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Banned for RMT?Follow

#1 Jul 06 2009 at 10:02 AM Rating: Good
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532 posts
I got an LM-17 error last night when I tried to log in and I figured it was from recently changing my CC info on the account. I called today and the representative says I was banned for RMT activity after keeping me on hold for 45mins. There's only one problem... I don't do any RMT'ing.

The only thing I could see is I garden on 15 mules and send money to my main from these mules after NPCing the items I get from Wildgrass Seeds. Has this happened to anyone else who gardens? I told the representative that I garden and that's where all my money comes from but he didn't sound like he really knew anything about the game and has no control over bannings.

The only thing I can figure could've happened besides being misunderstood for a RMT is that someone hacked my account sometime yesterday and did some RMT with my gil on-hand, though I didn't really have much since I keep buying stuff for my SMN and PLD.

Any insight would be appreciated as I feel completely betrayed by SE now and all my plants will die, causing me to lose about 300-400k. The rep said my account banning will be reviewed and they will get back to me within about 2 weeks. If I haven't heard anything by then, I should just assume my account has been perma-banned.

/cry
#2 Jul 06 2009 at 10:20 AM Rating: Good
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185 posts
Quote:
I garden on 15 mules and send money to my main from these mules after NPCing the items I get from Wildgrass Seeds


Yep. Don't forget that it's an automated program that is banning you, large sums of money being sent to one account after items are NPC'ed. I'm sure you tossed a lot of red flags.

Sadly you don't get to have any real input when your case is reviewed. If you do get your account back I wouldn't NPC your items, just sell them on the AH or craft them into something that will sell.

Edit: You can email the RMT Task Force from the POL menu, and explain yourself. That might help when your review comes up.

Best of luck,

-AvoIII



Edited, Jul 6th 2009 2:30pm by AvoIII
#3 Jul 06 2009 at 10:25 AM Rating: Good
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532 posts
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll do that right now.

Sucky situation is sucky.
#4 Jul 06 2009 at 10:32 AM Rating: Default
I highly doubt its as said, you know how many people garden and npc the results? There is even some guy on here with 95 gatrdening mules.
#5 Jul 06 2009 at 10:45 AM Rating: Good
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247 posts
Edit: Blank

Edited, Mar 13th 2011 6:37pm by AyriaBismarck
#6 Jul 06 2009 at 10:48 AM Rating: Good
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1,807 posts
Unfortunately, SE doesn't seem to know what the words "due process" mean. Of course, neither do most of us, until something happens to someone we know or care about.
#7 Jul 06 2009 at 10:57 AM Rating: Good
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532 posts
AyriaBismarck wrote:
Exactly the same situation here. I have a secondary account that I used for gardening with 13 mules, and pool the money over to my main. LM-17 on friday, and today they tell me it was for RMT-related reasons.

My guess is that gardening-only accounts are setting off some alarms.


Ok it looks like I'm not alone here. Thanks for sharing this and I hope you get yours unbanned soon as well. Hopefully SE didn't ninja-modify the TOS and make gardening then NPCing the results against the rules.

I guess all I can do at this point is wait. Is there any way to email the STF without going into POL? I can't even log in to POL right now because of the ban so I have no way to contact a GM or STF.

Thanks to everyone for sharing!
#8 Jul 06 2009 at 11:04 AM Rating: Good
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185 posts
Quote:
... SE doesn't seem to know what the words "due process" mean.


There is no "due process" all content, including accounts, items, gil, and friend list data is owned and maintained by SquareEnix and subject to be revoked at anytime for any reason. You don't own anything so revoking something you don't own can't be a violation of your rights.

The only thing a player can do is write letters of complaint, and excite methods to get the operating procedures changed. The most direct method is to draft an email, include your POL ID, and explain you are canceling your membership.

People have invested years in their accounts, and a great deal of money, I understand the frustration when it gets revoked. It's maybe unreasonable for players to ever gain ownership of accounts (the game service can never be stopped, even if one person is playing it) but it is reasonable to ask for a clear and open channel to lodge complaints and address problems like these.

In this case it appears the SE has a flaw in their system, the people banned shouldn't be banned (assuming the stories are correct), but as I explained in the my previous post there really isn't a rebuttal procedure. You don't get to defend your actions. That is bad policy. SE is watching this forum, and the stories of these people should be told in hopes SE happens on a these posts and reviews their actions.

-AvoIII



Edit: Changed "Players" to "Accounts" SE doesn't own you .. yet! =)




Edited, Jul 6th 2009 3:11pm by AvoIII
#9 Jul 06 2009 at 11:07 AM Rating: Decent
Do you have accounts with just gardening mules on them? or leveled main chars on accounts with additional gardening mules?
#10 Jul 06 2009 at 11:15 AM Rating: Good
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247 posts
Edit: Blank

Edited, Mar 13th 2011 6:37pm by AyriaBismarck
#11 Jul 06 2009 at 11:21 AM Rating: Good
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532 posts
It was my main character plus 15 mules I use for gardening. Have you gotten any information regarding the status of your account yet Ayria?
#12 Jul 06 2009 at 11:23 AM Rating: Good
18 posts
This just happened to me last night. Got kicked during dynamis and got an LM-17. Spoke to SE on chat and they said I was banned for RMT which is complete and utter crap and not true. All I can think is that I have 15 mules that my husband uses for gardening. His account, however, and his alt account also all have 15 mules that garden too but they were not touched. I don't know wtf is going on... I never RMT'd...
#13 Jul 06 2009 at 11:32 AM Rating: Decent
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1,504 posts
Incoming crazy conspiracy theory about SE purposely banning for chargebacks while double billing each month, and randomly banning gardening mules as RMT in an effort to force everyone to play FF14.

End conspiracy
#14 Jul 06 2009 at 11:35 AM Rating: Good
Are Square trying to make us quit by being retards or what? People are seriously getting banned for making gil in 100% legal means because they are too stupid to stop free trial accounts gardening? I swear to god they are stupid, wtf kind of stupid service is this. It would'nt be too bad if being banned was easily rectified but you have more chance of getting a speeding ticket reversed by Obama personally than speaking to someone with them that can help you at all.
#15 Jul 06 2009 at 11:47 AM Rating: Default
It's a shame we will never get the full story behind what really happened. We have heard the players' version, but we won't get to hear SE's take on what happened.

Perhaps they detected bots being used for the gardening mules? Or perhaps it's for something totally different. What I do know is that STF does investigate personally before they perma-ban anyone.

I wish there were some sort of system where SE can explain their actions in individual cases if required to the public, to quell the rumours that they ban people randomly. But I understand there are privacy issues that's preventing this happening.
#16 Jul 06 2009 at 11:51 AM Rating: Excellent
16 posts
The exact same thing just happened to a very good friend of mine. She was disconnected in the middle of Dynamis and when she attempted to log back in got an LM-17. Contacting POL support today, she was informed that the account was banned for involvement with RMT activities. She does not and has never RMT'd.

The main character on the account has multiple level 75 jobs and is very active. The rest of the account is full of gardening mules that her husband is using to fund a relic. The gardening mules primarily produce Ice Ore with Platinum Leaves as the byproduct. A significant amount of gil is transferred between these characters at every harvest. Much of this gil is generated via selling items to NPC's, as the platinum leaves NPC for around 1700 each and multiple stacks are generated on every mule each harvest. The majority of the gil goes to her husband, though he kicks her back some gil with every harvest because she will occasionally check and feed plants for him.

Two other accounts are used in this gardening operation: her husband's main account, and an alt account acquired from a friend who quit the game some time ago. Both of these accounts have the same pattern: an active main, and multiple mules used for gardening. Neither of these accounts received an LM-17.

Last week, when she logged in she received a notice that her content ID's had been deactivated. She had only a month left on the credit card used for that account and changed to a new credit card at the time. She was able to reactivate the content ID's and all was well.

Then, a few days later, Sunday night (Monday morning JP time), she was LM-17'd.

She has filed a complaint but is not hopeful as the support people are proving to be absolutely worthless.

This is devastating news as this is a character she has worked on since NA release, almost six years of her life. She met her husband via this game.

The degree of automation apparently inherent in the process of tracking down RMT is worrisome to say the least. How does their RMT tracking software distinguish between players who are accumulating and distributing large amounts of gil for purposes of RMT versus players who accumulate and distribute large amounts of gil for legitimate purposes? The danger of false positives seems extreme to me, and when coupled with SE's cryptic refusal to provide any specifics when an account has been banned, results in a process that is absolutely unfair. While such an arrangement of accounts and characters might reasonably trigger RMT flags, SE seems to be jumping the gun in concluding that such accounts are used for RMT.

Considering the number of items available in the game that require ludicrous, sadistic amounts of gil to complete, and the resultant incentive to set up operations designed to churn out mass amounts of gil, this is incomprehensible negligence on the part of S/E.
#17 Jul 06 2009 at 1:29 PM Rating: Decent
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532 posts
McGame wrote:
What I do know is that STF does investigate personally before they perma-ban anyone.


How do you know this for sure? It sounds like quite a few people have been banned this weekend and I find it hard to believe that it was because the STF reviewed all these legitimate gardening mules and banned all of us around the same time.

I haven't done anything wrong and I was banned for it. If SE said, "You're not allowed to pay us for 15 mules and use them to grow things under a system we implemented," I would have gladly canceled my 15 content IDs.
#18 Jul 06 2009 at 1:35 PM Rating: Excellent
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1,326 posts
As much as I hate RMT, I have to say that I think it's the lesser of two evils. I'd rather have RMT slip by than have legitimate players banned for using the system as it was designed. That's kind of crazy...
#19 Jul 06 2009 at 1:48 PM Rating: Good
[quote=MagicideAsura]The degree of automation apparently inherent in the process of tracking down RMT is worrisome to say the least. How does their RMT tracking software distinguish between players who are accumulating and distributing large amounts of gil for purposes of RMT versus players who accumulate and distribute large amounts of gil for legitimate purposes? The danger of false positives seems extreme to me, and when coupled with SE's cryptic refusal to provide any specifics when an account has been banned, results in a process that is absolutely unfair.
[quote]

I agree and also wonder this as well.

Given that the recent census results stated a high percentage of income from gardening, I imagine that this would have been an acceptable practice. I hope this is just a result of the "B-Squad" taking over with alot of people working on FFXIV and that this is just an error.
#20 Jul 06 2009 at 2:03 PM Rating: Good
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727 posts
This is really disturbing, and so typical SE. I used to see hordes of head/keyboard smash names and identical characters npcing in Bastok, they seem to be gone. Did SE fix the problem by banning ANY account that has more than X gardening mules? Or who's gardening mules are all in the same city? or some other formula that does not distinguish between legitimate and RMT accounts?

I USED to have 15 mules that gardened, I now have 7 (never garden on main). They are located in different cities. Haven't been banned yet.
#21 Jul 06 2009 at 2:20 PM Rating: Default
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843 posts
*derail*

Out of curiosity, what are you all gardening? =D
#22 Jul 06 2009 at 2:36 PM Rating: Decent
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532 posts
Wildgrass seeds.

I feed them water crystals which grows fire crystals mixed in with my NPCables. Then I feed them the fire crystals that I've harvested which grows ice crystals among the other NPCables. I NPC the ice crystals and start back over with water again.

Having one maple table per mule, along with 10 brass pots, means I never have to check my plants. I check one mule a couple days after planting to see if the "Feed Crystal" option is up yet. If it is, I go ahead and feed all my plants. Then after another couple days I check a mule to see if it's time to harvest everything.
#23 Jul 06 2009 at 2:40 PM Rating: Good
23 posts
I got a LM-17 as well on Friday my account had one active character on it I had a bunch of fishing mules before I had to cancel my account for finacial reasons and now its banned two days after i started again. I don't see howwhat little money i ever had on my account could be seen as RMT as that is what support had told me.
#24 Jul 06 2009 at 2:47 PM Rating: Decent
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2,722 posts
This happened to my brother on Monday (edit: of last week, not today). The original claim was that it was a Charge Back but, when pressed, they were unable to provide a date or time for when the Charge Back had occurred. The reason they wouldn't give the account back, though, was for RMT activity. No gardening on the account but doing 10-12 Avatar runs per day generates a lot of gil. It's weird that they only hit one of the six accounts we used for this, but oh well. Wish you all well with the game; we've all gone elsewhere.

Edited, Jul 6th 2009 4:48pm by Dracoth
#25 Jul 06 2009 at 3:01 PM Rating: Good
16 posts
The husband of my friend called up POL support and talked to a representative that he described as friendly and knowledgeable. Explaining that he was calling on behalf of his wife, he gave the representative her information. The rep then was able, without prompting, to bring up his POL ID and listed it as "another account that was involved."

Seeing as how almost all of the gil wound up on the husband's toon, it seems terribly perplexing to me that his wife's account was LM-17'd and his was not.

Neither was involved in any sort of RMT, mind you - it should be obvious from the Stage 3 relic horn, the currency for stage 4, and the large chunk of currency for stage 5 on the husband's account that that was where the overwhelming majority of the gil went.

But it appears from this that it was definitely suspicious-looking gardening activity that triggered the LM-17.
#26 Jul 06 2009 at 3:13 PM Rating: Decent
I make a fair amount of my gil from gardening, I am really furious that I am risking being banned even if its just for a few weeks because of it. This is totally disgusting, I should not have to worry about being banned when I'm doing nothing wrong. Maybe they only ban you if your gardening mules are located in bastok? >_>

If they want to stop the RMT, stop trial accounts being able to garden. If they want us to stop paying them all the money we do for these extra gardening mules then say so and we will but don't ban people for no reason!
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