[Xandra]

Hi,

some ppl here seem to be completely wrong, according to my pending support case. I asked if it would be allowed to do rather exactely what some described here, doing trades without in game equivalent.

I found out a business partner far away from my place is in EU, too; we often have rather small bills (less then 500 EUR) for little services, and it had been a fine possibility to pay via PED - avoiding banking taxes that can be rather high, for small amounts. We'd both agree to do this fully correctly, with invoices and proper book keeping (treating it as cash income).

Originally Posted by Xandra

[...] Question: If I did things like this (receiving small amounts of PEDs from other avatars without countervalue), provided that such activities would be fully at my/ my business partners risk and MA would be in full discharge from any liability (due to EULA anyway), would this put any risk onto my avatar of getting banned? [...]

Reply:

Originally Posted by MA

[...] For a number of legal reasons, MindArk has adopted a general common policy not to support money transactions that do not involve any direct participation in the Entropia Universe.

Though the transactions as you described them involve relatively small sums of money, we can unfortunately not make any exceptions even after receiving your explanations.

As a result our common policy is to block the involved Entropia accounts, in reference to the EULA 17 h. § and 18 §. [...]

(I made important part bold)

This is a bummer. Guess the reason is MA doesn't want to violate national banking/ postal laws. But such policy, and the nebulous formulations in the EULA, will put a lot of participants into severe danger. I tried then to explain to MA:

Originally Posted by Xandra

[...] I can imagine a lot of fully legally (?) EU activities that would include such transactions, and that would not be distinguishable without knowing the full context, for instance:

- Transfer of PED/ materials from/ to CND, usually between Soc members, RL friends or relatives to avoid the flight costs, done using auction and overpriced buyouts (haven't done yet, but forums are full of descriptions);

- Payment of "in game" services like FAPping, "hired guns" for LG/ PvP zone mining etc., "herding" (Merry Mayhem was full of them) and many others (haven't done yet, but forums are full of descriptions);

- "Sponsoring" a newbie, be it selling (otherwise TT'd) armor parts for sweat, accepting crazy rates (100 bottles -> 1 PED?), or giving presents, maybe even "investing" into a disciple, helping her with PED to graduate (I admit to have done often, both selling most cheap and giving presents);

- Helping depositing when at a friends location there's no working method at this moment (there are times UKash doesn't work everywhere ...), or advancing some 100 PED in case of a delayed depositing progress to keep a friend going (I admit to have done, in the past);

I'm very sure there's a lot more possibilities for similar transactions that might classify as "reason for blocking". In a lot of cases there might be a "one-way-transfer" without suitable equivalent. [...]

I know very well the above described actions are not what I asked initially, but would not be distinguishable when checking using the database - in all cases it would be trades without suitable equivalent, thus suspicious, and, according to MA's policy, a reason to block the involved Entropia accounts.

So I'd advice you to be very careful! Remember, when you want to withdraw, MA will investigate for possible frauds, and you might experience a nasty surprise.

Since I feel this is important I plan to create a thread about this, when I have the answers to my second question. I feel a virtual environment utilizing a real cash economy should have clear rules about utilizing real cash, as well as the "game" currency, and statements like the one above, that might give MA a reason to block nearly any participants account at will is not acceptable, IMHO.

Have fun!