It's time for GGG to take back reigns of trade for the sake of the game

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Nulledout wrote:

That is their problem not ours. If they had any idea how to use outside tools like splunk or something of the like, finding these people would be VERY easy. Monitor all trades of 10 Divine Plus, you would catch 90% of the people doing it. Check to see if the item was ever listed for what it was bought for, if not, flag. Check to see if any trades happen with nothing given back. If they ip's never interacted before, flag.

And every 'donation', loan or guild cooperation would be flagged in a moment, and the amount of false positives would be tremendous. I don't know about you, but I think that would be even worse for the game. And as dynamic IPs are still the 'standard' in lots of cases, flagging IPs isn't really the answer either.

Look, based on your last posts here, you'll probably take this as me 'defending RMT' for some odd reason. Well, I'm not. I'm just a realist, knowing that solutions aren't always as "easy" as people want them to be.

PS: No, it's not "their problem". When a company needs to hire more people, paying more wages and gets a larger outcome, it quickly becomes the customers "problem" in some way.

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Phrazz wrote:

And every 'donation', loan or guild cooperation would be flagged in a moment, and the amount of false positives would be tremendous. I don't know about you, but I think that would be even worse for the game. And as dynamic IPs are still the 'standard' in lots of cases, flagging IPs isn't really the answer either.

As a software engineer, one who has written bots for a living in the past, I can tell you that is exactly what you do. You flag everything and have a team sort it out. Anything unusual you flag, and if you start getting false positives, you start altering your algorithm. You create tools to help your manual labor, but you absolutely need a response team, which GGG obviously doesn't have.

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Phrazz wrote:

PS: No, it's not "their problem". When a company needs to hire more people, paying more wages and gets a larger outcome, it quickly becomes the customers "problem" in some way.

They have record profits, 10M+ per quarter, I am pretty sure they can hire a team of 20 at 60k per year and not really feel that much of a pinch. So yes, it is their problem. The fact they don't give a flying fudge about anything but profit, made it our problem.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Clearly not even remotely close to enough to qualify as middle ground.


Edit: Unless you are suggesting the status
quo is fine? Then I guess we just disagree. I think they can do much better if they wished. Just my opinion given the circumstances.

I'm suggesting the status quo is exceptionally hard to change without heavy collateral damage. I think in a prior post I explained my position. The most accurate investigations would be manual by a human with some automation for identifying potential cases to investigate. That is completely unrealistic on a massive scale. The most efficient method would be automated identification and banning, which would result in a lot of false positives because there isn't going to be any easily automated way to identify RMT that wouldn't also look like normal interactions in the course of playing. Automated banning with an appeal process runs into the same slow manual outcome for the appeals and will leave people angry when falsely banned.

They are likely closer to the manual investigation side of things to avoid collateral damage, which will give a higher fidelity in their decision making, but it will be slow and appear ineffective.

There is absolutely no winning on this point. No matter where they fall on the spectrum, people will be angry.

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roundishcap wrote:

Anyway the people selling items can be liable for tax evasion, and some forms of conversion and fraud. In most jurisdictions in game items that are obtained by playing the game belong to the developer, not the player. The person selling items does not own them. This is why ggg can't be sued for deleting someone's stash or account.

Exactly. RMT is indeed illegal for those reasons. If shit ever hits the fan in a court of law GGG can't just go "oh, we knew about it, players brought tangible proof about it, but it was too expensive to stop".

It's safe to assume RMT moves tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Either GGG comes up with a solution, be it a dedicated group or 3rd party, or it can be considered liable.

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Nulledout wrote:

They have record profits, 10M+ per quarter, I am pretty sure they can hire a team of 20 at 60k per year and not really feel that much of a pinch. So yes, it is their problem. The fact they don't give a flying fudge about anything but profit, made it our problem.

If that profit is indeed true, only reinforces my point of view for their lack of integrity and unwillingness to sort this shit out.

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Z3RoNightMare wrote:

It's safe to assume RMT moves tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Either GGG comes up with a solution, be it a dedicated group or 3rd party, or it can be considered liable.

RMT is a multi billion dollar a year industry.

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Nulledout wrote:

RMT is a multi billion dollar a year industry.

PoE RMT industry specifically, which i was undoubtedly low balling.

Devs, we just want a giant metal dildo up RMTrs ass. Deleting a massive allotment of mirror items from the RMTrs would be funny af too. I'll even promise to support the game. Maybe.

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Nubatron wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Clearly not even remotely close to enough to qualify as middle ground.


Edit: Unless you are suggesting the status
quo is fine? Then I guess we just disagree. I think they can do much better if they wished. Just my opinion given the circumstances.

I'm suggesting the status quo is exceptionally hard to change without heavy collateral damage. I think in a prior post I explained my position. The most accurate investigations would be manual by a human with some automation for identifying potential cases to investigate. That is completely unrealistic on a massive scale. The most efficient method would be automated identification and banning, which would result in a lot of false positives because there isn't going to be any easily automated way to identify RMT that wouldn't also look like normal interactions in the course of playing. Automated banning with an appeal process runs into the same slow manual outcome for the appeals and will leave people angry when falsely banned.

They are likely closer to the manual investigation side of things to avoid collateral damage, which will give a higher fidelity in their decision making, but it will be slow and appear ineffective.

There is absolutely no winning on this point. No matter where they fall on the spectrum, people will be angry.

Well then it is what it is. I think that's poor messaging, and I think the collateral damage you mention is overstated but that's a matter of opinion.

If GGG really prefers a "nothing to see here" approach to application of their ToS, then they have to accept people questioning their motives, or simple professional credibility.

I see no reason a company with 60+ million in annual revenue, and the backing of one of the largest publishers in the world, cant hire a few junior analysts to at least monitor the logs of highly suspected transactions. Say all Mirrors, Magebloods, and Divines qty over 100 to start with. If there are flags from that metadata that gets reviewed by a senior before account action is taken. Hell there was a time back in the day that devs would check the logs in a forum post where someone vaal'd a Koams into a rare to confirm, just for fun and the luls. They can do this.

Setting aside my personal assumption that based on their past history I wouldnt be shocked if some inside pool was going on, I think sacrificing the integrity of the game is more concerning than an occasional player false positive or organizational resource allocation. I mean they can do whatever they want, but I personally dont think they are getting it right in terms of mitigation here.

Edit: For clarity sake, I would be talking about the leagues primarily to begin with. Standard presents a scope issue, but less impactful to their revenue stream.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Well then it is what it is. I think that's poor messaging, and I think the collateral damage you mention is overstated but that's a matter of opinion.

If GGG really prefers a "nothing to see here" approach to application of their ToS, then they have to accept people questioning their motives, or simple professional credibility.

I see no reason a company with 60+ million in annual revenue, and the backing of one of the largest publishers in the world, cant hire a few junior analysts to at least monitor the logs of highly suspected transactions. Say all Mirrors, Magebloods, and Divines qty over 100 to start with. If there are flags from that metadata that gets reviewed by a senior before account action is taken. Hell there was a time back in the day that devs would check the logs in a forum post where someone vaal'd a Koams into a rare to confirm, just for fun and the luls. They can do this.

Setting aside my personal assumption that based on their past history I wouldnt be shocked if some inside pool was going on, I think sacrificing the integrity of the game is more concerning than an occasional player false positive or organizational resource allocation. I mean they can do whatever they want, but I personally dont think they are getting it right in terms of mitigation here.

Edit: For clarity sake, I would be talking about the leagues primarily to begin with. Standard presents a scope issue, but less impactful to their revenue stream.

I think we missed each other on one key point. I believe they do clamp down on RMT, just not at a level that is obvious and will satisfy the masses unreasonable expectation that RMT stops. I don't think anyone around here would like what it looks like for RMT to be completely unfettered and 100% without risk.

Going after the big fish is a good idea, except those people are probably exceedingly good at avoiding detection from trial and error. Getting them is absolutely harder than any of us would like it to be. And when they do finally get caught, it just means they lose their current set of mirrored items for the current league since it's impossible to ban someone and they'll back at it in short order. This is a business to these cheaters and a lost account or item is probably a part of their calculus. And for anyone who thinks you can ban relatively anonymous people permanently, try again. There is absolutely no way to ban someone who knows what they are doing. Banning streamers is a bit more effective because once they're banned, they can't really stream anymore for obvious reasons. For you or me though, they have no chance.

As for a "few false positives", well that feels like a massive understatement if you're implying they should go full force with automated detection and response. The shitstorm from that would be so much worse for them than angry randoms on reddit and their forum who mistakenly think there is a good answer to this problem. The cure would be worse than the disease.

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Nubatron wrote:

Going after the big fish is a good idea, except those people are probably exceedingly good at avoiding detection from trial and error. Getting them is absolutely harder than any of us would like it to be. And when they do finally get caught, it just means they lose their current set of mirrored items for the current league since it's impossible to ban someone and they'll back at it in short order. This is a business to these cheaters and a lost account or item is probably a part of their calculus. And for anyone who thinks you can ban relatively anonymous people permanently, try again. There is absolutely no way to ban someone who knows what they are doing.

Then let us hear your suggestion on what they should do to mitigate it as strongly as possible, because all i'm seeing is why they should give up and let it be 100% unfettered.

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Z3RoNightMare wrote:

Then let us hear your suggestion on what they should do to mitigate it as strongly as possible, because all i'm seeing is why they should give up and let it be 100% unfettered.

As someone else in this thread would've said: It's their problem, not ours. And it's hard to imagine there being an "easy fix" when RMT apparently is a "multi billion dollar a year industry".

They are fighting it. Hell, even some of the recent 'evidence' talked about a "ban wave". And NO ONE in this thread has even hinted towards they should just "give up". If that is your take here, I don't know what to say.