Guild Wars 2

I don’t believe that the OP is being entirely honest here.

DarcShriek.5829:

I don’t believe that the OP is being entirely honest here.

How so?

DarcShriek.5829:

I don’t believe that the OP is being entirely honest here.

ANet essentially confirmed the OP’s story. Why don’t you believe either ANet or the OP?

FlashAhAhh.4307:

RoseofGilead.8907:

FlashAhAhh.4307:

It happened ONCE that we know of and after support looked into it the items were given back (and the player is now up 166 gold).

Not sure what all the fuss is about??

The player didn’t get the items back. And yeah, they let him keep 166g out of the 400ish gold he had from his items selling. So, he’s out the 300g they took away, plus the listing fee he paid when he listed the items some months back. That’s kind of a crappy deal.

Yes he did get the items back. It says so on the reddit thread. There is no problem here.

Good that Reddit is such a terrible format that i don’t even understand what posts
are newer or older and how to find out if there are any new answers buried somewhere
in a thread.

That format was okay 20 years ago when you had maybe 5-6 answers in a thread
but not when there are hundreds of posts.

When I first posted in this thread, I thought the OP was a special case & the situation wasn’t likely to apply to others. Based on the dev posts on reddit, it appears that ANet’s changed the policy in a way that seems unfair to me. I don’t think ANet has a burden of proof equal to that of a courtroom, to demonstrate that people are trading illicit gold.

However, neither should they be just removing stuff from people who — through no fault of their own — had nothing to do with RMT (or its many facets, such as wealth laundering).

The principles should be clear and clean, to ANet staff, if not to their customers:

• People who routinely sell or bot get treated more harshly than one-offs.
• People shouldn’t keep gold or items that they bought from RMTs.
• It’s fair to remove the illicit wealth from the game, by whatever means are available.
• It’s not fair that any “innocent” victims be punished in any way, shape, or form:
  • If RMT (or gold buyers) bought their items, return those items to victim, along with the listing fee.
  • If RMT (or gold buyer) sold them items, return the gold to them.

tl;dr No one should have to worry about using the TP or become a detective to determine if the person with whom they are trading is engaged in RMT (buying or selling)

Keep in mind I’m not the person on reddit. Whilst the person on reddit finally did get their items returned (only because of after causing a fuss on reddit). It is still concerning for myself and others on Arena Net’s stance when using their trading post.

People should really stop with the hyperbole arguments. . The chances of this ever happening to legit sellers are slim. Unless they go out of their way and try to bid on stuff they know RTM use for trading.

The items would never had sold(not at this time if the RMT didn’t buy them) so the gold wasn’t lost. Luckily the OP on reddit got it sorted and gaid some extra. Foolishly he put up a bid again on the same items. Goodbye account if a RTM buys that again from the same person.

If it ever happens again to someone then anet needs to return the items and refund the listing cost.

mauried.5608:

A question that never gets asked, and its relevant to all games that have gold sellers and some form of trading system is where do Gold Sellers get the gold they sell from?
And the answer of course is that they get it from all the other players in the game who buy goods from the TP.
So , all the games players are bankrolling the gold sellers, albeit unintentionally.

They get it via two main ways:

1. Through botting. All those bots running the Wintersday JP, for example? It’s safe to say a fair number of them were probably farming the gifts to sell for gold. The same goes for all those underground harvesting bots you see from time to time in the open world.

2. The far more insidious way is that they outright steal the gold from hacked accounts. Every player who has their account hacked instantly has everything of value on it stripped and sold, with the gold then immediately passed on to a buyer or funneled to a secondary account before ANet discovers the breach and locks down the account.

That’s why my earlier post was wondering if gold sellers have been using proxy items on the TP to pass their ill-gotten gains to other accounts or buyers. I always thought it was a bit risky, due to stuff like the OP’s story happening (obviously the gold seller made a mistake and bought the wrong item), but perhaps it’s not quite as risky as we might think, and we need to keep an eye on very niche items with unusually high prices.

The Arcane Sliver seller got a great deal. Look at the price history on the GW2TP page the OP linked. They essentially sold an item that was selling for 9 gold and ended up making a 166 gold profit instead. There’s nothing to complain about. If a RMT hadn’t bought the player’s over-listed item, no one would have and their listing fee would be a total loss.

Regarding RMTs on the TP:
When free accounts first came out, buying uncirculated items on TP was the only thing I could think of that might have the ability to transfer gold from free botting accounts into the open market. There are all sorts of items that don’t have circulation on TP. You can see many random items of varying usefulness when you check to see unavailable items.

It’s interesting to see RMTs are even willing to try and buy out items that have ridiculous listings like the Arcane Sliver. Seems like kind of a desperate move so I’m guessing ANet has been running good interference on the other uncirculating items that are out there. Cool!

What puzzles me is this.

1. The seller even gets the idea of putting up useless items for 34G on TP.
2. Buyer (RMT) buys 4 useless items from seller whom sold it 8 months ago for no reason at all it seems.
3. Seller gains 5ooG on something the seller would normaly never gain as the item is useless.
4. Dev bans RMT player and seller looses 300G of the earnings becouse the Gold used to buy them was cat-gold and then people react badly to that Anet is actually kind enough to give the seller 166G instead of about 34G and the useless items back? I mean c’mon this is a better deal for the seller becouse he would have never gained the gold from a “normal” player becouse this item is useless.

OP wonders if sellers should beware (as he/she does have a ? on the title) and my answer will be that I am sure that sellers should not have to worry becouse we usually don’t sell worthless items for 500G each and should we actually do that and someone buys it be happy and if it is an RMT buyer well you can atleast know you will make a profit no matter what.

This story is realy wierd I would say.

Azure Prower.8701:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4149jf/til_using_the_trading_post_is_buying_gold_rmt/

TL;DR: Person sells expensive item on TP, gold seller buys said item. Anet takes away the gold from the person who sold the item and doesn’t refund the item.

Arena Net’s response on said reddit thread:

We monitor all incoming and outgoing sources of wealth. The gold that was used to purchase your arcane slivers (4 of them) for a total of 499.99 Gold originated from a RMT source and while your item listings may have been setup 8 months ago, that doesn’t change where the wealth originated (which was banned).

While the transactions completed, and do not appear to be any fault of yours, we still needed to reclaim the gains from it to remove the wealth from the economy that you should not have gained in the first place. Since we only removed 300g, it looks like you are netting about a positive 166 gold from this. We’ll let you keep that, and I’ll take the strike off your account for buying gold.

Should we avoid using the trading post with expensive items, just in case some one who violates TOS may end up buying it?

Totally agree, Clairy’s response is frightening it its implications .. and appalling as a policy statement.

Well I guess the best way to avoid this is to engage in your own money laundering techniques.

Immediately turn all gold profits into different items of varied worth. Sell those items quickly to regain the gold, reinvest this second hand money into different items and store those items in multiple places. Keep 90% of your gold locked up in items and only sell them when you need to make a large purchase. Make the purchase quickly and make sure it is for something like an account unlock, or skin.

This should help prevent Anet from stealing your gold as it will be much harder to track/remove.

Seems ANet (in the guise of the BLTC) are ducking responsibility on this one.

The integrity of BLTP transactions is completely Anet/BLTC’s job – they’ve set it up that way:
- ANet/BLTC have 100% control of selecting the purchaser and administering the BLTP transaction. The seller, on the other hand, has exactly 0% control of who purchases goods they post on the BLTP (all they get is an after-the-fact indication of the rate and approximate time of the transaction).

To suggest the seller is in some way at fault here is ludicrous.
To act that way is reprehensible.

The real problem here is simply one of timing: had Anet realized that particular pile of gold involved was from an illegal source a little earlier, the transaction would never have gone ahead.

Why Anet didn’t simply reverse the transaction, refunding the sale goods directly back to the seller, we’ll never know.

Instead of punishing the seller, the BLTC should simply put some of that 15% commission they take aside and use the resutlign fund to indemnify legitiate sellers against illegal transactions on the TP.

For those who took the time to read the topic, the OP stated that Anet did indeed give him his stuff back, and he relisted them,

Ok I Did It.2854:

For those who took the time to read the topic, the OP stated that Anet did indeed give him his stuff back, and he relisted them,

After a big fuss on reddit and after Support management got involved. Good for him. Not so good for anyone else who doesn’t get the same amount of visibility.

The people ranting over this crack me up! It’s NOTHING! And the odds of it happening are truly staggering!

Yes, If an RMT accidentally buys some almost worthless items for a HUGE amount more than they are worth you may have some trouble with support because it looks suspicious.

And YES! If someone loses a venomous pet snake in your yard at the same time you are looking for your kids favorite toy snake that they lost which just happens to be the same size and colour, you may end up in some trouble there as well!

But honestly, I don’t think either situation is really worth worrying about!

So in answer to the questions asked by the OP;

Seller beware? Nope.

Avoid the TP? Nope.

I can’t help but think that we have not got the whole story here.

Beldin.5498:

FlashAhAhh.4307:

RoseofGilead.8907:

FlashAhAhh.4307:

It happened ONCE that we know of and after support looked into it the items were given back (and the player is now up 166 gold).

Not sure what all the fuss is about??

The player didn’t get the items back. And yeah, they let him keep 166g out of the 400ish gold he had from his items selling. So, he’s out the 300g they took away, plus the listing fee he paid when he listed the items some months back. That’s kind of a crappy deal.

Yes he did get the items back. It says so on the reddit thread. There is no problem here.

Good that Reddit is such a terrible format that i don’t even understand what posts
are newer or older and how to find out if there are any new answers buried somewhere
in a thread.

That format was okay 20 years ago when you had maybe 5-6 answers in a thread
but not when there are hundreds of posts.

Reddit is annoying but on to more important matters: Your name is FANTASTIC!

You are one of the few people who would know why Cobalt is the only sword skin I use.

DoctorDing.5890:

I can’t help but think that we have not got the whole story here.

The entire story is on the reddit, OP made the slivers months ago, put them on TP and forgot about it, some random person bought like 300G from RMT, bought all of them from TP, then Anet contacted OP that 300G worth of that sell was from RMT and they removed it,

It was confirmed by a dev on that topic that the OP was not at fault in any way,

The problem arose when you have 2 or 3 different devs working on something, support remove the gold, another dev monitors market trades, another fixes the problem, this is just a great example of communication break down.

The only sad part it which has been mentioned is that, if it had not went to Reddit ( which is the new GW2 PR zone ) the OP probably would not have gotten there stuff back, and it would have been swept under the carpet and forgotten about.

Support are normally very good, but like I said it looks like a massive break down in communication between teams on that case.

Ok I Did It.2854:

DoctorDing.5890:

I can’t help but think that we have not got the whole story here.

The entire story is on the reddit, OP made the slivers months ago, put them on TP and forgot about it, some random person bought like 300G from RMT, bought all of them from TP, then Anet contacted OP that 300G worth of that sell was from RMT and they removed it,

It was confirmed by a dev on that topic that the OP was not at fault in any way,

The problem arose when you have 2 or 3 different devs working on something, support remove the gold, another dev monitors market trades, another fixes the problem, this is just a great example of communication break down.

The only sad part it which has been mentioned is that, if it had not went to Reddit ( which is the new GW2 PR zone ) the OP probably would not have gotten there stuff back, and it would have been swept under the carpet and forgotten about.

Support are normally very good, but like I said it looks like a massive break down in communication between teams on that case.

op does not have to say whether or not he looked for a gold buying site 8 months after listing these items and conveniently made a trade and just didnt tell us. and then if thats the case, perhaps anet chose to make it look not so bad when it looks terrible.

perhaps he is innocent and anet made a huge mistake, its not like they havent done that before. but i dont trust random people on the internet, personally.

insanemaniac.2456:

Ok I Did It.2854:

DoctorDing.5890:

I can’t help but think that we have not got the whole story here.

The entire story is on the reddit, OP made the slivers months ago, put them on TP and forgot about it, some random person bought like 300G from RMT, bought all of them from TP, then Anet contacted OP that 300G worth of that sell was from RMT and they removed it,

It was confirmed by a dev on that topic that the OP was not at fault in any way,

The problem arose when you have 2 or 3 different devs working on something, support remove the gold, another dev monitors market trades, another fixes the problem, this is just a great example of communication break down.

The only sad part it which has been mentioned is that, if it had not went to Reddit ( which is the new GW2 PR zone ) the OP probably would not have gotten there stuff back, and it would have been swept under the carpet and forgotten about.

Support are normally very good, but like I said it looks like a massive break down in communication between teams on that case.

op does not have to say whether or not he looked for a gold buying site 8 months after listing these items and conveniently made a trade and just didnt tell us. and then if thats the case, perhaps anet chose to make it look not so bad when it looks terrible.

perhaps he is innocent and anet made a huge mistake, its not like they havent done that before. but i dont trust random people on the internet, personally.

Well if you don’t trust the OP, and 3 different Anet devs then I don’t know what to tell you.

The problem of course is that 99.9% of dev communication happens exclusively on reddit. If the OP didn’t make a huge stink about it on Anet’s PR golden child site then nothing would have ever been done.

But the facts don’t add up, regardless of what devs said on that thread.

Ask yourself why someone would pay a very large listing fee to list “useless” items on the TP at a price way above the street price. Might be an error. Might be optimism. Might be something else.

Then ask yourself why an evil gold seller would turn up and pay such a huge price above market rates for “useless” items. I can only think of one reason but there may be others.

I just don’t think it is as clear cut as it first seemed.

One thing I do agree with, however, is that devs should not be discussing this stuff on public forums.

DoctorDing.5890:

But the facts don’t add up, regardless of what devs said on that thread.

Ask yourself why someone would pay a very large listing fee to list “useless” items on the TP at a price way above the street price. Might be an error. Might be optimism. Might be something else.

Then ask yourself why an evil gold seller would turn up and pay such a huge price above market rates for “useless” items. I can only think of one reason but there may be others.

I just don’t think it is as clear cut as it first seemed.

One thing I do agree with, however, is that devs should not be discussing this stuff on public forums.

Posts like this skirt the central issue.

In the post they said the gold was from an RMT source. This does not mean gold seller. It means gold buyers and gold sellers. We can’t tell which it was in this case and ANet said the guy was innocent, so I’m going with ANet’s assessment of guilt. The central point is that with this new policy, a gold buyer can buy any item from the trading post and then the gold is taken from the person who innocently sold the item. And that’s what is concerning. Not possible gold sellers buying items that no longer have a use in the game.

My biggest question about this, why did Anet hand out any Gold for this transaction at all?

Why not just ban the buyer, and then roll the seller’s account back (I Assume TP listings are part of the account rollback feature?) and then thats that.

The fact that anet posted this on Reddit is troublesome enough as they should really not have openly posted about this at all. But rather kept between the account holder and support.

But what happens when a player lists an item for 3k-4k and a RMT account holder buys said item and gets banned when the Gold is traced back to accounts that are flagged? The Item in question is lost (lets say its a legendary that someone put a lot of time on here) and all that gold is just up in the air.

There NEEDS to be a policy in place about this kinda stuff from happening, and it needs to be a policy that the accounts that are not found at fault get rolled back OR the item gets reimbursed. Let the Gold hit the Void, so as long as the seller can get their item back who cares.

The following would be really really nice to know:

1)How many times during those 8 months did the person use the auction house to check the price on those items that he claims to have totally forgotten about?
2)What exactly was his original intention when putting them there, losing a considerable amount of listing fee in the process.

I believe ArenaNet when they say that they removed the “strike” on his account for buying gold. But I bet there is a huge red “watch this guy” lable on his account now.
Also please note that Chris Cleary never said that this person was innocent. His exact wording was “it appears” that the transaction is not this person’s fault. Which can very well mean that they are pretty sure that all this was set up, but give him the benefit of a “sliver” of a doubt.

The (reddit) OP did nothing wrong — ANet has confirmed it and their story is consistent with common high-end investment practices. For the purposes of this thread, it’s also a moot point: it doesn’t matter what they did, it matters what ANet has said they are doing now, as part of their new policies.

ANet has specifically said that — in their effort to remove illicit gold from the economy — they will remove that gold, regardless of who has it at the time. I’m sure everyone is in favor of it being removed from RMT smurf accounts. I’m sure that most of us would want it removed from accounts that bought gold.

The issue is that, in the Reddit thread, ANet admitted that they removed the gold from an account without proving to their own satisfaction (never mind anyone else’s) that said account was a gold buyer or gold seller. The only thing they looked at was the source of the gold. That’s an issue to me, because (based on what we’ve learned to date), there’s no reason it won’t happen again. It’s more likely to happen with low-volume/high-value items (as in this case), but based on the statements by ANet staff, it apparently could happen with any high-value item that is bought by someone involved with trading illicit gold.

tl;dr

• It’s good for everyone if ‘bad’ gold gets removed from the game; it’s bad for everyone if we have to worry about who buys our stuff.
• If ANet wants to remove illicit gold after a non-RMT (buyer or seller) sells something on the TP, they should (a) return the item and (b) the listing fee.

No one should ever be indirectly punished for someone else’s actions.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The (reddit) OP did nothing wrong — ANet has confirmed it and their story is consistent with common high-end investment practices. For the purposes of this thread, it’s also a moot point: it doesn’t matter what they did, it matters what ANet has said they are doing now, as part of their new policies.

ANet has specifically said that — in their effort to remove illicit gold from the economy — they will remove that gold, regardless of who has it at the time. I’m sure everyone is in favor of it being removed from RMT smurf accounts. I’m sure that most of us would want it removed from accounts that bought gold.

The issue is that, in the Reddit thread, ANet admitted that they removed the gold from an account without proving to their own satisfaction (never mind anyone else’s) that said account was a gold buyer or gold seller. The only thing they looked at was the source of the gold. That’s an issue to me, because (based on what we’ve learned to date), there’s no reason it won’t happen again. It’s more likely to happen with low-volume/high-value items (as in this case), but based on the statements by ANet staff, it apparently could happen with any high-value item that is bought by someone involved with trading illicit gold.

tl;dr

• It’s good for everyone if ‘bad’ gold gets removed from the game; it’s bad for everyone if we have to worry about who buys our stuff.
• If ANet wants to remove illicit gold after a non-RMT (buyer or seller) sells something on the TP, they should (a) return the item and (b) the listing fee.

No one should ever be indirectly punished for someone else’s actions.

they shouldnt be considering anything but the source. there is no way for them to track gold buyers except by way of who the sellers are selling to. the transactions are carried out specifically to avoid the purview of anet.

refunding items is more than generous enough. screw the listing fee. if they dont take a hard line against this kind of bullkitten, people will just walk all over them, and rightfully so. zero tolerance is the way to go.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

It’s not just items that sell very rarely that’s impacted by this. What if an RMT buyer used RMT gold to buy a Legendary you were selling and you lost the gold from Support taking that gold from your account?

better yet: what if you sold a legendary, they paid with RMT gold, then you bought a different legendary with that gold, so you had none in your bank. does the person who sold you that legendary get screwed? what if they did the same thing, etc., and basically the whole lump sum was consumed in listing fees?

sirsquishy.8531:

My biggest question about this, why did Anet hand out any Gold for this transaction at all?

Why not just ban the buyer, and then roll the seller’s account back (I Assume TP listings are part of the account rollback feature?) and then thats that.

The fact that anet posted this on Reddit is troublesome enough as they should really not have openly posted about this at all. But rather kept between the account holder and support.

But what happens when a player lists an item for 3k-4k and a RMT account holder buys said item and gets banned when the Gold is traced back to accounts that are flagged? The Item in question is lost (lets say its a legendary that someone put a lot of time on here) and all that gold is just up in the air.

There NEEDS to be a policy in place about this kinda stuff from happening, and it needs to be a policy that the accounts that are not found at fault get rolled back OR the item gets reimbursed. Let the Gold hit the Void, so as long as the seller can get their item back who cares.

Then what happens if at time point a, you sell an item that is used by gold sellers either now or in the future. Then at time point b, you finally get the precursor drop from the mystic forge and it’s the one you want. Then time point c comes along and rolls your account back to point a, with point a being before point b.

So now innocent players are likely to lose any progress in the game if their irk is bought by a gold seller? In my opinion, that’s worse, because what if it had been eight months like what happened with the reddit poster? That is a lot of achievement points, gem purchases, skin unlocks, possibly even a few characters if I make alts.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Taxidriver.2043:

this is not a legendary weapon, no one is buying arcane silver and this guy decided to sell them at higher price all of the sudden and then all of them got bought out at the same time. He was buying gold and using arcane silver to transfer gold with the gold seller.

Did you miss the part where ANet said the guy who lost his gold was not at fault yet still removed 300 gold from his account?

ChrisCleary

We monitor all incoming and outgoing sources of wealth. The gold that was used to purchase your arcane slivers (4 of them) for a total of 499.99 Gold originated from a RMT source and while your item listings may have been setup 8 months ago, that doesn’t change where the wealth originated (which was banned).

While the transactions completed, and do not appear to be any fault of yours, we still needed to reclaim the gains from it to remove the wealth from the economy that you should not have gained in the first place. Since we only removed 300g, it looks like you are netting about a positive 166 gold from this. We’ll let you keep that, and I’ll take the strike off your account for buying gold.

Why would you list Slivers for over 100g a piece and leave them there when you can’t use them anymore? They said they’d been in there over 8 months. I’m not saying the person was at fault which is why he probably got to keep some of the gold, but it is still a strange situation and is unique and probably doesn’t happen often. And the reason why he was probably not given the items themselves back is because that are discontinued from the game. They no longer drop and are no longer usable. We’re not talking about regular crafting slivers from low level zones. These were pvp items from a long time ago when pvp crafting was a thing.

Paradox.1380:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Taxidriver.2043:

this is not a legendary weapon, no one is buying arcane silver and this guy decided to sell them at higher price all of the sudden and then all of them got bought out at the same time. He was buying gold and using arcane silver to transfer gold with the gold seller.

Did you miss the part where ANet said the guy who lost his gold was not at fault yet still removed 300 gold from his account?

ChrisCleary

We monitor all incoming and outgoing sources of wealth. The gold that was used to purchase your arcane slivers (4 of them) for a total of 499.99 Gold originated from a RMT source and while your item listings may have been setup 8 months ago, that doesn’t change where the wealth originated (which was banned).

While the transactions completed, and do not appear to be any fault of yours, we still needed to reclaim the gains from it to remove the wealth from the economy that you should not have gained in the first place. Since we only removed 300g, it looks like you are netting about a positive 166 gold from this. We’ll let you keep that, and I’ll take the strike off your account for buying gold.

Why would you list Slivers for over 100g a piece and leave them there when you can’t use them anymore? They said they’d been in there over 8 months. I’m not saying the person was at fault which is why he probably got to keep some of the gold, but it is still a strange situation and is unique and probably doesn’t happen often. And the reason why he was probably not given the items themselves back is because that are discontinued from the game. They no longer drop and are no longer usable. We’re not talking about regular crafting slivers from low level zones. These were pvp items from a long time ago when pvp crafting was a thing.

Again, this sort of post completely misses the point and main concern of this thread.

It’s not important what he was selling or for how much. It’s not important the price he listed it for or when he listed it. It’s not important that the item no longer has a use. What is important is their new policy is that a gold buyer can buy items from you on the trading post and the gold you get from it will be taken by ANet. Let’s say you do crafting to sell for profit. If someone buys gold then uses that gold to buy your crafted items, too bad for you. Maybe you’ll get the items back, or not. Depending on if you make a thread on reddit maybe.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Paradox.1380:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Taxidriver.2043:

this is not a legendary weapon, no one is buying arcane silver and this guy decided to sell them at higher price all of the sudden and then all of them got bought out at the same time. He was buying gold and using arcane silver to transfer gold with the gold seller.

Did you miss the part where ANet said the guy who lost his gold was not at fault yet still removed 300 gold from his account?

ChrisCleary

We monitor all incoming and outgoing sources of wealth. The gold that was used to purchase your arcane slivers (4 of them) for a total of 499.99 Gold originated from a RMT source and while your item listings may have been setup 8 months ago, that doesn’t change where the wealth originated (which was banned).

While the transactions completed, and do not appear to be any fault of yours, we still needed to reclaim the gains from it to remove the wealth from the economy that you should not have gained in the first place. Since we only removed 300g, it looks like you are netting about a positive 166 gold from this. We’ll let you keep that, and I’ll take the strike off your account for buying gold.

Why would you list Slivers for over 100g a piece and leave them there when you can’t use them anymore? They said they’d been in there over 8 months. I’m not saying the person was at fault which is why he probably got to keep some of the gold, but it is still a strange situation and is unique and probably doesn’t happen often. And the reason why he was probably not given the items themselves back is because that are discontinued from the game. They no longer drop and are no longer usable. We’re not talking about regular crafting slivers from low level zones. These were pvp items from a long time ago when pvp crafting was a thing.

Again, this sort of post completely misses the point and main concern of this thread.

It’s not important what he was selling or for how much. It’s not important the price he listed it for or when he listed it. It’s not important that the item no longer has a use. What is important is their new policy is that a gold buyer can buy items from you on the trading post and the gold you get from it will be taken by ANet. Let’s say you do crafting to sell for profit. If someone buys gold then uses that gold to buy your crafted items, too bad for you. Maybe you’ll get the items back, or not. Depending on if you make a thread on reddit maybe.

As I stated earlier in this thread, your best option is to launder the money through 3-4 different items before storing it in a non-liquid form in your guild bank. It is unlikely Anet will have the means to track that or take your items as easily.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Paradox.1380:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Taxidriver.2043:

this is not a legendary weapon, no one is buying arcane silver and this guy decided to sell them at higher price all of the sudden and then all of them got bought out at the same time. He was buying gold and using arcane silver to transfer gold with the gold seller.

Did you miss the part where ANet said the guy who lost his gold was not at fault yet still removed 300 gold from his account?

ChrisCleary

We monitor all incoming and outgoing sources of wealth. The gold that was used to purchase your arcane slivers (4 of them) for a total of 499.99 Gold originated from a RMT source and while your item listings may have been setup 8 months ago, that doesn’t change where the wealth originated (which was banned).

While the transactions completed, and do not appear to be any fault of yours, we still needed to reclaim the gains from it to remove the wealth from the economy that you should not have gained in the first place. Since we only removed 300g, it looks like you are netting about a positive 166 gold from this. We’ll let you keep that, and I’ll take the strike off your account for buying gold.

Why would you list Slivers for over 100g a piece and leave them there when you can’t use them anymore? They said they’d been in there over 8 months. I’m not saying the person was at fault which is why he probably got to keep some of the gold, but it is still a strange situation and is unique and probably doesn’t happen often. And the reason why he was probably not given the items themselves back is because that are discontinued from the game. They no longer drop and are no longer usable. We’re not talking about regular crafting slivers from low level zones. These were pvp items from a long time ago when pvp crafting was a thing.

Again, this sort of post completely misses the point and main concern of this thread.

It’s not important what he was selling or for how much. It’s not important the price he listed it for or when he listed it. It’s not important that the item no longer has a use. What is important is their new policy is that a gold buyer can buy items from you on the trading post and the gold you get from it will be taken by ANet. Let’s say you do crafting to sell for profit. If someone buys gold then uses that gold to buy your crafted items, too bad for you. Maybe you’ll get the items back, or not. Depending on if you make a thread on reddit maybe.

As I stated earlier in this thread, your best option is to launder the money through 3-4 different items before storing it in a non-liquid form in your guild bank. It is unlikely Anet will have the means to track that or take your items as easily.

Maybe, maybe not.

ChrisCleary
We monitor all incoming and outgoing sources of wealth.

I suspect ANet can “follow the money” since they have the ability to see everything an account does. A gold seller or buyer who tries to launder money to hide it might mean more work, but they leave a data trail for ANet to follow.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Paradox.1380:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Taxidriver.2043:

this is not a legendary weapon, no one is buying arcane silver and this guy decided to sell them at higher price all of the sudden and then all of them got bought out at the same time. He was buying gold and using arcane silver to transfer gold with the gold seller.

Did you miss the part where ANet said the guy who lost his gold was not at fault yet still removed 300 gold from his account?

ChrisCleary

We monitor all incoming and outgoing sources of wealth. The gold that was used to purchase your arcane slivers (4 of them) for a total of 499.99 Gold originated from a RMT source and while your item listings may have been setup 8 months ago, that doesn’t change where the wealth originated (which was banned).

While the transactions completed, and do not appear to be any fault of yours, we still needed to reclaim the gains from it to remove the wealth from the economy that you should not have gained in the first place. Since we only removed 300g, it looks like you are netting about a positive 166 gold from this. We’ll let you keep that, and I’ll take the strike off your account for buying gold.

Why would you list Slivers for over 100g a piece and leave them there when you can’t use them anymore? They said they’d been in there over 8 months. I’m not saying the person was at fault which is why he probably got to keep some of the gold, but it is still a strange situation and is unique and probably doesn’t happen often. And the reason why he was probably not given the items themselves back is because that are discontinued from the game. They no longer drop and are no longer usable. We’re not talking about regular crafting slivers from low level zones. These were pvp items from a long time ago when pvp crafting was a thing.

Again, this sort of post completely misses the point and main concern of this thread.

It’s not important what he was selling or for how much. It’s not important the price he listed it for or when he listed it. It’s not important that the item no longer has a use. What is important is their new policy is that a gold buyer can buy items from you on the trading post and the gold you get from it will be taken by ANet. Let’s say you do crafting to sell for profit. If someone buys gold then uses that gold to buy your crafted items, too bad for you. Maybe you’ll get the items back, or not. Depending on if you make a thread on reddit maybe.

The point I was making is that normally they take the gold and give you the items back. This is not a new policy at all. It has happened more than once. My point was to specifically state that the reason he didn’t get the items back (and was probably allowed to keep some of the gold) was because those items are no longer available in game and do nothing so they probably couldn’t refund the items.

Paradox.1380:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Paradox.1380:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Taxidriver.2043:

this is not a legendary weapon, no one is buying arcane silver and this guy decided to sell them at higher price all of the sudden and then all of them got bought out at the same time. He was buying gold and using arcane silver to transfer gold with the gold seller.

Did you miss the part where ANet said the guy who lost his gold was not at fault yet still removed 300 gold from his account?

ChrisCleary

We monitor all incoming and outgoing sources of wealth. The gold that was used to purchase your arcane slivers (4 of them) for a total of 499.99 Gold originated from a RMT source and while your item listings may have been setup 8 months ago, that doesn’t change where the wealth originated (which was banned).

While the transactions completed, and do not appear to be any fault of yours, we still needed to reclaim the gains from it to remove the wealth from the economy that you should not have gained in the first place. Since we only removed 300g, it looks like you are netting about a positive 166 gold from this. We’ll let you keep that, and I’ll take the strike off your account for buying gold.

Why would you list Slivers for over 100g a piece and leave them there when you can’t use them anymore? They said they’d been in there over 8 months. I’m not saying the person was at fault which is why he probably got to keep some of the gold, but it is still a strange situation and is unique and probably doesn’t happen often. And the reason why he was probably not given the items themselves back is because that are discontinued from the game. They no longer drop and are no longer usable. We’re not talking about regular crafting slivers from low level zones. These were pvp items from a long time ago when pvp crafting was a thing.

Again, this sort of post completely misses the point and main concern of this thread.

It’s not important what he was selling or for how much. It’s not important the price he listed it for or when he listed it. It’s not important that the item no longer has a use. What is important is their new policy is that a gold buyer can buy items from you on the trading post and the gold you get from it will be taken by ANet. Let’s say you do crafting to sell for profit. If someone buys gold then uses that gold to buy your crafted items, too bad for you. Maybe you’ll get the items back, or not. Depending on if you make a thread on reddit maybe.

The point I was making is that normally they take the gold and give you the items back. This is not a new policy at all. It has happened more than once. My point was to specifically state that the reason he didn’t get the items back (and was probably allowed to keep some of the gold) was because those items are no longer available in game and do nothing so they probably couldn’t refund the items.

But they did give the items back, after a thread was made about it and management got involved. If it’s not in the game’s best interest to give discontinued items back, then they shouldn’t have done so (especially since he immediately relisted them). If it’s that important for the game to remove the item, then maybe they should remove them from the buyers inventory each time they’re sold, for consistencies sake. It doesn’t make sense to let the other people keep dc’d items they buy, but not return dc’d items to the OP. Or they should cancel all sell orders of dc’d items and confiscate them. Not allow some to be sold, and not return others on the grounds that someone else bought gold. At best, its sloppy policy.

And source where they normally take the gold and give items back? Because this thread is the first I’ve heard of this policy where they remove Trading Post gold from innocent accounts

Seera.5916:

sirsquishy.8531:

My biggest question about this, why did Anet hand out any Gold for this transaction at all?

Why not just ban the buyer, and then roll the seller’s account back (I Assume TP listings are part of the account rollback feature?) and then thats that.

The fact that anet posted this on Reddit is troublesome enough as they should really not have openly posted about this at all. But rather kept between the account holder and support.

But what happens when a player lists an item for 3k-4k and a RMT account holder buys said item and gets banned when the Gold is traced back to accounts that are flagged? The Item in question is lost (lets say its a legendary that someone put a lot of time on here) and all that gold is just up in the air.

There NEEDS to be a policy in place about this kinda stuff from happening, and it needs to be a policy that the accounts that are not found at fault get rolled back OR the item gets reimbursed. Let the Gold hit the Void, so as long as the seller can get their item back who cares.

Then what happens if at time point a, you sell an item that is used by gold sellers either now or in the future. Then at time point b, you finally get the precursor drop from the mystic forge and it’s the one you want. Then time point c comes along and rolls your account back to point a, with point a being before point b.

So now innocent players are likely to lose any progress in the game if their irk is bought by a gold seller? In my opinion, that’s worse, because what if it had been eight months like what happened with the reddit poster? That is a lot of achievement points, gem purchases, skin unlocks, possibly even a few characters if I make alts.

You do know that your entire account doesnt need rolled back, they can just rollback what was affected. Thats the beauty of database systems.

I suppose what is so gripping about this incident isn’t that it might happen to us one day, but that when it did happen the response was so backwards an nonsensical.

#1: Apparently, RMT is illegitimate funds that harm the game by existing. Now, unless I miss my guess, there’s only one source for gold to come from for RWTers to use: a sweatshop, where a bunch of people will grind the game for a awhile, pool their resources, and then sell it to players on the cheap. The thing is, this isn’t much different from a single player grinding their way to this much gold. I’m not a fan of RWTing, but I fail to see how the mere existence of the money is somehow wrong, and that anything bought with this money has to be terminated.

#2: The fact that the guy received a strike against his account for something that was completely out of his control. The only clue that he did nothing wrong was that the bought item was from 8 months ago. If he decided to sell the slivers a week ago, the strike might never have been removed. Anet would’ve remained convinced that the player was using some convoluted gold laundering scheme by… selling items the way you’re supposed to sell them.

#3: The fact that initially, the guy had the gold removed and wasn’t refunded the items. It’s an extended case of how schools will suspend students for getting punched: It doesn’t make a lick of sense, puts the power to cause harm into the hands of someone that the seller literally has no control over

#4: The fact that this had to be brought to attention publicly before something was done about it. Granted, the fact that this issue has been resolved helps things out, but this shouldn’t have made it to step 4 before something was done. Someone other than the customer should’ve looked at the whole thing and thought “Oh wow this doesn’t make sens” and done something about it.

This is a public case. What I’m concerned about is how often this kind of non-thought discipline happens that doesn’t get reported. How many players out there received strikes because someone decided to punch them?

I personally find it interesting that there has been no official comment on a thread on their official forum about their policy of confiscating Trading Post gold from accounts that haven’t engaged in gold buying. Not even to point out mistakes in understanding or to clarify exactly what the policy is.

Too much to ask for I guess.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I suppose what is so gripping about this incident isn’t that it might happen to us one day, but that when it did happen the response was so backwards an nonsensical.

#1: Apparently, RMT is illegitimate funds that harm the game by existing. Now, unless I miss my guess, there’s only one source for gold to come from for RWTers to use: a sweatshop, where a bunch of people will grind the game for a awhile, pool their resources, and then sell it to players on the cheap. The thing is, this isn’t much different from a single player grinding their way to this much gold. I’m not a fan of RWTing, but I fail to see how the mere existence of the money is somehow wrong, and that anything bought with this money has to be terminated.

#2: The fact that the guy received a strike against his account for something that was completely out of his control. The only clue that he did nothing wrong was that the bought item was from 8 months ago. If he decided to sell the slivers a week ago, the strike might never have been removed. Anet would’ve remained convinced that the player was using some convoluted gold laundering scheme by… selling items the way you’re supposed to sell them.

#3: The fact that initially, the guy had the gold removed and wasn’t refunded the items. It’s an extended case of how schools will suspend students for getting punched: It doesn’t make a lick of sense, puts the power to cause harm into the hands of someone that the seller literally has no control over

#4: The fact that this had to be brought to attention publicly before something was done about it. Granted, the fact that this issue has been resolved helps things out, but this shouldn’t have made it to step 4 before something was done. Someone other than the customer should’ve looked at the whole thing and thought “Oh wow this doesn’t make sens” and done something about it.

This is a public case. What I’m concerned about is how often this kind of non-thought discipline happens that doesn’t get reported. How many players out there received strikes because someone decided to punch them?

#1. If they don’t remove the gold that gold sellers sell, it duplicates the gold received from accounts that were recovered and had a rollback on. You can imagine how this over along period of time would be bad for the economy.

#2. This was probably more due to an honest mistake than malicious intent. Items that aren’t usable anymore but are sellable on the TP make wonderful ways to bypass the mail restrictions on gold. This is what the situation with slivers is and the poster on reddit got caught in the net and when ANet realized it, they removed the strike. But since it was likely a gold seller who bought the slivers in order to gain complete control over that market, they felt the gold needed to be returned. They should have returned the items right away without having to have it go public, so hopefully, they’ll do the same for future innocents caught in the net.

#3. Probably intentional behavior if they suspect it was involved in gold selling. Remove the item(s) used for gold selling and it becomes harder to do so. The items should have been returned immediately when they determined that the person was not a gold buyer or seller.

#4. This is the only one I agree with you on. ANet shouldn’t have made the person feel they need to make a public post in order to get the proper resolution.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

tl;dr No one should have to worry about using the TP or become a detective to determine if the person with whom they are trading is engaged in RMT (buying or selling)

Exactly. In fact, Anet encourages us to use TP (and pay the tax), using this as an argument. TP is supposed to be safe, and Anet is supposed to guarantee this.
There should be no exceptions from it.

So let’s see if I get this right:
- someone posted some obsolete items with no use (i.e. junk) on the TP for 450 gold
- these items were bought with RMT gold
- some of the gold was removed but the player got to keep 166 gold for junk
- and now that player is angry that he didn’t immediately get his junk back, too?

I wonder what would happen if ANet decided to simply remove obsolete items from the game, would anybody actually notice or care?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I personally find it interesting that there has been no official comment on a thread on their official forum about their policy of confiscating Trading Post gold from accounts that haven’t engaged in gold buying. Not even to point out mistakes in understanding or to clarify exactly what the policy is.

Too much to ask for I guess.

Once again, Just a flesh wound, something I agree with. This is a topic I’d think they would have taken the time to address with the whole community here. Perhaps posted in this thread maybe once, at the very least. Alas, the topic of which word is the proper one to use – staves vs staffs- is at least seeing some ANet interaction…

This is an important topic. We all have to use the Trading Post in this game at some point. We shouldn’t be worried about being caught up and punished for some nefarious dealings not of our doing.

obviously buying gold and anyone who believes otherwise is gullible. it happens all the time in every game the gold seller buys his cheap item for a extreme price and he gets the gold. what idiot would actually sell that for such a expensive price knowing it wont sell. provide me with one good argument pls. idc what support said just because they cant find evidence doesn’t mean it isn’t obvious. its hard to prove something when you have no access to the sensitive information needed to prove it.

Michael Henninger.7451:

Hey guys; Chris is out for the week but I’ve been looking at this and the bottom line is that this was a single incident that was mishandled when we removed the gold before looking deeper into the account’s behavior.

We made things right with the player because it is not our desire to punish someone who clearly took advantage of a buyer who didn’t check their source. They did not engage in RMT activity and should not have had their gold removed which is why we gave it back.

On the other hand when this happens – An account buys something worthless for a large sum – it is almost always RMT activity but it still falls on mine and Chris’ teams to investigate the account before removing the gold.

If you (as players) engage in fair gameplay you should feel confident that neither CS nor GS are aiming to take action on your account – but we make mistakes. If we do; reach out and we’ll fix it. You all know me well enough by now to know I’m going to do right by you.

Actually, as far as I can tell from what was said on the thread by the OP, they didn’t give the gold back. They eventually gave the items back, which the OP relisted, but not the gold.

So, if they didn’t give the gold back is it now policy to remove gold from innocent accounts if TP items were bought with RMT gold, and then give back the items?

Michael Henninger.7451:

Hey guys; Chris is out for the week but I’ve been looking at this and the bottom line is that this was a single incident that was mishandled when we removed the gold before looking deeper into the account’s behavior.

We made things right with the player because it is not our desire to punish someone who clearly took advantage of a buyer who didn’t check their source. They did not engage in RMT activity and should not have had their gold removed which is why we gave it back.

On the other hand when this happens – An account buys something worthless for a large sum – it is almost always RMT activity but it still falls on mine and Chris’ teams to investigate the account before removing the gold.

If you (as players) engage in fair gameplay you should feel confident that neither CS nor GS are aiming to take action on your account – but we make mistakes. If we do; reach out and we’ll fix it. You all know me well enough by now to know I’m going to do right by you.

Personally, I think you guys should have never replied to the player the way you did on Reddit. It should have been done via a support ticket entirely. I really do think that is the root of the issue as we see it. And the fact is, the player base doesn’t need to know how you guys handle each and every case.

Everything else aside.

I do think this case was mishandled. On the other hand, I’m not exactly worried that this will happen to me, since I don’t sell worthless items for large sums of money.

Michael Henninger.7451:

Bruno.3812:

they didn’t give the gold back.

I am they. I assure you; I did. =)

Thank you the information. It was very disturbing to think that the trading post was not a safe place to sell items and that ANet could remove gold and not restore items from innocent accounts, unless a fuss was made as shown on that thread. Perhaps you should go back to that thread and state exactly what was finally done and what the policy is for items bought with RMT gold as the thread ended without this information being clear.

Bruno.3812:

Michael Henninger.7451:

Bruno.3812:

they didn’t give the gold back.

I am they. I assure you; I did. =)

Thank you the information. It was very disturbing to think that the trading post was not a safe place to sell items and that ANet could remove gold and not restore items from innocent accounts, unless a fuss was made as shown on that thread. Perhaps you should go back to that thread and state exactly what was finally done and what the policy is for items bought with RMT gold as the thread ended without this information being clear.

And this is why these situations shouldn’t be posted on Reddit of all places. Now you have to spend EXTRA time to fix the situation that has already been dealt with.

complete time waste.