Merchant Archive
Thread: Fear and Loathing in Mos Eisley: A Merchant's Tale in SWG
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Katmer
Wed Aug 18, 2004 9:12 am
#1
I have seven Merchants on seven different galaxies. Each character runs a thriving business of small-to-medium size.
Every one of them went out of business yesterday... in self defense. A plague has struck, an economic form of the Black Death.
My characters sit huddled in a corner in fear, not knowing if this is the end of their days.
The money supply is infected, and the in-game government has stated that they will cut the infection out with a flaming sword. It's the death penalty for everyone infected.
Monday's announcement read as follows:
-----
"… A credit dupe has surfaced. We are aware of it, and have put a solution in place.
We know who did it. We log everyone’s financial transactions, including WHO AND WHERE THE MONEY IS TRANSFERRED TO.
Please be careful of receiving large sums of money from anyone.
We are going to suspend, and then ban anyone who has participated in this dupe, which includes transfer or reception of funds.
If you know of a PA hall that has received these funds, DO NOT attempt to retrieve any money... this will flag you as dirty as well. And anyone you transfer money to becomes dirty as well. And so on...
We take this extremely seriously, and will go to great lengths to protect your play experience."
-----
Unscrupulous players had uncovered a bug which allowed for counterfeiting of in-game money: credits. They began exploiting this bug heavily, and produced literally billions of credits. All of these credits appear identical to players, there is no way for someone receiving them to know that they are counterfeit.
Ebay listings began to appear with insanely large amounts of credits for sale, for much lower than market rates.
A check of the message boards revealed that these players began an effort to "launder" these counterfeit funds in a variety of ways. They started outbidding everyone in trade auctions for insane amounts. Merchant vendors offering tens of millions of credits in inventory were stripped bare in minutes.
Anything and everything valuable that was for sale was bought.
And now we wait for the axe to fall on the innocent and the guilty alike.
Duplication bugs are the bane of existence for MMORPGs. They can completely wreck any game's internal economy in either direction: duplication of currency can cause hyperinflation, while duplication of valuable items can cause an item value crash.
The developers of SWG are right to take a stand against those who have done this, and for that they are to be applauded. However, their fear-inspiring tactics may end up doing vastly more damage than the duplication itself.
There are three basic desires that are in conflict in addressing this issue:
1. A desire to contain and eliminate the economic impact of the counterfeited credits. If the credits are left in the economy, hyper-inflation can wreck the economic base of the game.
2. A desire to punish those who are guilty of thise action, and to ensure that they do not profit from this exploitation. Just as in the real world, this means tracking down attempts to launder the funds that pass through legitimate businesses.
3. A desire to cause no harm to those who are innocent of any wrongdoing... those caught up as "collateral damage" in the disaster.
The developers have a huge advantage over real-world criminal investigators: they have logs which show all transactions that take place in the game. This enables them to see the flow of credits in every transaction.
The devs appear to be focusing their efforts on addressing the first of these two issues, but it is quite likely that point three will be the major point of contention.
In the real world, if you receive counterfeit money for goods, the government will confiscate all of the counterfeit bills without compensation. You don't get your stuff back, and you don't get the money either. You, the merchant, bear the economic brunt of the counterfeiting.
If the devs want to eliminate the economic impact of the counterfeit credits, they must delete them. Without doing so, the money supply increase will cause massive inflation. Who will bear the brunt for lost valuable items on banned account purchased with counterfeit credits?
The devs have to track the money through these transactions, because the dupers are using "legitimate" purchases to launder their funds. If they don't, the dupers will remain fabulously wealthy by transferring the wealth to other innocent-appearing accounts through any number of levels of buy-and-sell laundering, and bans will have no real effect of punishment.
After the announcement that the dupe had been discovered, the message boards began to be flooded by reports of dupers using their ill-gotten gains as a weapon.
They began tipping millions of credits to random strangers, and more importantly, donating them to their enemies in hopes that they, too, would be caught in the purge to come.
If they couldn't keep their stolen wealth, they were going to take as many people down with them as possible. Money had become a weapon of mass destruction.
Given the policy of "dirty" flagging as outlined by the developers, every transaction by the dupers with someone innocent marked all of the innocent person's funds as "dirty" as well. All of that person's legitimate transactions would likewise mark everyone they dealt with as "dirty". Legitimate business had become an infection vector for the mark of guilt.
Today, no one can perform an economic transaction with anyone else, without the fear that they will be punished despite doing nothing wrong at all.
The devs have spelled out a crystal-clear message: if you receive duped credits, your account will be suspended and banned. But since there is no way for anyone to know if the person who just bought something from your vendor while you were logged off was a duper (or someone who sold something to someone... who sold something to someone... who sold something to a duper), every transaction carries with it the very real risk that you will lose EVERYTHING you worked for in the game.
Commerce has become the ultimate communicable disease, and infection carries the death penalty, because of the mechanics of the "serious treatment" position taken by the devs.
The dupers must be laughing all the way to the bank.
I'm completely paralyzed. I can't make an economic move without risking losing EVERYTHING. I might already be infected and not know it... someone could have bought something from one of my vendors with infected credits. Almost a year's worth of work could disappear overnight.
If no one bought things from me with dirty credits, my only hope of keeping my account free of the stigma of the "dirty" flag is to never sell or buy anything. I can't go out in public either, because a drive-by tipper might send me free money, and I CANNOT REFUSE TO ACCEPT IT. The game has no such mechanic for refusal. All of my legitimate money would become infected too, as soon as I received the duped credits.
So in self defense, I pulled down every single item from my vendors. 40 to 50 million credits worth of inventory on some galaxies. I'm out of business until I can get some kind of GUARANTEE from the developers that I'm not going to become an innocent-bystander collateral-damage victim of their effort to punish the guilty.
Without such a guarantee, the developers have done vastly more economic damage to the game and the state of the economy than the dupers could ever have hoped to.
Every one of them went out of business yesterday... in self defense. A plague has struck, an economic form of the Black Death.
My characters sit huddled in a corner in fear, not knowing if this is the end of their days.
The money supply is infected, and the in-game government has stated that they will cut the infection out with a flaming sword. It's the death penalty for everyone infected.
Monday's announcement read as follows:
-----
"… A credit dupe has surfaced. We are aware of it, and have put a solution in place.
We know who did it. We log everyone’s financial transactions, including WHO AND WHERE THE MONEY IS TRANSFERRED TO.
Please be careful of receiving large sums of money from anyone.
We are going to suspend, and then ban anyone who has participated in this dupe, which includes transfer or reception of funds.
If you know of a PA hall that has received these funds, DO NOT attempt to retrieve any money... this will flag you as dirty as well. And anyone you transfer money to becomes dirty as well. And so on...
We take this extremely seriously, and will go to great lengths to protect your play experience."
-----
Unscrupulous players had uncovered a bug which allowed for counterfeiting of in-game money: credits. They began exploiting this bug heavily, and produced literally billions of credits. All of these credits appear identical to players, there is no way for someone receiving them to know that they are counterfeit.
Ebay listings began to appear with insanely large amounts of credits for sale, for much lower than market rates.
A check of the message boards revealed that these players began an effort to "launder" these counterfeit funds in a variety of ways. They started outbidding everyone in trade auctions for insane amounts. Merchant vendors offering tens of millions of credits in inventory were stripped bare in minutes.
Anything and everything valuable that was for sale was bought.
And now we wait for the axe to fall on the innocent and the guilty alike.
Duplication bugs are the bane of existence for MMORPGs. They can completely wreck any game's internal economy in either direction: duplication of currency can cause hyperinflation, while duplication of valuable items can cause an item value crash.
The developers of SWG are right to take a stand against those who have done this, and for that they are to be applauded. However, their fear-inspiring tactics may end up doing vastly more damage than the duplication itself.
There are three basic desires that are in conflict in addressing this issue:
1. A desire to contain and eliminate the economic impact of the counterfeited credits. If the credits are left in the economy, hyper-inflation can wreck the economic base of the game.
2. A desire to punish those who are guilty of thise action, and to ensure that they do not profit from this exploitation. Just as in the real world, this means tracking down attempts to launder the funds that pass through legitimate businesses.
3. A desire to cause no harm to those who are innocent of any wrongdoing... those caught up as "collateral damage" in the disaster.
The developers have a huge advantage over real-world criminal investigators: they have logs which show all transactions that take place in the game. This enables them to see the flow of credits in every transaction.
The devs appear to be focusing their efforts on addressing the first of these two issues, but it is quite likely that point three will be the major point of contention.
In the real world, if you receive counterfeit money for goods, the government will confiscate all of the counterfeit bills without compensation. You don't get your stuff back, and you don't get the money either. You, the merchant, bear the economic brunt of the counterfeiting.
If the devs want to eliminate the economic impact of the counterfeit credits, they must delete them. Without doing so, the money supply increase will cause massive inflation. Who will bear the brunt for lost valuable items on banned account purchased with counterfeit credits?
The devs have to track the money through these transactions, because the dupers are using "legitimate" purchases to launder their funds. If they don't, the dupers will remain fabulously wealthy by transferring the wealth to other innocent-appearing accounts through any number of levels of buy-and-sell laundering, and bans will have no real effect of punishment.
After the announcement that the dupe had been discovered, the message boards began to be flooded by reports of dupers using their ill-gotten gains as a weapon.
They began tipping millions of credits to random strangers, and more importantly, donating them to their enemies in hopes that they, too, would be caught in the purge to come.
If they couldn't keep their stolen wealth, they were going to take as many people down with them as possible. Money had become a weapon of mass destruction.
Given the policy of "dirty" flagging as outlined by the developers, every transaction by the dupers with someone innocent marked all of the innocent person's funds as "dirty" as well. All of that person's legitimate transactions would likewise mark everyone they dealt with as "dirty". Legitimate business had become an infection vector for the mark of guilt.
Today, no one can perform an economic transaction with anyone else, without the fear that they will be punished despite doing nothing wrong at all.
The devs have spelled out a crystal-clear message: if you receive duped credits, your account will be suspended and banned. But since there is no way for anyone to know if the person who just bought something from your vendor while you were logged off was a duper (or someone who sold something to someone... who sold something to someone... who sold something to a duper), every transaction carries with it the very real risk that you will lose EVERYTHING you worked for in the game.
Commerce has become the ultimate communicable disease, and infection carries the death penalty, because of the mechanics of the "serious treatment" position taken by the devs.
The dupers must be laughing all the way to the bank.
I'm completely paralyzed. I can't make an economic move without risking losing EVERYTHING. I might already be infected and not know it... someone could have bought something from one of my vendors with infected credits. Almost a year's worth of work could disappear overnight.
If no one bought things from me with dirty credits, my only hope of keeping my account free of the stigma of the "dirty" flag is to never sell or buy anything. I can't go out in public either, because a drive-by tipper might send me free money, and I CANNOT REFUSE TO ACCEPT IT. The game has no such mechanic for refusal. All of my legitimate money would become infected too, as soon as I received the duped credits.
So in self defense, I pulled down every single item from my vendors. 40 to 50 million credits worth of inventory on some galaxies. I'm out of business until I can get some kind of GUARANTEE from the developers that I'm not going to become an innocent-bystander collateral-damage victim of their effort to punish the guilty.
Without such a guarantee, the developers have done vastly more economic damage to the game and the state of the economy than the dupers could ever have hoped to.
Katmer
Wed Aug 18, 2004 6:01 pm
#2
Atlas5 wrote:
Any official word from the Devs on this? Is the only way to ensure safety to close our vendors down until further notice?
Enquiring minds want to know...
I've looked, and I can't find any official clarifications from red-letter folks. I'd really appreciate links to any such statements regarding whether it's safe to run your vendors... or if doing so opens you up to losing your credits, your items, or your entire account if your buyer is using "dirty" credits.
Vauge reassurances don't help me. My confidence is utterly shaken by the draconian nature of that "anyone you transfer to" statement from JustG.
Does anyone have a link to an OFFICIAL statement that you are 100% safe if you didn't personally dupe, but some duper bought things from your vendor? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I'm remaining out of business until I can find such a statement. I'm not going to flush 8+ months of play time down the toilet because some mouth-breathing leet script kiddie is trying to launder his funds using my vendors without my knowledge or consent.
DocSavag
Wed Aug 18, 2004 8:32 pm
#3
from the Knowledge Base article: soe13430
What should I do if I received duped credits?
Thank you for sharing your concerns regarding this matter with us. If you were not directly involved with the credit duping or the trafficking of duplicated credits then no action will be taken on your account. If you have received an amount of credits that you believe to be of a duped origin, please tip these credits in game to SOE-Collector. If you do this via bank transfer, you should subtract the 5% bank fees from the credits you are returning to avoid cost to yourself. The amount of the fees is 50,000 credits for every million that you are transferring.
Thank you again and have a good day.
What should I do if I received duped credits?
Thank you for sharing your concerns regarding this matter with us. If you were not directly involved with the credit duping or the trafficking of duplicated credits then no action will be taken on your account. If you have received an amount of credits that you believe to be of a duped origin, please tip these credits in game to SOE-Collector. If you do this via bank transfer, you should subtract the 5% bank fees from the credits you are returning to avoid cost to yourself. The amount of the fees is 50,000 credits for every million that you are transferring.
Thank you again and have a good day.
Atlas5
Thu Aug 19, 2004 12:51 am
#4
Any official word from the Devs on this? Is the only way to ensure safety to close our vendors down until further notice?
Enquiring minds want to know...
Katmer
Thu Aug 19, 2004 8:18 am
#5
From the "Banning Merchants" thread:
So even following the cited KnowledgeBase article is insufficient to protect you... you lose the items on the sale, you lose the funds by tipping them to SOE-Collector, and you STILL get a ban.
Looks to me like my fears were 100% justified. As detailed in the "Banning Merchants" thread, innocent parties are getting banned first over vendor sales and THEN they need to prove their innocence if they want their account back? What happens to their BUSINESS while the so-called "investigation" takes place?
Until there are some concrete guarantees that innocent people aren't going to get railroaded, your only possible protection (that I can see) is to take your vendors down... ALL OF THEM.
These grossly ham-handed tactics will do more long-term harm to the game than the duped credits would have.
DocSavag wrote:
kaspars_tenowog wrote:From what I have heard is a lot of the legit high name crafters on my server (taken with a grain of salt of course) did exactly what the CSR told them to do, they did not move the credits, they submitted the ticket, tipped the money to the SOE collector and then they got banned.
I know that Thunderheart is already looking into this situation from earlier reports. Be patient. It is frustrating to be caught up in a net for something you are innocent of but they are trying to prevent a massive spread of duped credits into the economy.
So even following the cited KnowledgeBase article is insufficient to protect you... you lose the items on the sale, you lose the funds by tipping them to SOE-Collector, and you STILL get a ban.
Looks to me like my fears were 100% justified. As detailed in the "Banning Merchants" thread, innocent parties are getting banned first over vendor sales and THEN they need to prove their innocence if they want their account back? What happens to their BUSINESS while the so-called "investigation" takes place?
Until there are some concrete guarantees that innocent people aren't going to get railroaded, your only possible protection (that I can see) is to take your vendors down... ALL OF THEM.
These grossly ham-handed tactics will do more long-term harm to the game than the duped credits would have.
Glizzy
Thu Aug 19, 2004 1:26 pm
#7
are we supposed to know which credits are duped and which are not? i'm calling madame cleo!
i'd close down the mall but you can't make a bldg private if you have vendors! i'm not pulling down every item on my vendors either. i'll take my chances knowing thatthe 5mil a week weapons / resources business i do is legit. i'm not listing any really high end weapons on my vendors till this is resolved.
bah! this seems to have hit some servers harder than others. good luck with all the banned accounts!
great analogy - "Commerce has become the ultimate communicable disease, and infection carries the death penalty, because of the mechanics of the "serious treatment" position taken by the devs."
5 star post!
Sgian_Dubh
Thu Aug 19, 2004 3:04 pm
#8
I think Katmer's post hits the nail on the head here. Sure I see the dev's issue and hyperinflation but this is killing business - its like blaming the victim for being raped.
Best way I can see to tackle this is to put a 1 million entry fee on your house or tent - that way you know if someone does pay it theyre a duper and the devs will have proof you tried to prevent it. At least I would hope they would have that much sense.
Best way I can see to tackle this is to put a 1 million entry fee on your house or tent - that way you know if someone does pay it theyre a duper and the devs will have proof you tried to prevent it. At least I would hope they would have that much sense.
Katmer
Thu Aug 19, 2004 8:33 pm
#9
What bothers me most about this is the almost flippant, cavalier attitude they seem to be taking towards these bans... it's like they are saying, in effect:
"Bah, just ban everyone the money touches. If they complain, we'll put them on a list and see if we think they are clean... when we get around to it."
In the meantime, what happens to those innocent folks who get banned, and their stockroom items go past the seven-day deadline?
What about harvesters and structures that run out of maintenance and go poof?
What about the once-in-a-year opportunities that are missed to harvest some critical high-quality resource?
What about the faction base that they can't defend while they are banned?
How long are the folks (like me) who have yanked 100% of their business off the market for self-protection going to have to let their businesses rot, because SOE won't commit to telling us when it's safe to run a vendor again?
I was reconciled to accepting the merchant nerf, and going about my business... but it is the way that the Devs are handling this incident that is bothering me infinitely more than the existence of the dupe itself.
Our galaxies could have absorbed the hiccup of a money supply spike (mitigated over time as they tracked down and individually banned those that they were fairly sure were dupe participants) far, far easier than we will be able to cope with commerce grinding to a screeching halt, and legitimate merchants losing their businesses or accounts... solely because their business WAS SUCCESSFUL.
It's the largest sellers with the best inventories of high-end stuff that got clobbered as the obvious and easy money-laundering targets.
Now, I may paint myself as a bit of a Pollyanna by saying it, but I used to trust the Devs to (basically) do the right thing, especially when it comes to something as drastic as yanking someone's access to the game.
This tactic has shattered that trust. I see this as not substantially different from hitting everyone in a five-block radius with stun guns, rubber bullets and truncheons, and then hauling them all away to jail. After all, they know that some bad guys are within that five-block radius, and we can't have them getting away with anything... Hey, if you're innocent, what's the big deal, right?
No. It's not right. They could have chosen to use their "flagging" tools to give them LEADS, and they could have slapped down bans only on those who they were reasonably certain were guilty, AFTER their investigations were complete.
Instead, it's shoot first... ask questions later. Does anyone expect that the wrongfully banned are going to be justly compensated for the damage they incur from the trigger-happy ban response?
I suppose I'm lucky that I read the warnings in as dire of a light as I did. My "panicked" response kept me from becoming one of the long list of merchants banned because some duper bought something from their vendor. But instead of being banned, I'm out of business until it's "safe" to run a vendor again.
A merchant can't stop that from happening, Devs. Slapping a ban on an innocent merchant's account isn't going to make this duping situation any better.
Use your tools to track down the TRULY guilty. As you find them, by all means, drop a piano on them. In the meantime, stop the collateral damage before you alienate your entire base of merchant players. Far better that some of the fake credits work their way into the economy, than to have innocent (and major) merchants wrongfully banned.
"Bah, just ban everyone the money touches. If they complain, we'll put them on a list and see if we think they are clean... when we get around to it."
In the meantime, what happens to those innocent folks who get banned, and their stockroom items go past the seven-day deadline?
What about harvesters and structures that run out of maintenance and go poof?
What about the once-in-a-year opportunities that are missed to harvest some critical high-quality resource?
What about the faction base that they can't defend while they are banned?
How long are the folks (like me) who have yanked 100% of their business off the market for self-protection going to have to let their businesses rot, because SOE won't commit to telling us when it's safe to run a vendor again?
I was reconciled to accepting the merchant nerf, and going about my business... but it is the way that the Devs are handling this incident that is bothering me infinitely more than the existence of the dupe itself.
Our galaxies could have absorbed the hiccup of a money supply spike (mitigated over time as they tracked down and individually banned those that they were fairly sure were dupe participants) far, far easier than we will be able to cope with commerce grinding to a screeching halt, and legitimate merchants losing their businesses or accounts... solely because their business WAS SUCCESSFUL.
It's the largest sellers with the best inventories of high-end stuff that got clobbered as the obvious and easy money-laundering targets.
Now, I may paint myself as a bit of a Pollyanna by saying it, but I used to trust the Devs to (basically) do the right thing, especially when it comes to something as drastic as yanking someone's access to the game.
This tactic has shattered that trust. I see this as not substantially different from hitting everyone in a five-block radius with stun guns, rubber bullets and truncheons, and then hauling them all away to jail. After all, they know that some bad guys are within that five-block radius, and we can't have them getting away with anything... Hey, if you're innocent, what's the big deal, right?
No. It's not right. They could have chosen to use their "flagging" tools to give them LEADS, and they could have slapped down bans only on those who they were reasonably certain were guilty, AFTER their investigations were complete.
Instead, it's shoot first... ask questions later. Does anyone expect that the wrongfully banned are going to be justly compensated for the damage they incur from the trigger-happy ban response?
I suppose I'm lucky that I read the warnings in as dire of a light as I did. My "panicked" response kept me from becoming one of the long list of merchants banned because some duper bought something from their vendor. But instead of being banned, I'm out of business until it's "safe" to run a vendor again.
A merchant can't stop that from happening, Devs. Slapping a ban on an innocent merchant's account isn't going to make this duping situation any better.
Use your tools to track down the TRULY guilty. As you find them, by all means, drop a piano on them. In the meantime, stop the collateral damage before you alienate your entire base of merchant players. Far better that some of the fake credits work their way into the economy, than to have innocent (and major) merchants wrongfully banned.
Vrond
Thu Aug 19, 2004 9:37 pm
#10
Well the bannings are underway in full force on Ahazi some of our biggest merchants are going down. If you can I would close your shops till this blows over
NadienImesso
Fri Aug 20, 2004 12:42 am
#11
i want clareification on this very very very soon or i will leave the game i am not a ball in their hands they can throw around.
how they anounced the mercahnt changes was a low blow and now this. i am runing a high profil shop (buying/selling 25+ million the week). i need to know how save it is to play. or how i know when money is duped.
also i want to know why they need so many days (when i only count the anouncement) to react or even remove the tained money. I can t belive they have let the tained money spread for days and not instandly removed it from game or even temporaly closed the servers for 1 to 2 days to clear this. but i cant play my merchant any more without risking to get tainted money because they did not make their job.
Katmer
Fri Aug 20, 2004 8:07 am
#12
Sgian_Dubh wrote:
Best way I can see to tackle this is to put a 1 million entry fee on your house or tent - that way you know if someone does pay it theyre a duper and the devs will have proof you tried to prevent it. At least I would hope they would have that much sense.
Apparently, the maximum entry fee that you can set is 50k.
I suppose listing every individual item on vendors at 99 million credits each would give pretty convincing proof that the person buying it was purchasing something at an obviously unreasonable price, and going to the Devs with that as evidence might bolster your case.
Of couse, who knows... they might say that the 99 million proves that you are just acting as a receiver for a huge transfer, and suspect you all the more.
I don't know what to think anymore. This "ban first, figure it out later" policy is just nuts, IMO.
WhydoIstillplaythisgame
Fri Aug 20, 2004 9:15 am
#13
DocSavag wrote:
from the Knowledge Base article: soe13430
What should I do if I received duped credits?
Thank you for sharing your concerns regarding this matter with us. If you were not directly involved with the credit duping or the trafficking of duplicated credits then no action will be taken on your account. If you have received an amount of credits that you believe to be of a duped origin, please tip these credits in game to SOE-Collector. If you do this via bank transfer, you should subtract the 5% bank fees from the credits you are returning to avoid cost to yourself. The amount of the fees is 50,000 credits for every million that you are transferring.
Thank you again and have a good day.
Do you actually think that's gonna work!?! I didn't log in for 2 days and when I tried to I was banned. I sell 180 FULL suits of composite a week on my armor vendor at 600K each. How in God's name could I have known to log in to make sure someone wasn't using duped credits!?!?!
Unreal...it really is like a bad nightmare that the devs once again are just ignoring.
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