Fleche
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Posted - 2008.04.13 18:10:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Wyn Pharoh
Short of invading [insert EVERY developing nation here], lining up and shooting ALL the ISK farmers worldwide in RL...
I volunteer.
Something important to realize about ISK sellers is that they use stolen credit cards to create accounts. This is the primary reason they are headquartered in countries that either turn a blind eye to CC theft of Westerners or who actively encourage it as a way to "stick it to the Man". Otherwise it would be easy to file a stolen CC complaint with the local authorities and get a nice high-profile set of arrests... not for violating game policies, but for good old-fashioned fraud and theft. But when the local "authorities" are at best indifferent, or more often bribed, options become limited.
IMNSHO, the only way to deal with this is to attack demand. If you buy ISK and are caught, first warning is stripping the account of all assets other than the character, i.e. you're left with a noob-ship witha civilian mining laser. Second offense, the account and everything in it (including the characters and all prepaid time) are removed and the no-refunds-for-expulsion clause invoked.
Zero tolerance for seller-cheaters, zero tolerance for buyer-cheaters. An approved in-game mechanism for extra ISK is available, and if you step out of that boundary, you're toast. People who are offended by this... tough. The rest of us don't want or need them to be here. Besides, what are they going to do about it? Appeal to a court and admit to breaking a EULA and enabling credit card fraud? Go to some other game? There's no other game like EVE out there to go to.
Play fair or get out.
And as for reporting statistics of disciplinary actions, I am all for that. I would also support identification by character name (or even account name) of terminated accounts. There is a precedent: your credit report. When you get a credit card, you explicitly agree to allow disclosure of violation of your agreement with them. This is no different: make it a condition of play that your account name and the cause of your expulsion may be disclosed. Don't like it? You don't get to play. Heck, I'd support that on an industry-wide basis. Create a real-identity database in which cheating and harassment that escalated to expulsion is reported, then other MMO providers could make an informed decision on whether they want to risk taking on a "nomad cheater". Same as a credit rating.
Hmmm. I wonder if there's a business opportunity in being the provider of such a system.
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