Guild Wars 2

Boils down to this: Ghastly Grinning Shield skin started losing value a long time before anything about recipes were even mentioned. Suddenly now, we are able to MF the skins through mystic forge, but now price already dropped from 4k gold to 500 gold when people first found out.

Yea, unless there was insider information leaked, Anet already said somewhere that the ghastly grinning shield skin will not be coming back. The price should have stayed at 4k gold until recently. Very obvious inside info leak.

I’d wager some of the favorite ‘testers’ that they have continue to stockpile the things they know are going to be valuable down the line. In this case, came ready to craft when they knew this was hitting the streets.

Update: It has happened again. This time with Stabilizing Matrix. Someone over on the subreddit found it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ur0o1/stabilizing_matrices_and_insider_trading/

I really wish Arena Net would put a stop to this. We’re not operating in a fair market at all here. I see this as an outright exploit at this point.

slamfunction.7462:

Update: It has happened again. This time with Stabilizing Matrix. Someone over on the subreddit found it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ur0o1/stabilizing_matrices_and_insider_trading/

I really wish Arena Net would put a stop to this. We’re not operating in a fair market at all here. I see this as an outright exploit at this point.

This has been debated, it has been shown to the devs as a concern, it has went to deaf ears.

You need to consider this:

- Insider trading is not considered universally bad, some economists support it. It might be ANET’s resident economist is one of those;

- Those with leaked knowledge are people who had access to Beta and/or that are friends with the developers to know this stuff. So it is likely they know who knows and don’t reprimand them for it.

- Insider trading has been discussed way back and recurrently for almost 4 years now and never acted upon by ANET.

With all the above, accept this is the way it will always be, make friends with someone to give you insider as well or pack your things.

It simply ain’t getting changed.

Update: Poster of previous thread on Reddit is asking for an update.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4xb9qn/stabilizing_matrices_and_insider_trading/

Again, can we please get an update on this? Either that, or please begin discussing economy changes with us, prior to the changes being performed in patches. This way, we all know what you are going to do, thus killing the opportunity for those who are doing the actual insider trading.

Also note that we never got a response from Mr. Cartwright.

slamfunction.7462:

Also note that we never got a response from Mr. Cartwright.

I count saying nothing as an admission

Insider trading means ANet employees making ingame money. From what’s being presented it’s a question of insider information.

If the people involved got sanctioned, we will never hear about it unless those people make noise about their sanction on the forums or reddit.

Even if it’s happening, the impact on those of us who don’t “cheat” is short and relative small. Of course, it makes me angry that people take advantage of the privilege of being involved in testing, but it just doesn’t matter that much in the long run.

Gold buyers hurt the economy every day and those taking advantage of insider knowledge have a small impact for a short period of time. I’d rather ANet focus on tracking down buyers and reducing the incentives of thieves to steal accounts for gold farming.

(Be great though if ANet including in the test builds a few changes that would affect the economy, but they don’t plan to include in the game. Imagine if the test server had a 3-ore for 1 mithril ingot refinement recipe and insider friends ended up going long on mithril…only to find out that there was no change in the live game. Might even be cheaper than trying to figure out who told who about what.)

Yes, it is likely that someone is benefitting from information before the rest of us get it. That isn’t going to change. They will never acknowledge it either way.

I never understood why people defend “playing” the auction house with the argument that that is how it is in real life.

Imagine going to the store to buy a new keyboard (sword, greatsword, etc. in game), because yours isn’t as good as it could be or you just want a new look. But, when you get to Best Buy they have completely sold out of every keyboard (both in store and on their website). Also, all of their suppliers have been bought out as well. (the same holds true with jeans, t-shirts, Arby’s, Domino’s, etc) So, in order to get a new keyboard, you need to go behind Best Buy to the guy that bought them all and pay him 5 times the cost of what it would have been in the store. This is what the trading post is like.

Not sure how that is “like” the real world for most things.

All you need to do is find out when testers gain access to pre patch builds. Usually within a day or two there will be a handful of items on the trading post moving in large large volumes. Go to one of the tp websites to find out what those items are and jump on the bandwagon.

Or you know Anet could use placeholder items for crafting recipes and vendors. Eg make new vendors sell everything for 1 copper

Well the partners do get early copies of the patch notes and sometimes access to new content like the LS3 the evening before it dropped, many used that time to do their reaction videos. Then it’s scout’s honor that they aren’t going to use that info to profit.

But I don’t imagine the penalty to be severe enough to boot someone on the first offense. ANet needs content creation partners to promote the game at this pivotal time in the game live, dismissing a partner, especially a main one for a specific region, I would imagine it would be difficult.

Well the penalty needs to be higher, because insider trading gives thousands of gold profit for no effort

So for context, insider trading doesn’t actually hurt your average player. It’s something that hurts speculators, or in real markets investors, but in a game without finance its impact is actually pretty muted. Not saying you shouldn’t care, especially if you play the TP…but if you don’t this doesn’t impact you much, if at all.

In the case of the GGS, talked about early on in this thread, it’s unlikely the market changes were being driven by insider trading. It is very, very difficult to take short positions on the TP without financial instruments available – I can’t go short GGS without actually owning a bunch in the first place. Thus to see the kind of movement we did would require massive, widespread information leaks well in advance of the patch – a scale at which there would be little, if any, surprise to see it in the patch notes. That isn’t how it played out at all, so I’d wager the market was being driven by other factors – risk aversion in the face of old skins being released as part of other content chiefly amongst them.

Stabilizing Matrices are a different story. We see a pretty big jump in price alongside a lot of inventory being bought out the Friday before the patch – which is roughly the point where media partners and the like get their first look at what’s coming. A big price change hitting at the same time as a widespread, if still privileged information release looks a whole lot like people breaking NDAs or acting on inside information. It’s a pretty good indicator that they need to tighten up their processes.

You can rationalize against it all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that its absolutely wrong, and unfair.

Lets say i have 100 apples. Current TP price is 1 copper. I go ahead and put them up, and get my 1 silver. A week down the road now, people start putting up the applies for 1 gold a piece…just “out of the blue”, well ok, i shoulda waited (i think to myself). Next, a patch drops where apples are now the #1 commodity to sell. Think about that. Seriously. That right to you?

Sure, i sold my apples. I got what they were worth at the time, but had i known that they were now going to to go for 1g a piece in a week, don’t ya think i would have held on to them?

You say: “This doesn’t hurt the every day user”. No, no it doesn’t, but it screws us out of a profit, because we didn’t have the farsight that the insiders had in the first place.

Now, lets say because i’m bestest chums with Gaile Grey, she gives me a secret buff in WvW or PvP with her developer magic, and i go own everything in sight, because we’re best buddies. Does that sound ok to you? It doesn’t really hurt the majority of players, because i’m not doing it in PvE, so who cares? Cheaters running speed hacks are clearly more dangerous. Right?

The logic you are placing here is that if ANet is ok with it, then its ok to exploit. As long as it doesn’t directly affect you, then its ok.

Wrong is wrong, and this is something thats been going on for quite some time. Granted, its not enough to kill my enjoyment of the game, but it sure speaks volumes to those involved, which may hold sway against ANet later down the road.

slamfunction.7462:

You can rationalize against it all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that its absolutely wrong, and unfair.

Lets say i have 100 apples. Current TP price is 1 copper. I go ahead and put them up, and get my 1 silver. A week down the road now, people start putting up the applies for 1 gold a piece…just “out of the blue”, well ok, i shoulda waited (i think to myself). Next, a patch drops where apples are now the #1 commodity to sell. Think about that. Seriously. That right to you?

Sure, i sold my apples. I got what they were worth at the time, but had i known that they were now going to to go for 1g a piece in a week, don’t ya think i would have held on to them?

You say: “This doesn’t hurt the every day user”. No, no it doesn’t, but it screws us out of a profit, because we didn’t have the farsight that the insiders had in the first place.

Now, lets say because i’m bestest chums with Gaile Grey, she gives me a secret buff in WvW or PvP with her developer magic, and i go own everything in sight, because we’re best buddies. Does that sound ok to you? It doesn’t really hurt the majority of players, because i’m not doing it in PvE, so who cares? Cheaters running speed hacks are clearly more dangerous. Right?

The logic you are placing here is that if ANet is ok with it, then its ok to exploit. As long as it doesn’t directly affect you, then its ok.

Wrong is wrong, and this is something thats been going on for quite some time. Granted, its not enough to kill my enjoyment of the game, but it sure speaks volumes to those involved, which may hold sway against ANet later down the road.

I 100% agree with this.

There are issues which need addressing that have made customers unhappy with the favoritism being displayed within this game. These issues affect the customers, many who have paid at some point, to play and take part of this game. Ignoring it and toeing it under the rug with a tongue-in-cheek .jpg or reference to “looking into it”, with zero word to those who voiced concern in the first place about what may have been discovered (or not discovered) just feels like a placation tactic to delay giving an actual response on the issue.

Customers don’t like that. Some customers stop supporting companies who employ tactics like that… over and over again. Patience wears thin once you realize you’ll either be merged and ignored for months or even a few years…. or your concerns will be treated with such an air of disdain, you’ll simply stop spending your money.. then your time on the game, only checking in on occasion to see what may have changed. Eh, gw2 financials plummeted, someone finally paid attention to the many months of warnings of social engineering “vulnerabilities” within CS… and a few hours of LS3…maybe I’ll “tag” my account for it in a few months or something so it’s eligible (lol, even though I paid for the expansion) to be there for free later, but I’m in no rush.

I’m a GW1 player from 1st day. Bought every collector’s edition until HoT. Actually, just before the collections achievments release, some item’s prices skyrocketed. When update arrives we can see every item in the collections have skyrockected, some happy few inside traders made an enormous profit. We asked John Smith to do something, he said since some infos leaked on wooden potatoes youtube chanel, it should have been considered as an official Anet communication, and everything was fine. From that point i knew i would’nt buy anything from them, that’s why i still don’t have HoT, and won’t buy it.
Good luck to all Anet players, for me GW2 is dead, too many bad decisions have been made.

slamfunction.7462:

You say: “This doesn’t hurt the every day user”. No, no it doesn’t, but it screws us out of a profit, because we didn’t have the farsight that the insiders had in the first place.

It doesn’t screw you out of anything. You’re conflating the effect of an insider trade and the price adjustment from changes to the game.

Without a lick of insider information you’d see a very similar overall price change – the price of apples, in this example, would be 1c up until the patch hits, with it shooting up to 1g (probably well past it, then settling down to 1g) within minutes, if not seconds, of the patch and patch notes going live. You still would have sold your apples for 1c, and still would see them at 1g after the patch. Someone trading on inside information does nothing to you.

People trading on inside information are taking money from other speculators (primarily) and from market makers (secondary). Instead of buying and selling at 1c, they put in offers at 2c to vacuum up a lot of apples – from speculators that had been holding a bunch at 1c waiting for an opportunity to double their money, or from market makers offering spread trades. The ‘sell as you go’ guy is actually a little bit better off as a direct effect, since he’ll get 2c for his apples instead of the 1c he would have gotten by just selling regardless of price.

Sell as you go guy only gets hurt as a secondary effect, as spread traders are more wary when they get taken advantage of by insiders, and thus there are fewer of them and everyday players get offered worse terms (that is, higher spreads) when using the trading post.

This isn’t a ‘hey this doesn’t actually matter’ argument. It absolutely does matter and when it’s really bad can cause markets to break down entirely. What I’m saying is that the effects of insider trading are very subtle compared to all of the crap that people attribute to it. There’s a lot of negative being heaped onto insider trading that is totally unrelated to it, blowing the issue out of proportion.

Still, it’s surprising that they don’t make a big show out of any response to insider trading. It’s a really minor thing in reality, but the perception is such a big deal that it’s basically free public goodwill for changes that do essentially nothing.

slamfunction.7462:

Wrong is wrong

What is wrong about it and why? Asking it as food for thought – this is a pretty hard ethical question.

It is unfair because you can easily make one or more legendaries worth of profit with insider trading. If you think that is ok devs might as well spawn legendaries directly for their favorite players

Ensign.2189:

People trading on inside information are taking money from other speculators (primarily) and from market makers (secondary). Instead of buying and selling at 1c, they put in offers at 2c to vacuum up a lot of apples – from speculators that had been holding a bunch at 1c waiting for an opportunity to double their money, or from market makers offering spread trades. The ‘sell as you go’ guy is actually a little bit better off as a direct effect, since he’ll get 2c for his apples instead of the 1c he would have gotten by just selling regardless of price.

While i completely agree with the main points of your post, I just wanted to point out that you cant sell anything for 1c on the tp, the minimum is 2c.
Why?
Because the minimum listing fee (5%) is 1c and the minimum sales tax (10%) is also 1c.

So if you are selling something for 2c on the tp, all you do is give your apple away for free, as you pay 1c (50%) listing fee and only get 1c in your pickup tab after 1c (50%) sales tax gets deducted.

Wanze.8410:

Ensign.2189:

People trading on inside information are taking money from other speculators (primarily) and from market makers (secondary). Instead of buying and selling at 1c, they put in offers at 2c to vacuum up a lot of apples – from speculators that had been holding a bunch at 1c waiting for an opportunity to double their money, or from market makers offering spread trades. The ‘sell as you go’ guy is actually a little bit better off as a direct effect, since he’ll get 2c for his apples instead of the 1c he would have gotten by just selling regardless of price.

While i completely agree with the main points of your post, I just wanted to point out that you cant sell anything for 1c on the tp, the minimum is 2c.
Why?
Because the minimum listing fee (5%) is 1c and the minimum sales tax (10%) is also 1c.

So if you are selling something for 2c on the tp, all you do is give your apple away for free, as you pay 1c (50%) listing fee and only get 1c in your pickup tab after 1c (50%) sales tax gets deducted.

You are being pedantic Wanze. Fine, change copper to silver or add a 0 to the end. You know what the point was.

Behellagh.1468:

Wanze.8410:

Ensign.2189:

People trading on inside information are taking money from other speculators (primarily) and from market makers (secondary). Instead of buying and selling at 1c, they put in offers at 2c to vacuum up a lot of apples – from speculators that had been holding a bunch at 1c waiting for an opportunity to double their money, or from market makers offering spread trades. The ‘sell as you go’ guy is actually a little bit better off as a direct effect, since he’ll get 2c for his apples instead of the 1c he would have gotten by just selling regardless of price.

While i completely agree with the main points of your post, I just wanted to point out that you cant sell anything for 1c on the tp, the minimum is 2c.
Why?
Because the minimum listing fee (5%) is 1c and the minimum sales tax (10%) is also 1c.

So if you are selling something for 2c on the tp, all you do is give your apple away for free, as you pay 1c (50%) listing fee and only get 1c in your pickup tab after 1c (50%) sales tax gets deducted.

You are being pedantic Wanze. Fine, change copper to silver or add a 0 to the end. You know what the point was.

And i completely agreed with Ensigns points, so what is your problem?

Without a lick of insider information you’d see a very similar overall price change – the price of apples, in this example, would be 1c up until the patch hits, with it shooting up to 1g (probably well past it, then settling down to 1g) within minutes, if not seconds, of the patch and patch notes going live. You still would have sold your apples for 1c, and still would see them at 1g after the patch. Someone trading on inside information does nothing to you.

Correct, so here is the thing: The day after i sold my apples, but one week prior to the patch dropping, the applies go to 1g, for no apparent reason. We didn’t get any notice as to why. How do i know the people buying out the 1 copper apples aren’t buying them in mass, right before 7 days prior to the patch, and relisting them at 1g a piece?

You see now?

Again, people who are buddies, media partners, whatever are getting a market advantage on everyday players, who aren’t “in the know”.

Let me clarify one more thing: If this was WoW, or FFXIV, or any other monthly sub game, there would be no harm, no foul, because in those games, currency farming is far more easier for a casual player. Plus, they have test servers and pre-patch notes out the wah-zoo to give people more than enough notice on what things are changing. ANet intentionally holds just about everything until its released, because as they state ‘they don’t want to ship something that isn’t done’ or ‘they don’t want to make promises they may not deliver on’. I think its more than that, in how the market plays out. Just look at Revnants in WvW or their underwater skills. What happened there? Why wasn’t that addressed before it shipped, amongst other things?

GW2 on the other hand: It has gotten better, but ANet’s bread and butter is still gem-to-gold transactions. Its why leather, cloth, and T6 materials are so “fetch” for most people. (Note: Some people can farm these fairly quickly, but this is a smaller niche than what you would think).

That being said, we now have a real life monetary component in this, almost a RL stock market, where people are investing their cash into the economy, to get the virtual goods they want. And, now apply insider trading, that drives up the price right before a path, and BOOM!, you have an unfair advantage that is affecting people’s RL wallets.

Either way, i’m done posting here for now. I’ll update this thread again, when another incident occurs on the next quarterly patch, because it will keep happening.

slamfunction.7462:

It has gotten better, but ANet’s bread and butter is still gem-to-gold transactions. Its why leather, cloth, and T6 materials are so “fetch” for most people.

Anets bread and butter is gem→gemstore and not gem→gold.
The gem exchange doesnt destroy gems, only the store.

Supposing everyone here accept that it’s morally wrong, that it’s unfair. How important an issue is it? How urgent is it? Those are the questions that business ask to figure out what sort of resources to bring to bear on an issue.

It’s clearly important to ANet’s reputation and to how much people trust the TP. However, I don’t see that it’s all that important otherwise, because the amount of coin that changes hands on the TP is so vast that anything earned by insider knowledge is a drop in the bucket.

I also don’t see it as urgent — this has been going on since launch (at least, according to many of those most strongly advocating for ANet to react) and the economy hasn’t died, people can still become rich by mindless farming, mindful farming, or clever investments of time and/or coin.

In effect, some people cheat and it has no impact on me. None. Except that I think it’s horribly unfair that those privileged to get advance access to patch details are taking advantage of it in the live game.

It hurts my sense of fair play, but it doesn’t hurt me financially. That makes it relatively non-urgent and relatively less important than all the other issues that confront ANet and the game.

I’d really like ANet to prevent it from happening; I just don’t think it matters in the long run except to their reputation.

Malediktus.9250:

slamfunction.7462:

Also note that we never got a response from Mr. Cartwright.

I count saying nothing as an admission

Yes I fully agree with that.

Incidentally reading back over this thread, John Smith, an economist, doesn’t know what salami slicing is! Amazing.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It hurts my sense of fair play, but it doesn’t hurt me financially.

All about you is it? “Doesn’t hurt me, so the everyone else should be fine with it.”

It’s a good thing most of society in RL doesn’t have that attitude.

My two cents.

There are too many “coincidences” when you look at tracking sites where the supply is drained or an enormous number of buy orders appear for an item only to have something significant happen to that item in the patch that drop a few days later to not be the result of an information leak. And I don’t think anybody is saying it’s okay to break NDA by using that knowledge to profit.

But as others pointed out, the example Slamfunction is using is problematic, because in that example with the apples, the issue is temporal in nature, it’s 20/20 hindsight. No matter when the information is dropped, someone will cry “but if only I knew”.

Also if there was a 100% effective lock down on information about a change what would shake up the TP, it’s still those who can react the fastest who will make the most profit. There will always be players at work, in class, sleeping when a patch and it’s notes drop and by the time they are aware of the change it will be too late to make any significant profit. So the real issue isn’t either of these cases; it’s solely about wanting ANet to root out the leakers and punish them.

That isn’t as easy or clear cut as you would think. Primarily because if it was an ANet Partner, that partner would have to be monumentally stupid to use any account that could easily be tracked back to them or publicly talk about taking advantage of that information ahead of time.

ANet could identify the accounts that drained the TP supply or started buying up vast quantities of new supply. But some of those players may only be following their nose, that the tools they use notified them about the rapid supply drain or onslaught of bids or rapid changes in prices and they quickly joined in. A “The Dukes are trying to corner the market on frozen concentrated orange juice, they must know something” moment (Re: Trading Places).

But lets say Anet got a list of accounts that participated in the preemptive trading. If none of them are partners what is ANet going to do, bring them down to the virtual station and virtual waterboard them to find out the name of the leaker? Beyond checking friends lists and guildies there is very little ANet could do. And in the end it would all be circumstantial as players may be friends or guildmates with several partners. I know I am.

Short of a smoking gun, all ANet can do is send out a strongly worded e-mail to partners after each occurrence of such shenanigans reminding them about the NDA and possible sanctions.

Behellagh.1468:

My two cents.

..shortened for brevity…

I think the best solution to all this would be for Anet to simply be open with the player base about what they intend to change. Send out the info when it hits any sort of distribution outside of Anet. Let the investors fight over it at that point. As it stands currently, people are profiting thousands of gold off information that they shouldn’t have. They have an unfair advantage in that they are free and clear to invest and such with little to no competition with others on the TP (as opposed to patch day when thousands of people will jump on opportunities).

This company…. seriously….

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Supposing everyone here accept that it’s morally wrong, that it’s unfair.

I accept that it’s unfair but not that it’s morally wrong. I’m struggling to think what the case for it being amoral would look like.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

In effect, some people cheat and it has no impact on me. None. Except that I think it’s horribly unfair that those privileged to get advance access to patch details are taking advantage of it in the live game.

The only impact it has on the rest of the players is that they don’t get the same chance to make the same money. And since everyone else doesn’t have advance notice, they wouldn’t get that chance anyway, so it doesn’t affect everyone as you say. But you are also correct that it IS unfair to allow certain people to have an in-game advantage like that. It looks really bad to allow things like that to continue.

Anet should not “partner” with people who took advantage again.

Neural.1824:

Behellagh.1468:

My two cents.

..shortened for brevity…

I think the best solution to all this would be for Anet to simply be open with the player base about what they intend to change. Send out the info when it hits any sort of distribution outside of Anet. Let the investors fight over it at that point. As it stands currently, people are profiting thousands of gold off information that they shouldn’t have. They have an unfair advantage in that they are free and clear to invest and such with little to no competition with others on the TP (as opposed to patch day when thousands of people will jump on opportunities).

Partners are evangelists for the game. It helps them to promote the updates to their followers if they are informed about the changes and even play them ahead of time. That is not ever going to change.

Trying to “hide” the economy changes from an early access client is just asking for an OOPS when the actual patch gets dropped. Simply looking over the existing patch notes show that not everything they intend to be in a patch gets there on the first attempt.

Neural.1824:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It hurts my sense of fair play, but it doesn’t hurt me financially.

All about you is it? “Doesn’t hurt me, so the everyone else should be fine with it.”

It’s a good thing most of society in RL doesn’t have that attitude.

Most of society in RL does have that attitude. People (on the whole) vote with their pocket books, not with mine.

Regardless, that’s a misstatement of my opinion by taking the quote out of context — I’m not fine with people cheating. I hate it.

What I’m saying is that despite my frustration, there’s no long term, practical impact on the vast majority of gamers. There’s always someone in every economy (RL or game) that stretches the rules or exploits a mechanic to gain an advantage not available to everyone else. But the GW2 economy is so huge that it dwarfs the effects of folks using insider information to make lucrative trades.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Neural.1824:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It hurts my sense of fair play, but it doesn’t hurt me financially.

All about you is it? “Doesn’t hurt me, so the everyone else should be fine with it.”

It’s a good thing most of society in RL doesn’t have that attitude.

Most of society in RL does have that attitude. People (on the whole) vote with their pocket books, not with mine.

Regardless, that’s a misstatement of my opinion by taking the quote out of context — I’m not fine with people cheating. I hate it.

What I’m saying is that despite my frustration, there’s no long term, practical impact on the vast majority of gamers. There’s always someone in every economy (RL or game) that stretches the rules or exploits a mechanic to gain an advantage not available to everyone else. But the GW2 economy is so huge that it dwarfs the effects of folks using insider information to make lucrative trades.

Ok, so let’s go with that for a bit. When do we start allowing other things to slip through? Where is the line then drawn? People will scream “why are you punishing us for x when insider trading is allowed?”.
It needs to be stopped. If anyong was making thousands of gold off an unfair advantage ANY other way, Anet would permanently ban them in a heartbeat.

Neural.1824:

Ok, so let’s go with that for a bit. When do we start allowing other things to slip through? Where is the line then drawn? People will scream “why are you punishing us for x when insider trading is allowed?”.
It needs to be stopped. If anyong was making thousands of gold off an unfair advantage ANY other way, Anet would permanently ban them in a heartbeat.

There is no ‘we’ in deciding what is or isn’t allowable; it’s ANet’s game and they set the boundaries.

~EW

slamfunction.7462:

Hello All,

In the past we’ve seen grand ploys to garnish your hard-earned cash into the GW2 gem store. Nothing so innocent as a really fab skin, or a black lion ticket. No, no… We’ve seen straight up “gambling” (halloween raffle for Halloween 2013 skins) and “Salami Slicing” (gem to gold exchange UI update).

Now, we are faced with the next big thing in ANet’s corrupted history: Insider Trading.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with insider trading, please google it.

How did Anet perform the illegal action of insider trading? Let me draw your attention to this very post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/ghastly-grinning-shield-skin/first#post6071210

Now, i would like to draw your attention to this post, where an ANet developer released a comment on the GW2 sub-Reddit, but ANET_AndrewM:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4g3t53/so_i_found_this/d2grweu

“This is part of some updates that I’ve been working on with the mystic forge, though we had not intended it to go out with last weeks build, as some parts of the change still need some work.

I didn’t put this in the update notes since it wasn’t meant to go live yet, but since it apparently went through, we added the Bloodbound weapons, Shadow of the Mad King weapons, and some weapons with no way to get them anymore like Scarlet’s Kiss to the mystic forge as possible rewards for combining rare weapons."

Is this just “merely coincidence”? Could it be “merely coincidence” that a small group of players just all of sudden, decided to start lowering the prices on their backstocks of Halloween 2013 weapon skins? Could it just be “merely coincidence” that the market on such items was at an all time low, in terms of demand, that affected the price?

I’ll let you answer that, but for me, the two posts are liking writing on the wall.

Since we’ve easily allowed gambling, and salami slicing to occur without much resistance from the community, i believe this too shall pass, as no one will really care, and proceed to be happy about their new Halloween 2013 skin, much like i am with my new greatsaw. However, i wonder ‘how far’ is ‘too far’?

7/26/2016 – Update: It has happened again. This time with Stabilizing Matrix. Someone over on the subreddit found it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ur0o1/stabilizing_matrices_and_insider_trading/

So if these posts elude to changes that affect mass sell out or cornering and inflation and deflation of a specific market item AND they are being released to reddit prior to this “change” being made then how it is “insider trading”? By your wording here wouldn’t anyone that can start the internet and go to reddit read the very same post; And if that is so can they not also partake in said “insider trading” along with all the “intended” recipients of this knowledge?

edit:

next time I will check the original posting date and not waste my time… disregard.

Ahh well, insider Trading has been seen in GW1 as well. So it is not a problem of last 4 years it is a problem from more then 10 years. Their were ppl who stocked matiriels never used before and at the end they wre rich cause of Patches. And they just say it was luck.

Well it happens 1 Time 2 Times but not thatmany that u just ask urself how does he know what to stock.

I gave it up.

It was discussed in Gw1 on the Guru sides, but deaf ears on Anet.

Next point is that Anet is regularing the Market in the Name of stabilizing the Market.

Well they buy stocks they sell stocks. They raise droprate they drop droprate.

The n… tell u that it is rng. But u need just to change a few numbers to change the drop value.

And they can generate inifinite Gold and items.

Basicly u have just to accept their doings or leave this game.

Their is an rng in this game. But it is not that high compared to the doings of Anet manually.

Ensign.2189:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Supposing everyone here accept that it’s morally wrong, that it’s unfair.

I accept that it’s unfair but not that it’s morally wrong. I’m struggling to think what the case for it being amoral would look like.

Its fraud how is that not morally wrong?

morrolan.9608:

Its fraud how is that not morally wrong?

How is it fraud?

Ensign.2189:

morrolan.9608:

Its fraud how is that not morally wrong?

How is it fraud?

Its a criminal conviction if done using actual company shares and is classed as securities fraud. The fact that its done in a game is in principle no different. And that line is somewhat blurred given the ability to use cash to buy in game currency.

No because there is no way to convert gold into cash. Gold can be used in lieu of cash to purchase items in the gem shop but that only hurts ANet.

But in the end they can’t really sanction anyone without a smoking gun, like a partner or employee using their account to profit on the TP.

how can you not understand that Anet stand to profit hugely from this. it has direct link to our wallets. item A gets leaked for patch… player stocks A while majority is unaware. Patch day hits, item A raises in price 1000×. people flock to gemstore CC in hand and donate money to convert gems to gold, to give to Anet(not only in gem purchase, but tax on sales in BLTC) to afford new price of item A.

Christs sake, its like someone in FEMA buying out a local grocery store cuz he knows a mass epidemic is commin and then raises prices when it hits. then the masses going to FEMA to buy food rations to spend at said grocery store… FEMA makes bank, so does informant, and the rests wallets are a little/lot lighter now uneccessarily.

JaddynnStarr.5201:

how can you not understand that Anet stand to profit hugely from this. it has direct link to our wallets. item A gets leaked for patch… player stocks A while majority is unaware. Patch day hits, item A raises in price 1000×. people flock to gemstore CC in hand and donate money to convert gems to gold, to give to Anet(not only in gem purchase, but tax on sales in BLTC) to afford new price of item A.

Christs sake, its like someone in FEMA buying out a local grocery store cuz he knows a mass epidemic is commin and then raises prices when it hits. then the masses going to FEMA to buy food rations to spend at said grocery store… FEMA makes bank, so does informant, and the rests wallets are a little/lot lighter now uneccessarily.

Grats.

morrolan.9608:

Its a criminal conviction if done using actual company shares and is classed as securities fraud. The fact that its done in a game is in principle no different.

Let’s break it down a little bit. We have laws against insider trading in this country (and in every securities market I am aware of) to punish opportunism arising from moral hazard. Executives at a publicly traded company are, by law, agents of the shareholders and charged with acting in their interests. Buying and selling shares based on private information is, implicitly, buying and selling shares to shareholders – and in acting on that inside information, the inside executive is effectively stealing from shareholders, the people they have a fiduciary duty to serve.

That’s why it’s a crime.

In the United States, and a lot of other countries, securities regulators go after people trading on ‘leaks’ as well. The driver there is such leaks are indirectly stealing from investors, and regulators do not want insiders to be trading secrets for personal gain – it’s not too dissimilar to receiving stolen property. Basically, people are clever and will find ways to profit indirectly from shirking their fiduciary duty, so you have to go after anyone who would profit from it to shut it down.

Trading on private information, in and of itself, is perfectly fine. It is, in fact, the basis for securities markets in the first place – prices ultimately are crowdsourced from a bevy of traders, each with their own private information, that is amalgamated in the market through the price mechanism. Arguing that people shouldn’t trade on private information is more or less an argument against financial markets at their core.

The problem, at its core, is the moral hazard, and agents shirking their duty to defraud their principals.

In the case of the GW2 trading post and insider trading, I basically have two questions:

- What is the (implicit) contract between A.Net and the players with regards to the trading post?

- Where is the moral hazard?

I don’t think it’s impossible to form an argument for harm from insider trading in the GW2 market – but I don’t think it’s easy, either, because the relationships are different and the moral hazard isn’t obvious. I’d like to see a better case than superficial similarities for it being a real problem.

The biggest harm I can spot is essentially a NDA breach by trading on that private information – buying and selling based on privileged information is essentially making that information public, and I’m sure there is a contract around that signed by everyone involved.

I think the insider trading is reprehensible, but the alternative is little better. Even if everyone finds out at the same time, it won’t take long before someone (or several someones) with a lot of gold steps in and depletes supply. Then the situation ends up the same, except a different subset of people have a chance to benefit from it and the 1% has less time to exploit it.

There is no rule that people have to play nice. There is no guarantee for fairness. Even if you prevent the cheating, you can’t stop players being complete greedy kittens.

Update: There has been another Reddit posting on the issue, requesting an update from Arena Net: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4yilpb/stabilizing_matrices_and_insider_trading/

Nothing is going to happen. ANet isn’t going to spend the manpower on a witch hunt.

Behellagh.1468:

Nothing is going to happen. ANet isn’t going to spend the manpower on a witch hunt.

If you actually read that post evidence has been provided.