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Square Enix...starting unethical business practices?
Cymdai
Member UncommonPosts: 1,043
Well, nothing like Mourning, but this is pretty damn ridiculous to me.
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I'd say that's a power trip if I've ever seen one by a GM. Unjust seizure of items is uncalled for, especially without an exact explanation and proof.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Comments
Seems strange that Squenix would do such a thing. I use to play FF XI and 1.9 mil in gill is certainly not a little bit of cash, but not really too much if you are a hardcore player. Lets just hope they were not favoring one racial group over another.
Cant we all just get along?
he could have taken the money but returned him the item he sold...that would have been fair and square as that guy was just as much victim as the guy the money was stolen from.
I don't call this stealing or anything, rather very bad judgemental skills from the GM.
That GM needs some comprehension skills hammered into his brain.
1) You didn't know that the money was stolen.
2) By taking your money away and not having the chance of getting back the item you are technically the victim of this dodgy transaction.
3) Since he has not proof that you knew how the other player obtained the money and it is not your duty to do investigations before transactions are made, you are not responsable for what happened.
The GM should have take the following actions:
1) Take the money away from you and transferit to the original player who got the money stolen.
2) Take the item away from the person who bought your item and give it back to you.
3) Ban the thief, if he has enough evidence.
What I am thinking is that, the GM thought that you bought the money on IGE and you trade it in game for a worthless item, but if you can prove that your item is worth that kind of money he has not right to act the way he did.
IT IS NOT THE PLAYER RESPONSABILITY TO CHECK WHERE PEOPLE GET THEIR MONEY FROM.
Behaving the way he did, he made one customer happy and another honest customer terribly upset.
This is not the way an expert GM should behave, so i suggest you report him to the customer service, it is your right to have at least your item back, and some apologies too.
I'm not seeing anything wrong with what the GM did. This isn't any much different then how situations like this are handled in most MMO's.
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
That's exactly how the situation would've been handled in alot MMO's. The illegally obtained item/cash would be deleted regardless of who now had it, granted some would've tried to track down the trade that was made although tbh alot can't and even more wouldn't. In fact I think alot of MMO's wouldn;t even bother telling you about it and the money would just vanish when you were logged off.
The GM didn't do anything wrong, in fact he displayed alot of patience when the player seemed unable to understand simple English and then resorted to flaming the GM.
An accusation of 'unethical business practices' is frankly just childish.
Except in most MMO ToS it does say that everything remains the property of X company to prevent you from doing that.
A good wife deserves more than half the praise, just as a bad one deserves more than half the blame. - Tacitus
I'm not saying I wouldn't be mad. Simple fact of the matter is. That is exactly how the situation would have been handled in 90% of the MMO's out now. I had a similar sitaution happen to me when I use to play EQ. The items which I had to farm to get was deleted. The money that was given to me for said item was deleted. It's one of the things you come to expect in MMO's.
In War - Victory.
In Peace - Vigilance.
In Death - Sacrifice.
GM's guidelines are usually set in stone, they often aren't really allowed to bend the rules on individual cases.
A good wife deserves more than half the praise, just as a bad one deserves more than half the blame. - Tacitus
Except in most MMO ToS it does say that everything remains the property of X company to prevent you from doing that.
I dont think your entirely correct with your statement of it being childish and handled like this in most MMORPG games. The person who got their cash stripped by the GM should have gotten that Item back, the GM knows that the player has received stolen funds meaning 1 player is already out of pocket. Now that hes removing cash from this player and returning it there is still now 1 player who is out of pocket. Unfortunatly 2 wrongs dont make a right, either make things even and ban the player who stole the original funds.
I once had a semi similar experience to this in Lineage 2, my account was taken over by a "hacker", funny thing is i was playing the game at the time when it logged me out and told me my account was in use. My entire clan followed the person controlling me and blocked them in a warehouse while they got GMs. While this was happening i had e-mailed support and told them what had happened, they then asked me to confirm my game code to confirm i was the account owner etc. This took about 15 mins and no MAJOR damage had been done to my account at this time. Once they had authorised me as the account owner i was expecting some sort of action such as my account being temporarily banned or the player kicked and my password reset as for some reason i could not change any of my account details while this person was on. I had a GM on my friends computer who was in a different room to me, and told him what was happening, they told me "This is not classed as an in-game emergancy" i think i still have the screenshots of this somewhere... The GMs didnt do a thing, they refused to ban my account or kick the person playing as me off even tho 5 minutes ago support had verified me as the account owner. Anyway blah blah blah they stripped me while i watched them pleading to GMs to do something, luckily me and a group of friends managed to re-gain access to my account, it was too late to save any items of mine but at least they didnt disband my clan or anything.
I later found out it was a group effort and it was 2 people who were doing it, one was constantly changing my account details so i couldnt gain access while the other ran round the world selling my gear for dirt cheap and trading my cash to a friend of theirs for selling on IGE or whatever. It also ended up that the "hacker" was a clan member who had gained enough information about me via clan members to take over my account (D.O.B and otehr details by asking how old i was and when my Bday was to other members who thought it was harmless chit chat)
Technically this was my fault, and NCSoft refused to take any action because it was my fault the "hacker" had gotten access to my account, which ok fair enough i would take responsibility for that. However the GMs would not take responsibility for not acting on the information provided, i mean they had a 20 min window to kick the person on my account, support had been informed of this happening and had all the releven info yet no action was taken.
It was good that in the FFXI case that the GMs tracked down the stolen currency and acctually did something about it. Although its VERY bad that they just screwed the player who seemed to get it legitimatly, they should have been re-imbursed for this happening too... im gonna stop rambling now
Wow.... that really really sucks. I had a similar situation happen to me in SWG, having received a dropped item that wasn't supposed to drop, I then sold it not knowing any better for a ton of credits. Of course the GM's were on top of me a short while after, took all the credits I earned from the sale and the item from the person I had sold it to. Even though I didn't know the player I sold too, I gave him back the credits (since the gm's refused the refund the sale either) so I kinda lost all around but I felt worse for the person that paid me all these credits for an item they had taken away.
Fortunately in my situation the GM was very very kind and was obviously not happy with the situation overall and there was very little they could do to help me out.
It's a shame the GM in this situation didn't even seem to care about the player. Things like this have to handled really carefully, certainly they could have been been a little nicer about it all.
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One instance doth not a trend make.
A common ploy used by CSR people to get some sympathy. A GM has the power to correct it however they feel best while keeping in mind both the customer and the company. If they had really felt compassionate about it they could have gone to a supervisor. I did customer service for several years, its all up to how motivated the rep is to help you.
I have had to request to speak to a supervisor when a GM of SOE's decided there was nothing that can be done.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
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The loss of gil is really a grey area for me, provided there is ample proof it was stolen. However, the player has every right to be pissed off if he didn't receive the item he sold in return.
Wow... I just have so many things I could say in this thread. Some of them would get my lynched. So, like my typical self... Here I go.... *sigh*
A few points to ponder:
- GMs are bound by rules, it is very rare they can bend them. This wasn't a case where they could
- This was handled just as it would be in real life. The police don't take stolen money and then give you a reimbursement of 'good' money, nor would they try to get the items you sold back. The police aren't stealing in that case, they are retrieving stolen goods. In some cases, you would actually go to jail whether you were aware or not.
- Never take 3rd party information as truth. I have found in at least 75% of these cases, it is a friend asking a friend to "hold" the money or someone who actually knows what has happened but is trying really hard to find a way out.
- A lot of games have chat logs, so trying to get one over on a GM can just be making you look like a fool. They may not say they actually know what is happening, but a lot of times they do. They would rather let you save face than call you out like a thief.
- If the GM had been watching the situation, he/she would have more than likely stopped the transfer as soon as it happened and avoided the situation. GMs generally don't 'live police' this type of situation. They find these types of things in logs and usually after someone complains. It is much easier to catch the problem before it explodes.
Unfortunately the GM has to be firm and end with closed comments. I agree, it does seem callus, but there would have been no workable answer which would have made the customer happy.
I am not sure what would have sparked the investigation, but if it was a case of someone "selling an empty bag" then it probably shouldn't have gotten to this point anyway.
Selling an empty bag: A thief or con telling a player they have a great and known item to sell someone contained in a bag. The mark buys the bag and finds it is actually empty. Once the trade is made, it is made and there isn't much to do from there. Buyer beware and keep your eyes open! Unfortunately there are some real jerks out there.
These situations are really painful for everyone involved. These types of things are the reason for heavy moderation of cheats, thieves, and telling players to be extra careful when trading, buying, giving information, etc. *NEVER* trade for something unless you know what it is, and *NEVER* give a "friend" or guildmate your account information. Unless you can go down the street and personally kick the person's butt, they aren't your friend. I have had situations where people have planeted themselves in a guild for up to a year just to start getting account information to sell later. After a year they starting saying things like "I'll level your character while you are at school!", "I will trade the stuff later tonight, don't worry man... get some sleep.", etc.
Final Comments: This stuff really sucks to read. If the person is truly an innocent, it just plain sucks and the least that should happen is the person causing this issue should be removed (Meaning the player that stole.) If not, kudos for starting another controversy.. and umm.. anti-kudos too.
Fadinaway
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The GM, or whoever made the policy is a complete idiot, their job is to keep the game balanced and in order and their actions failed to do that:
[Person who had Gil Stolen] [Person who Stol Gil] [Trader (person who took the screenshots]
Before GM Intervention: [ - ] [ + ] [ = ]
GM Action (from information assuming at the theif still has the item since nothing was said differently) - obviously the net imbalance is still the same meaning a complete failure on the part of the GM: [ = ] [ + ] [ - ]
GM Action (assuming the theif was punished) Still a partial failure because the game is still imbalanced: [ = ] [ = ] [ - ]
What should have been done; original player had funds returned, theif banned, item returned to the trader: [ = ] [ = ] [ = ]
Now, unless you're a complete morron you cannot say that the GM did a good job since they didn't undo what happened or restore balance to the situation. I don't like to flame, but anyone who can comprehend logic cannot agree with what the GM did
Key: [ = ] Player neither has advantage nor disadvantage, [ + ] player has unfair advantage (eg the stolen gil) [ - ] player has unfair disadvantage (eg they were robbed)
Now, we could assume that the item was traded to someone else and impossible to trace, in that case the GM's action would probably have fitted withint the company policy. That does not make it logical in my opinion though. From what I've seen MMORPG companiess prefer to leave a [ - ] in the equation rather than a [ + ] which is, quite frankly, stupid but expected because the admins are only human and the type of people who run these games are generally rather anal retentive about balance and instinctivley would rather have someone lose something than let them have something they shouldn't have. I know, I'm that type of person and I run a MMORPG server (it's a private Ragnarok Online server. yes I know it's illegal, what are you going to do, sue me?). From a buisness perspective it would make sense to make one customer happy than have one pissed off, but like I said, the server admins aren't the finance guys and companies DO make mistakes.
For those of you who didn't want to read all that here's a summery: I understand how it happened. I think the GM (or Squeenix) is an asshole as well as a stupid idiot from a buisness perspective and I think anybody who agrees with the GM doesn't understand the concept of logic (or good buisness for that matter).
I hate to say it but ring up and get him disciplined - Else youre just throwing your hard work away.
--
Note: PlayNC will refuse to allow you access to your account if you forget your password and can't provide a scanned image of the product key for the first product you purchased..... LOL
Making the assertion that this is like real life is absurd. First off, if the police take away stolen merchandise you bought, yes, the "police" would not refund your money but then benjamins are not virtual money that can be created out of thin air. No harm no foul, and if someone is going to say that will unbalance the economy i seriously question their intellect.
Second in real life you can take action against lets say a pawn shop that sold you stolen property, the stolen property you bought could be confiscated by the police but then you in turn can take legal actions against the pawn shop. Either way, when you are wronged in real life you often have other avenues to pursue for justice.
What it really comes down to is in real life, is that "justice" is at least attempted. Not always successful but it certainly is implied and if everything works as it should justice is served. Their are at least legal methods in which you can hire a lawyer "solicitor" to be your advocate in compensation for your loss. True enough often it fails because
#1 the criminals if caught have no monetary abilities to compensate you for your loss
#2 the criminals arent caught so noone can be held responsible
So no, real life is not the same as a GM who just decides and you need to just suck it up. Before making a comparison, at least think it through first.
Just to point out, this isn't the first time this has happened in this game. A previous occurence inspired a cartoon about it on Pennyarcade. I'm almost certain this isn't an isolated incident.
I don't know why I'm surprised though, SE has never given a damn about their customers. I'd argue they have the worst customer service to date. (GM calls take hours, days sometimes, and even then, the GM doesn't do anything)
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
A common ploy used by CSR people to get some sympathy. A GM has the power to correct it however they feel best while keeping in mind both the customer and the company. If they had really felt compassionate about it they could have gone to a supervisor. I did customer service for several years, its all up to how motivated the rep is to help you.
I have had to request to speak to a supervisor when a GM of SOE's decided there was nothing that can be done.
So what your saying is I was suckered
. Damn SOE, there is no limit to their evil 
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