To make it clear what's happened I have here 3 people: Cherry Chargeback Larry Launderer and CIGGuy
Act I Cherry is buying herself a nice fancy new SpaceshipJpeg for $1000. Unfortunately there is no LTI anymore for it because she came to late for the LTI stuff. But she heard of a way to turn her lovely ShipJpegThing into a lovely LTI ShipJpegThing.
So she went to reddit and asked the swarmintelligence.
Act II Larry Launderer is a fan of CR since he was a little boy, he pledged very early, with his early backer account he has the ability to get a discount and LTI ships (Yay!). He is also on reddit and reads poor Cherrys post, he wants to be a ("spaceship") [rich] hero and tells her that there is a way to turn her ShipJpegThing into a fancy new LTI ShipJpegThing by sending him the ShipJpegThing to melt/rebuy it. Cherry is gifting the ShipJpegThing to Larry. Larry melts the ShipJpegThing and gets ¢1000 (ShopCredit). Larry now buys a new LTI ShipJpegThing for ¢990. Larry now gifts back the LTI ShipJpegThing to Cherry. Cherry is happy to have her LTI ShipJpegThing.
Act III Time Passes ... 2 years later We have Fish, we have Alpha2.0, but we still don't have Cherrys LTI ShipJpegThing hangar ready. Cherry is very disappointed but greedy and sells her ¢990 LTI ShipJpegThing on the grey market and asks her bank account manager to chargeback the transaction from 2 years ago. The bank account manager, very happy to have $1000 more in his playground is initialising the chargeback. CIGGUY is not happy about this and wants to poof her ShipJpegThing, but ... it is not there anymore, she gifted it away!
Act IV CIGGuy informs Larry that the ShipJpegThing which has been gifted to him and that he melted, is invalid and he owes CIGGuy ¢1000. Larry becomes angry and posts his story on reddit.
Basically Larry should be asked to give back the ¢10 that remained in his account for this transaction, but CIGGuy is threatening to get the full amount out of his account by poofing other ShipJpegThing from him.
When you have cake, it is not the cake that creates the most magnificent of experiences, but it is the emotions attached to it. The cake is a lie.
Suppose I bought for a grocery voucher for $10, I give it to you and you spend it, I then do a chargeback on the voucher and the grocery store comes to you looking to get their money instead of me, that's not how these things are meant to work.
At the end of the day who has the products bought with the voucher? Liability rests with both parties but if you use the voucher the person you got it from could put the blame on you in a heartbeat saying they told you not to use it.
Innocent until found guilty.
The person doing chargeback could not pass the blame forward so easily.
Also this might vary from one country to another, but at least in my country people are required to return property that's been stolen by third party but not property that's been acquired through fraud by third party. So once the voucher is used to buy physical goods, the person using the voucher would be free to keep those goods.
Groceries are a bad example here though. We're not talking about physical goods but about licenses or services. RSI is not required to continue providing license/services that were acquired from them through fraud even if the fraudster is a third party.
Act III Time Passes ... 2 years later We have Fish, we have Alpha2.0, but we still don't have Cherrys LTI ShipJpegThing hangar ready. Cherry is very disappointed but greedy and sells her ¢990 LTI ShipJpegThing on the grey market and asks her bank account manager to chargeback the transaction from 2 years ago. The bank account manager, very happy to have $1000 more in his playground is initialising the chargeback.
CIG can't establish that in-game currency has intrinsic value.
Push the issue. CIG clowns guy and either refuses service, or modifies his account, to reflect bogus transaction of make-believe value. Huge pr disaster. 10% more backers want out, 20% think this is amazing punishment of bad guy, but they're also not throwing the money equivalent to the lost 10%. Fine. Do it.
Act III Time Passes ... 2 years later We have Fish, we have Alpha2.0, but we still don't have Cherrys LTI ShipJpegThing hangar ready. Cherry is very disappointed but greedy and sells her ¢990 LTI ShipJpegThing on the grey market and asks her bank account manager to chargeback the transaction from 2 years ago. The bank account manager, very happy to have $1000 more in his playground is initialising the chargeback.
I don't think that's what happened.
Banks don't do chargebacks two years later.
The chargeback could also have happened way before and CIG was just slow with investigating. Sure there could be no chargeback at all, then they just poofed her LTI back - gifted ship. and everything should be ok, she paid $1000 they poofed $990 and could ask the launderer for $10)
When you have cake, it is not the cake that creates the most magnificent of experiences, but it is the emotions attached to it. The cake is a lie.
Unless there's more to this than has been "revealed" by Grishord & Friends, then it's most likely an over-zealous CS employee that has overstepped their authority.
I see no evidence of this being a widespread issue, which makes it more than likely that it's a "special case". It will be interesting to see what CIG's response is.
It has been widespread and CIG already had a measured response in "limiting melt tokens".
I meant that there's no sign that CIG are trying to recover similar fraudulent transactions from a large number of people. If that was the case, then it could be said that this action is part of "CIG official policy".
I know the LTI-scam was widely abused, but that has been ended by CIG. Admittedly, they should have been much faster with their clampdown on that exploit. Nobody really seems interested in criticising them for being slack on that account though, lol
Aside from the chargeback aspect, this is alot like what happened in the first weeks of GW2. An exploit empowered some number of users, through a mechanism in the game, GW2 banned thousands of people, Reddit cheered in victory, but the percentage of lost participants included a good number of players who were livestreaming and otherwise promoting the game, resulting in a huge pr debacle.
At least they had a game, though. SWtOR keeps making similar mistakes with its borked economy and, overall, says "our bad". /shrug. There are ways to handle these things, but it starts with the presence of mind of the developers in creating atmosphere for this kind of behavior.
Act III Time Passes ... 2 years later We have Fish, we have Alpha2.0, but we still don't have Cherrys LTI ShipJpegThing hangar ready. Cherry is very disappointed but greedy and sells her ¢990 LTI ShipJpegThing on the grey market and asks her bank account manager to chargeback the transaction from 2 years ago. The bank account manager, very happy to have $1000 more in his playground is initialising the chargeback.
I don't think that's what happened.
Banks don't do chargebacks two years later.
The chargeback could also have happened way before and CIG was just slow with investigating.
Ok, sorry, I didn't know Germany had so long time limit.
Simple, send CIG an invoice for the time spent replying and dealing with the problem that they have instigated. Charge them $100 per hour of your valuable time and if they refuse to pay then refuse to give them what they want. Both are as legal as each other and neither can be enforced in court.
R vs Ashley Mitchell disagrees if said virtual item is bought with real money. The items that can be exchanged or bought with real money have value. In the case above an employee of a poker site transfered virtual poker chips that could be bought with money. The virtual chips were accessed a value cause they could be bought or cashed out for money.
Need citation. Not seeing any such case. Thanks.
On a phone. Look up british case law. Zynga was the online company.
Would never apply to this company. One, CIG doesn't distribute proceeds of contest wins in the form of currency. Two, because the discussion revolves around CIG's arbitration, which would be filed first in California, if such a situation ever was dreamt.
Would never apply to this company. One, CIG doesn't distribute proceeds of contest wins in the form of currency. Two, because the discussion revolves around CIG's arbitration, which would be filed first in California, if such a situation ever was dreamt.
The point is that the view of virtual goods is changing and does/will have value as more things are becoming virtual in distributions and "ownership". Blanket comments that all virtual goods have no intrinsic value is not true. It is just not a traditional concept of value.
To make it clear what's happened I have here 3 people: Cherry Chargeback Larry Launderer and CIGGuy
Act I Cherry is buying herself a nice fancy new SpaceshipJpeg for $1000. Unfortunately there is no LTI anymore for it because she came to late for the LTI stuff. But she heard of a way to turn her lovely ShipJpegThing into a lovely LTI ShipJpegThing.
So she went to reddit and asked the swarmintelligence.
Act II Larry Launderer is a fan of CR since he was a little boy, he pledged very early, with his early backer account he has the ability to get a discount and LTI ships (Yay!). He is also on reddit and reads poor Cherrys post, he wants to be a ("spaceship") [rich] hero and tells her that there is a way to turn her ShipJpegThing into a fancy new LTI ShipJpegThing by sending him the ShipJpegThing to melt/rebuy it. Cherry is gifting the ShipJpegThing to Larry. Larry melts the ShipJpegThing and gets ¢1000 (ShopCredit). Larry now buys a new LTI ShipJpegThing for ¢990. Larry now gifts back the LTI ShipJpegThing to Cherry. Cherry is happy to have her LTI ShipJpegThing.
Act III Time Passes ... 2 years later We have Fish, we have Alpha2.0, but we still don't have Cherrys LTI ShipJpegThing hangar ready. Cherry is very disappointed but greedy and sells her ¢990 LTI ShipJpegThing on the grey market and asks her bank account manager to chargeback the transaction from 2 years ago. The bank account manager, very happy to have $1000 more in his playground is initialising the chargeback. CIGGUY is not happy about this and wants to poof her ShipJpegThing, but ... it is not there anymore, she gifted it away!
Act IV CIGGuy informs Larry that the ShipJpegThing which has been gifted to him and that he melted, is invalid and he owes CIGGuy ¢1000. Larry becomes angry and posts his story on reddit.
Basically Larry should be asked to give back the ¢10 that remained in his account for this transaction, but CIGGuy is threatening to get the full amount out of his account by poofing other ShipJpegThing from him.
Thank you for this excellent explanation for us plain folk who would never even conceive of an operation like this, much less understand it.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Only thing catches my eye is $455 INSANE !!. No wonder these kickstarter ideas work,tons of ridiculously dumb people out there.
One other thing that bothers me is the lack of SECURITY,not just with this operation but within ALL gaming.
The reason it bothers me is because developers and publishers SHOULD be tracing CC use BEFORE the purchase happens.There SHOULD be a layer of security like even an automated phone call.I know of this one because i have used it myself on several purchases.You can't go wrong with a CC number tied into the owners home phone,then a phone call.Further more the places i used that service were not big time operations,so if they can afford to use it so can ANYONE IF they care.
So imo LAW should be stepping in to protect consumers,businesses SHOULD be forced to use layers of security to eliminate the problem of CC theft.It just seems laws are never strict enough or good enough until some big shot lawyers step in and force huge lawsuits,than of course change happens. Example if someone hired a big law firm to suit CGI for showing a lack of security level then there would be huge changes in how it works ,i guarantee CGI would incorporate a better level of security.However until their hand is FORCED they simply don't really give a dam about customers ONLY about their own money which is not even THEIR money lmao.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Would never apply to this company. One, CIG doesn't distribute proceeds of contest wins in the form of currency. Two, because the discussion revolves around CIG's arbitration, which would be filed first in California, if such a situation ever was dreamt.
The point is that the view of virtual goods is changing and does/will have value as more things are becoming virtual in distributions and "ownership". Blanket comments that all virtual goods have no intrinsic value is not true. It is just not a traditional concept of value.
Well, this argument isn't the same, entirely as the vernacular you might be trying to steer it. Specifically, we were discussing in-game currency, which is not regulated, so has no standard. There are huge, huge implications of "creating your own currency", and people have known this for decades. Even whole countries have an international responsibility in this. I thought for sure we were discussing the same subject, particularly because you argued case law about online gambling.
"All virtual goods" would encompass copyrighted IPs, and while it could be argued they have some intrinsic value (relative to income value), more importantly the holders enjoy protections and rights. Star Citizen, for example, has such protections and rights, but this does not put SC currency on the international exchange, as a yen or a ruble. SC currency stops being "real" the instant it "walks off SC", so to speak. You, I, even CIG, cannot file in court for "loss of SC money".
Well i guess that is why it is called a gamble... sometimes you win... most of the time you lose.
People interested in some upcoming indie games that denounce the AH/broker systems in favor of gray market trading should pay attention to this. There is a reason why gamers asked for safe trading systems between accounts. There is a reason why devs delivered on that.
This whole grey market could potentially be a thread to unravel the whole tapestry. I don't care if I am right or wrong. If I bought a ship, and someone else's charge back made my ship go poof. I'd charge back too. and when the original ship I bought goes poof, what's going to happen to the guy I traded that to? He's going to charge back.....and so fall the dominos.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
lol grey market participants get what they deserve. It's not called the grey market cause it's legit, you buy/sell at your own risk. I think SC is pretty scummy as is, but they're in the right here and someone needs to cough up $500.
I agree that grey market participants get what they deserve, but the company also got what they deserved for allowing grey market in their game. Is CR that desperate for those $500 when all these poor souls were already willingly stripped of their life savings to fund that game? lol They are all part of this shady mess.
They all have a valuable lesson to learn here, including the company.
Sounds to me like the person doing the charge back is the one committing fraud especially if its something that was charged on their CC two years ago.
Shouldn't CIG be contesting the CB?
My guess is there is a time limit for retailers to contest a CB.
Yes but if the CB is recent like from what I understand CIG should be after the one initiating the CB, dunno but I don't see how person X is responsible for person Y doing a CB.
I go (person X) to guitar store buy a nice 5k guitar on my CC, gift it to another (person Y) and he then gifts it back with better strings (LTI) 2 years later I go ehh sell it to Y who then goes to guitar store and trades it in or sells it.
Person X decides, 2 years later, to do a CB on initial purchase so how can guitar store try and go after person Y or anyone else other than person X?
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Sounds to me like the person doing the charge back is the one committing fraud especially if its something that was charged on their CC two years ago.
Shouldn't CIG be contesting the CB?
My guess is there is a time limit for retailers to contest a CB.
Yes but if the CB is recent like from what I understand CIG should be after the one initiating the CB, dunno but I don't see how person X is responsible for person Y doing a CB.
I go (person X) to guitar store buy a nice 5k guitar on my CC, gift it to another (person Y) and he then gifts it back with better strings (LTI) 2 years later I go ehh sell it to Y who then goes to guitar store and trades it in or sells it.
Person X decides, 2 years later, to do a CB on initial purchase so how can guitar store try and go after person Y or anyone else other than person X?
Beats me, whole deal sounds pretty shady (hence the name gray market I suppose) and I steer clear of it.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Comments
Cherry Chargeback
Larry Launderer
and CIGGuy
Act I
Cherry is buying herself a nice fancy new SpaceshipJpeg for $1000. Unfortunately there is no LTI anymore for it because she came to late for the LTI stuff. But she heard of a way to turn her lovely ShipJpegThing into a lovely LTI ShipJpegThing.
So she went to reddit and asked the swarmintelligence.
Act II
Larry Launderer is a fan of CR since he was a little boy, he pledged very early, with his early backer account he has the ability to get a discount and LTI ships (Yay!).
He is also on reddit and reads poor Cherrys post, he wants to be a ("spaceship") [rich] hero and tells her that there is a way to turn her ShipJpegThing into a fancy new LTI ShipJpegThing by sending him the ShipJpegThing to melt/rebuy it.
Cherry is gifting the ShipJpegThing to Larry.
Larry melts the ShipJpegThing and gets ¢1000 (ShopCredit).
Larry now buys a new LTI ShipJpegThing for ¢990.
Larry now gifts back the LTI ShipJpegThing to Cherry.
Cherry is happy to have her LTI ShipJpegThing.
Act III
Time Passes ... 2 years later
We have Fish, we have Alpha2.0, but we still don't have Cherrys LTI ShipJpegThing hangar ready.
Cherry is very disappointed but greedy and sells her ¢990 LTI ShipJpegThing on the grey market and asks her bank account manager to chargeback the transaction from 2 years ago.
The bank account manager, very happy to have $1000 more in his playground is initialising the chargeback.
CIGGUY is not happy about this and wants to poof her ShipJpegThing, but ... it is not there anymore, she gifted it away!
Act IV
CIGGuy informs Larry that the ShipJpegThing which has been gifted to him and that he melted, is invalid and he owes CIGGuy ¢1000.
Larry becomes angry and posts his story on reddit.
Basically Larry should be asked to give back the ¢10 that remained in his account for this transaction, but CIGGuy is threatening to get the full amount out of his account by poofing other ShipJpegThing from him.
When you have cake, it is not the cake that creates the most magnificent of experiences, but it is the emotions attached to it.
The cake is a lie.
The person doing chargeback could not pass the blame forward so easily.
Also this might vary from one country to another, but at least in my country people are required to return property that's been stolen by third party but not property that's been acquired through fraud by third party. So once the voucher is used to buy physical goods, the person using the voucher would be free to keep those goods.
Groceries are a bad example here though. We're not talking about physical goods but about licenses or services. RSI is not required to continue providing license/services that were acquired from them through fraud even if the fraudster is a third party.
Banks don't do chargebacks two years later.
Push the issue. CIG clowns guy and either refuses service, or modifies his account, to reflect bogus transaction of make-believe value. Huge pr disaster. 10% more backers want out, 20% think this is amazing punishment of bad guy, but they're also not throwing the money equivalent to the lost 10%. Fine. Do it.
Sure there could be no chargeback at all, then they just poofed her LTI back - gifted ship. and everything should be ok, she paid $1000 they poofed $990 and could ask the launderer for $10)
When you have cake, it is not the cake that creates the most magnificent of experiences, but it is the emotions attached to it.
The cake is a lie.
I know the LTI-scam was widely abused, but that has been ended by CIG. Admittedly, they should have been much faster with their clampdown on that exploit. Nobody really seems interested in criticising them for being slack on that account though, lol
This have been a good conversation
At least they had a game, though. SWtOR keeps making similar mistakes with its borked economy and, overall, says "our bad". /shrug. There are ways to handle these things, but it starts with the presence of mind of the developers in creating atmosphere for this kind of behavior.
You get an awesome for it.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
No wonder these kickstarter ideas work,tons of ridiculously dumb people out there.
One other thing that bothers me is the lack of SECURITY,not just with this operation but within ALL gaming.
The reason it bothers me is because developers and publishers SHOULD be tracing CC use BEFORE the purchase happens.There SHOULD be a layer of security like even an automated phone call.I know of this one because i have used it myself on several purchases.You can't go wrong with a CC number tied into the owners home phone,then a phone call.Further more the places i used that service were not big time operations,so if they can afford to use it so can ANYONE IF they care.
So imo LAW should be stepping in to protect consumers,businesses SHOULD be forced to use layers of security to eliminate the problem of CC theft.It just seems laws are never strict enough or good enough until some big shot lawyers step in and force huge lawsuits,than of course change happens.
Example if someone hired a big law firm to suit CGI for showing a lack of security level then there would be huge changes in how it works ,i guarantee CGI would incorporate a better level of security.However until their hand is FORCED they simply don't really give a dam about customers ONLY about their own money which is not even THEIR money lmao.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
"All virtual goods" would encompass copyrighted IPs, and while it could be argued they have some intrinsic value (relative to income value), more importantly the holders enjoy protections and rights. Star Citizen, for example, has such protections and rights, but this does not put SC currency on the international exchange, as a yen or a ruble. SC currency stops being "real" the instant it "walks off SC", so to speak. You, I, even CIG, cannot file in court for "loss of SC money".
Shouldn't CIG be contesting the CB?
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
They all have a valuable lesson to learn here, including the company.
Just my opinion.
I go (person X) to guitar store buy a nice 5k guitar on my CC, gift it to another (person Y) and he then gifts it back with better strings (LTI) 2 years later I go ehh sell it to Y who then goes to guitar store and trades it in or sells it.
Person X decides, 2 years later, to do a CB on initial purchase so how can guitar store try and go after person Y or anyone else other than person X?
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
CIG comes across as not very competent here. And it starts at the top.
They were happy enough about the grey market when it helped them out, but clueless about the problems it might bring. Ooops...
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon