Item Stack Resale Exploit

[TX_Angel]

Yeah indivudual packs were up for 900k-1m

 

Im not buying -anything- until things stabilize (which sucks for the legit sellers since i usually buy 5-6 crates off the gtn when a new pack comes out)

 

I still have the older generations of packs for sale (pre-4.0), I posted some last night...

 

I'm not listing for new stupid prices, I'm selling them for the same prices I was before. I am making profits, I don't need to price gouge.

 

Likewise with augments, I'm selling those for the same prices I've been selling them for weeks (about 100k each, give or take a bit).

[Infernixx]

Well Darkside.

I know I sold a couple Akk Dog licences, a couple Sith insidious sets and a few of the Resolute guardian sets as well for my credits.

just hope the people who bought it weren't part of that helacious exploit.

Can't blame sellers if they bought cartel packs.

the devs don't want part of any massive lawsuits from players wrongly accused of that crap.

 

There's no grounds for a lawsuit in banning someone from the game. They can ban people for any reason and absolutely no reason at all. They can ban people for the hell of it or because they're in a bad mood and there's no legal recourse.

[Sweetiepies]

I believe it might already be to late to track down every legit buyer tbh, they should really just do something about those that participated in the exploit itself.

 

Yes, we need to completely ignore the "completely innocent" people that were knowingly selling exploited goods.

[DawnAskham]

I still have the older generations of packs for sale (pre-4.0), I posted some last night...

 

I'm not listing for new stupid prices, I'm selling them for the same prices I was before. I am making profits, I don't need to price gouge.

 

Likewise with augments, I'm selling those for the same prices I've been selling them for weeks (about 100k each, give or take a bit).

 

LOL I want to be on your server, the past two days augments were close to crossing the 60K mark on my server for just about every stat type, rebounding a bit today.

 

There's no grounds for a lawsuit in banning someone from the game. They can ban people for any reason and absolutely no reason at all. They can ban people for the hell of it or because they're in a bad mood and there's no legal recourse.

 

Generally true in the sense that any claim would most likely fail, but the TOS isn't law, and someone with enough money to afford a competent attorney council could make a number of claims regarding loss associated with an account closure, and in such case the TOS would not provide a bullet proof shield for EA, though getting the TOS (or sections of the TOS) deemed invalid would be a high hurdle for any claimant.

 

Just Google around 'virtual law' and there are some interesting cases where game companies have been successful sued (usually settled before final judgement), with portions of their TOS thrown out or deemed not to provide cover against specific claims, even to the point where companies have settled and paid out real money for lost digital items within a game world.

 

Not at all saying the average gamer here is going to be able to make a successful claim against EA for loss of account or items associated with their account, just saying it is possible - such is the way the US legal system works.

Edited December 11, 2015 by DawnAskham

[TX_Angel]

LOL I hope everybody is ready for the accounts of the innocents to be caught up, banned, and robbed of credits when this drag net sweeps through. I hope you all haven't made any large purchases, or moved any credits around over the last 6 weeks, otherwise you will be enjoying the ban with the rest of us.

 

I spent a huge number of credits on the GTN over the past few weeks ranking up companions.

 

In my defense, I spent credits that I've had for a long time and bought from a lot of different sellers (whoever was cheapest).

 

My main is now ranked to 50 on every single companion, but I burned over a hundred million credits to do it. Mostly due to a lack of anything else to buy. But I've been wealthy for awhile, having passed a billion credits more than 6 months ago, so my wealth was gained long before 4.0 dropped. About half of it is from crafting, the other half is from playing the GTN minigame for 2 years.

[Infernixx]

LOL I want to be on your server, the past two days augments were close to crossing the 60K mark on my server for just about every stat type, rebounding a bit today.

 

Good god.

[TX_Angel]

It'll be easy for them to appeal it and prove their innocence. and probably earn a free month in the process.

 

They shouldn't HAVE to appeal it... An innocent paying customer who gets into trouble doesn't say "oh well, that is nice, no worries, I don't mind spending two hours on the phone/e-mail fighting to prove I'm innocent, I won't hold it against Bioware for wasting my time"...

 

I suspect as likely as not, they'll leave.

 

Fixing the economy is important. Not losing honest paying customers is just as important.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

LOL I hope everybody is ready for the accounts of the innocents to be caught up, banned, and robbed of credits when this drag net sweeps through. I hope you all haven't made any large purchases, or moved any credits around over the last 6 weeks, otherwise you will be enjoying the ban with the rest of us.

 

Just go away.

[Infernixx]

They shouldn't HAVE to appeal it... An innocent paying customer who gets into trouble doesn't say "oh well, that is nice, no worries, I don't mind spending two hours on the phone/e-mail fighting to prove I'm innocent, I won't hold it against Bioware for wasting my time"...

 

I suspect as likely as not, they'll leave.

 

Fixing the economy is important. Not losing honest paying customers is just as important.

 

Mistakes happen and you'd be surprised how many people will find their outrage dissipating when they're given something for their troubles.

 

And it wouldn't be hard to check and see if their account actually exploited or was the recipient of exploited goods/credits. It wouldn't take hours.

 

Right now, I'd say fixing this mess and tracking down all the billions of credits and other goods and removing them is their primary concern. Or it should be.

[TX_Angel]

LOL I want to be on your server, the past two days augments were close to crossing the 60K mark on my server for just about every stat type, rebounding a bit today.

 

Augments did drop, but I generally won't list them below about 80k. A few were up for 75k, I listed for 89k figuring that with it being Friday, the 75k ones would sell and I'd be next in line.

 

As for the packs, Shipment 6 packs I'm selling for 400-500k each, about half what the other sellers are asking. Honestly I think a million credits a pack is just silly, but that's me. Those prices are what I've been selling them for, even since before 4.0 dropped.

 

I try not to chase prices to the bottom (sometimes I buy up the supply if that happens), but in turn I don't price gouge either. Just because someone else lists something for 1 million doesn't mean that is reasonable.

 

I'm on BC BTW...

[MeNaCe-NZ]

The market is all kind of sideways right now, stuff like rare and expensive CM items have seen huge price spikes and a major reduction in availability as exploiters looked for ways to 'store' their ill-gotten gains, while other general items have had their prices fall (crafted items, gifts, contracts).

 

I've seen a number of new 'crafters' show up the past couple of days posting pages of items which all require rare materials, and all at prices far lower than the typical market rates.

 

My assumption is some of these new 'crafters' are simply players who exploited, maxed all their companions (faster crafting / more crits), bought up materials and are dumping finished goods as a way to launder credits.

 

This makes it more difficult to earn credits crafting as the profit per item has fallen, requiring the crafting and sales of more items just to make the same amount of credits (more time invested), yet those credits are now devalued when it comes to buying desirable items.

 

On the flip side, I've bought lots of cheap gifts and other items the past couple of weeks that were most likely dumped by exploiters, so even while I'm taking a hit with crafting, I've 'benefited' somewhat from this mess.

 

In the same vain, people buying CM items to sell in game (or who had rare items to sale the past week or two) are likely gaining more credits than they normally would, with some of those sales being made with exploited credits.

 

No idea how the market will look a few weeks from now, but hopefully things will calm down a bit and all markets will move back to normal trends.

 

Yeah right now CM items are inflated, I didn't play for the last week really so my last ales round was about 7 days ago and nothing was a miss then.

If anything the market was down on CM items. I believe this due to cheaters buying up packs and dumping contents on the GTN ( also I suspect some of the reason for the removal of all but the new pack ).

 

This past week would have been a huge rush I imagine because it's pretty empty market right now on rare items. Probably patch got fixed and then people rushed the GTN in a rush to avoid bans or hide their gains after the patch but before the bans came in.

I would have thought after 6 weeks they would have had a ban list ready to go immediately at the same time as the patch to avoid this but it just really proves noone was taking this seriously up until the past couple of weeks ( else monitoring would have been going on for quick and efficient banning and credit removal ).

 

If the delay was just a "you don't understand how development works" as some are trying to defend BW with that doesn't change the fact that they still had 6 weeks to start banning people etc. as they cheated and avoid this huge credit explosion, that has nothing to do with patching the exploit or development.

 

Th market will only bounce back quickly if they manage to remove a lot of the credits and that's tough because no doubt we all have a lot of credits from the cheating and just don't realise it.

 

At the least I imagine we will see action on accounts who amassed a fortune in these past weeks or amasses and then spent a fortune.

They are going to have to draw a line in the sand and say "we can't prove this account is linked to an exploit but we can see this pattern of credit growth is well outside the bounds of what we would see in the regular economy or their own history so we take action".

Yes innocent people will most likely get caught but then they will no doubt quickly get up in arms for a review and most than likely get things reversed.

[DawnAskham]

Augments did drop, but I generally won't list them below about 80k. A few were up for 75k, I listed for 89k figuring that with it being Friday, the 75k ones would sell and I'd be next in line.

 

As for the packs, Shipment 6 packs I'm selling for 400-500k each, about half what the other sellers are asking. Honestly I think a million credits a pack is just silly, but that's me. Those prices are what I've been selling them for, even since before 4.0 dropped.

 

I try not to chase prices to the bottom (sometimes I buy up the supply if that happens), but in turn I don't price gouge either. Just because someone else lists something for 1 million doesn't mean that is reasonable.

 

I'm on BC BTW...

 

I put up some of each augment for 2 days in the high 80s, hoping the super cheap stuff would get bought up and the dumpers wouldn't keep posting, though most of my listing have now returned to my mailbox.

 

Oh and just as a funny side note, one of the people dumping synthweaving augs the other morning was obviously not paying attention as while I was scanning the GTN, they started posting for the defaul price of 6K something, and I bought like 10 of them before they stopped posting.

 

I feel pretty confident I'll get more than 6K relisting them.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Well Darkside.

I know I sold a couple Akk Dog licences, a couple Sith insidious sets and a few of the Resolute guardian sets as well for my credits.

just hope the people who bought it weren't part of that helacious exploit.

Can't blame sellers if they bought cartel packs.

the devs don't want part of any massive lawsuits from players wrongly accused of that crap.

 

I imagine if you sold them for the usual rate you're probably ok ... if they average things out and the buyer paid 5+ times what they average sell for on the GTN ... you've got a problem.

 

Of course the problem now is things are selling for 5 times the amount easily because they bought up all the decorations for example and no new ones are coming in from the pack removal thus there is now a supply issue which pushes prices up.

 

I hope the person who has to try fix this mess is the same person who thought waiting 6 weeks was a good idea and I also hope whoever makes the decisions over at Bioware lately loses their job over this ... they are ruining what was a perfectly good product I pay for however no longer wish to due to their ineptitude.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

I spent a huge number of credits on the GTN over the past few weeks ranking up companions.

 

In my defense, I spent credits that I've had for a long time and bought from a lot of different sellers (whoever was cheapest).

 

My main is now ranked to 50 on every single companion, but I burned over a hundred million credits to do it. Mostly due to a lack of anything else to buy. But I've been wealthy for awhile, having passed a billion credits more than 6 months ago, so my wealth was gained long before 4.0 dropped. About half of it is from crafting, the other half is from playing the GTN minigame for 2 years.

 

You will have a history though that shows your fortune and how it was amassed and on average how much a week it went up/down by - tons of metrics like that to look at.

 

They will be looking for things outside the trends, even outside the recent trend as I expect all accounts were gaining more lately than prior the exploit but there will be some that are way outside the trends that metrics will show and those are the accounts they are just going to have to remove from regardless of proof.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Oh yeah and wait til you see the rage of people who buy credits who bought up large when the price dropped to like under $1 per million have it all removed and they are out of pocket real money.

 

Of course those that sold credits get to keep said money and being farmers they are probably always running throw away accounts.

[TX_Angel]

You will have a history though that shows your fortune and how it was amassed and on average how much a week it went up/down by - tons of metrics like that to look at.

 

They will be looking for things outside the trends, even outside the recent trend as I expect all accounts were gaining more lately than prior the exploit but there will be some that are way outside the trends that metrics will show and those are the accounts they are just going to have to remove from regardless of proof.

 

I sure hope that is the case... I have single toons with over 100 million credits, but they have had that money for a long time. I started crafting when 2.0 came out and have been building slowly over that time. While I have more today than when 4.0 dropped, it isn't a massive change and it came from selling stuff I had before 4.0 or from crafted augments/dyes/crystals...

 

If this was the real world, I'd start a charity!

[Alssaran]

I spent a huge number of credits on the GTN over the past few weeks ranking up companions.

 

In my defense, I spent credits that I've had for a long time and bought from a lot of different sellers (whoever was cheapest).

 

I'll second this.

 

I bought at least three dozen Luxury gifts and Cultural Artifcats over the past two and a half weeks. The price was 60,000 credits per piece and I bought three stacks of 10 for 600k each. As someone who has not partaken in the exploit, or was even remotely aware of its existence before last friday, there was no way to verify that those gifts were in any way connected with fraudulent activity.

 

I think that's why Bioware is so hesitant to speak about laundering accounts. When a long standing account without any previous involvement in any exploit or with any warning completes a normal transaction (3 million over the course of two weeks) for something that is usually available on the GTN (companion gifts), there is no way to say for sure that this person was laundering money.

 

It's sad to say, but I doubt Bioware will touch most of the stuff and credits which already went through the GTN to "clean" accounts. The backlash in reputation and PR would be too high if many of the accounts involved had nothing to do with the exploit at all.

 

People love to take a "JUST BAN THEM ALL! WHO CARES?!" approach to this, but Bioware has to think long term. While Infernixx is somewhat correct in his assumption that Bioware could ban everyone without an explanation because their wife didn't cook dinner tonight, I highly doubt that it would be a compelling legal case. ToS cannot and never will overwrite existing public rights and laws. It would highly depend on the judge overseeing the trial. I guess you'd have a hard time explaining that banning three thousand people from time they spend money for "Just because" is justified.

 

However, that's not the issue here. The PR backlash would be more severe. Imagine major MMO newspages with the message: "Star Wars: The Old Republic - massive banwave hits innocent players.", with the text inside that they were banned for buying stuff from the GTN. People don't care if the first person exploited it. People bought it without knowing it was fraudulent stuff.

 

That'd be a PR kill for the game at this point. Creating an atmosphere in which buying something off the GTN can get you banned? Kiss a community sense goodbye.

Edited December 11, 2015 by Alssaran

[Infernixx]

Well, reports are starting to come in from admitted exploiters stating that their alt accounts are banned and all their 'billions' are gone.

 

Seems like they're digging into the system and tracking people down.

 

Though, I do wonder how far they can track the credits. Through one or two transfers is easy enough, but some are talking about transferring through GTN through 8 accounts.

[RPHero]

Hey folks,

 

Here is another update on the exploit, and the action we have taken. We are continuing to investigate accounts and action is on-going. Here are the actions we have taken against accounts:

• Suspension time, up to and including a permanent ban (more than 500 accounts have been permanently banned so far)
  
• Removal of all Credits
  
• Removal of all Currencies
  
• Removal of all items which could be gotten from the exploit, including recurring Event Currencies and Companion gifts
  
• Resetting of all Companion Influence to 0
  
• Resetting progress of all Alliance Commanders to 0
  

The nature of this exploit is that players could use it to gain a wide array of things. This includes anything from credits, to event currency, to Companion affection via Rank 6 gifts. We are working to ensure that the action we take against player is fair, but makes it clear that use of exploits will not be tolerated.

 

We have seen quite a few comments and questions about accounts which have participated in laundering ill-gotten items and credits around. I will have an update on this later today. Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

 

Great news and very happy to see such action taken but the damage is done and we are in recovery mode and Bioware have said time and time again " Your Choices Matter " and in this case it really did 500 cheats flushed down the toilet and more to come keep up the good work Musco

[lokimogor]

Well, reports are starting to come in from admitted exploiters stating that their alt accounts are banned and all their 'billions' are gone.

 

Seems like they're digging into the system and tracking people down.

 

Though, I do wonder how far they can track the credits. Through one or two transfers is easy enough, but some are talking about transferring through GTN through 8 accounts.

 

This makes me overly happy

[znihilist]

Well, reports are starting to come in from admitted exploiters stating that their alt accounts are banned and all their 'billions' are gone.

 

Seems like they're digging into the system and tracking people down.

 

Though, I do wonder how far they can track the credits. Through one or two transfers is easy enough, but some are talking about transferring through GTN through 8 accounts.

 

They are not, you really need specialized forensic analysis to really track this. Law enforcement agencies spend a lot of resources to detect this kind of things.

[XiamaraSimi]

The fact that people on reddit were posting they sold enough credits to gold sellers to earn $8,000.00 USD shows just how insanely people exploited this... Edited December 11, 2015 by XiamaraSimi

[Lord_Sleepy]

They are not, you really need specialized forensic analysis to really track this. Law enforcement agencies spend a lot of resources to detect this kind of things.

 

True, but law enforcement isn't tracking information that is all on their own servers. Here they can, if they wanted, track all the transactions because they have all the information, not trying to get it from many other companies, no court orders needed, no "lost" information.

[lokimogor]

True, but law enforcement isn't tracking information that is all on their own servers. Here they can, if they wanted, track all the transactions because they have all the information, not trying to get it from many other companies, no court orders needed, no "lost" information.

 

It's really a matter of writing the queries appropriately to probe the data.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Well, reports are starting to come in from admitted exploiters stating that their alt accounts are banned and all their 'billions' are gone.

 

Seems like they're digging into the system and tracking people down.

 

Though, I do wonder how far they can track the credits. Through one or two transfers is easy enough, but some are talking about transferring through GTN through 8 accounts.

 

If they attack it looking at "standard" account activity then they can actually handle it quite easily ( from an analytical stand point ).

The difficulty is in deciding to take the action because no doubt innocent people will get caught up but in saying that if you sold something that normally goes for 100K for 10 million then I don't think you should get the 10 million back, they should review it and give the chair back.