then yes it should be even if it's a month-two month ban to prevent them from playing in that league on that specific account. I dont think it should call for a perm. ban. It's avoidable by using either the two eyes you were born with or the one you might have been born with and are currently using. If you happen to have no eyes I feel as though you probably aren't reading this and the least of your concerns are being scammed on PoE.

ex2: You find a headhunters in Cadiro, you offer it to someone if they tip, the deal is they give you 10 ex. They come in and you ask for half upfront, they give you 5 exalts. You kick them and ignore then you attempt to sell the headhunters again later. This is something that I feel is much worse than the above. While the above has the fail safe of you visually looking at the item this has absolutely 0 ability to have a fail safe. It's either you trust the seller enough to give half upfront or you pass on the deal. In the same aspect you are asking the seller to trust you. The scam can work both ways [skipping out on the other 5 ex etc]. There is absolutely no fail safe atm for this. Even a "3rd-Party" by using someone else still can't work since it could be your friend or their friend and either way they are going to be bias in that direction.


One of those is to me should be less punishable but the other I could see banning them for quite awhile.


Anyways back to everyone here claiming "ToS" like morons. This must be your first online game or something, every single game's ToS states this almost exactly word for word. "For the further avoidance of doubt, pursuant to clause 3, any rights you may have in respect of any elements or aspects of POE (including without limitation in respect of the in-game characters and Virtual Items) are strictly limited to a personal ‘licence to use’ such as part of the Licence and at no time do you acquire any ownership rights in respect of such." Which means GGG OWNS all your items, your characters, everything on your account is owned by GGG. You however are licensed to use them which is why it's considered "your account" but in no other way is it actually "your account". This means GGG holds the right to ban you at any given time without any reason or detail as is the same in almost every single online game ever. [Quite literally almost every single one as without that clause it opens up a backdoor to lawsuits for loss of virtual property] this isn't exactly rocket science.


Towards OP: whenever you do anything bad in this game the precedent shouldn't be "Did other people get banned for it" it should be "will I be the first to be banned for it" if you think that is a possible outcome then you probably shouldn't do it.


Also you can expect upwards of a week for account investigations, they literally have to sift through your trades [so everytime you got like 20c-40c for no return trades] etc and see if it was a scam by checking chat logs at the same time too. If you did this a decent amount of times in the past week they'll have to check all that. They'll also have to check if they received any emails about you, they'll have to decide as a team not just one person if your punishment should be light or if you should be banned for good.

Expecting VIP treatment after failing to adhere to probably the most basic of morale codes is pretty silly and it fails to show [at least to me] that you are being an adult about this whole situation.

Jeez Mr,accountlocked you are not satisfied ever are you? He said clearly you could get banned for scamming. And also that he will not discuss individual cases in public. And then you respond by questioning wether what he says is true? What does it matter if hes a mod or a dev?

Most of the other responses after Gary just make me sick. How hard is it to figure out what scamming is? Just freaking behave yourself and treat people like you want to be treated and there will never be any issue regarding scamming. They don't have to tell anyone anything specificly what is allowed and what is not. You touch a grey area then take responsibility for your actions. And please stop the pathetic bickering about people that scammed others and are still walking free. You know nothing about what happened specifically in those cases exept for GGG and the people involved. Let them do their job for christ sake.

Guys let just chill a moment please?

OP is basically venting my frustration at the lack of comms between support and myself - I don't expect VIP treatment just basic communication of why the lock.

It shouldn't be to difficult for an email stating your account is under investigation for xxx it will take some time to be sent.

Its just the not knowing :)

As to the question if a forum mod or a dev I wasn't trying to be rude just wanting to clarify who was giving me this information.

"

Towards OP: whenever you do anything bad in this game the precedent shouldn't be "Did other people get banned for it" it should be "will I be the first to be banned for it" if you think that is a possible outcome then you probably shouldn't do it.

Completely fair point.

"

Also you can expect upwards of a week for account investigations, they literally have to sift through your trades [so everytime you got like 20c-40c for no return trades] etc and see if it was a scam by checking chat logs at the same time too. If you did this a decent amount of times in the past week they'll have to check all that. They'll also have to check if they received any emails about you, they'll have to decide as a team not just one person if your punishment should be light or if you should be banned for good.

How do people know this? If support had communicated this with me I don't think i'd be voicing my concerns now.

"

Accountlocked wrote:

No lessons yet mate although i see the point your trying to make :)

Again i haven't been banned and please notice the ambiguity from any sort of ggg response in regards to the point blank question is scamming allowed.Scammers have been banned in the past (apparently) Scammers have definatley been dealt with leniently in the past (100percent as there are threads regarding this)

I just again want to know why the lock out - regardless of why, it shouldn't take 4 days for a reply along the lines of XXX is why your locked out.Investigation will take some time.

I'm adult enough to cop the punishment if necessary the lack of transparency and communication is the frustration.

18 pages later and still no clear answer.

I dont forum much is GGG_Gary a dev or just a good old forum mod?

Mildly weird that you haven't had a response, seeing as it is post 5pm on Monday. Maybe you've been bumped right down the priority list while they deal with users who issues are more important. I can't imagine they're busting their asses to get to you if there a lot of player support issues on the task list.

As for Garys response, take it at face value. He doesn't specifically say what type of "scam" others were banned for, he is simply letting others who asked in the thread know that there is a precedent for it. He cannot link it directly to your case because that would be tantamount to discussing a specific players account.

I said previously that continuing to post in this thread is not going to expedite your process, only direct contact with GGG will do that. In the interest of consistency, your thread should have been locked at page 1, and you should have received the stock answer "Thanks for the feedback, I have passed it on to Samantha, she will contact you, we don't discuss this in the forums blah blah blah."

The fact that your thread remains open is interesting. If I was a betting man (and I am, but only on horses and jellywrestling), then I would say that the reason would be because it A) Is an easily bumped thread and B) Serves as a warning that you might get your shit fucked up if you're being a detriment to the playerbase through your behaviour.

You're now the poster boy for "don't scam", because even if your account is not going to be banned, you've been locked, inconvenienced, and investigated.

I imagine GGG will probably end up clarifying their stance or processes around scamming because of the vast quantity of people doing it (and falling for, obviously) this league. But I wouldn't expect that for a while, it would probably need to go past Chris, and I bet he is busy as hell with the Dev team right now, and will be for a while.

In the same way there is no hard set rule there probably isn't a hard set time limit for how long they'll take.

If they told you 4 days and it took 6 you'd be angry, however if they tell you the forwarded it to investigation to look at and don't tell you how long there is no expectation for you to know when you'll get the account back or when the investigation will be done.

It's nearly the exact same with rule sets in every game, every game pretty much has if you use a 3rd party program to cheat, gain an advantage or automate something you'll be banned. However most games leave other rules up to case by case basis because if you put in a hard-set rule it's easier for those to skirt by on the "bare minimum" of following the rules.


As for the knowledge of knowing how long it takes I'd assume anyone whose has dealt with anything that has some kind of infrastructure [Schools, Companies, anything that isn't a "ma and pa" store] should have a grasp on how things work. I've never dealt with the investigation team for PoE but I look at it the same way I'd do the investigation. I'd have to look up recent trades in say a week or two, go through those logs, find all the ones in which the person was given currency or items without them trading anything back. Now I have to find the chat logs that match those time frames from that character that received the items and then the same chat logs from the character giving those items. This could take an hour or two if it's only happened once or if it happened dozens and dozens of times. They then have to see if there was a verbal agreement in those chats, if so what was the agreement? If there was no agreement then they have to check if this person is just a friend of yours giving you the currency/items. If it was just a friend this is a dead end and might have taken an hour or so to sift through. Now we start over again onto the next trade you did. Rinse repeat. They'll probably avoid any trade in which you received an item while giving an item/currency because that'd probably won't be flagged as a "scam". In the same light they'd have to check when your trades happened with chat logs as well as again any emails they might have received against your character names etc. So it could take quite awhile.

Also they probably don't flat out tell anyone this because like most companies they keep the curtain closed on what goes on for investigations because no company wants you to know how they investigate circumstances because you could then "skirt" and avoid those exact red flags.