Chicken Little's Open Letter to EU

[-=rAndom=-]

I would say that if they would undo transactions they would broke their own policy of all trades being final, which would in turn make some players sick.

Anyway I guess that items / skills bought with false ped will be resold by MA avatar (depending on amount and if MA will care), and loss after this (as many of those items were AFAIK sold above markup) will be MA loss, not squeezed from players by "balancing manager".

As to "correct" handling. MA didn't sent email to many (AFAIK) or any explanation before ppl actually asked on support, which I find lame.

[JackFree]

Originally Posted by Shadowsong

Whenever there is a discussion around the sustainability of EU, one of the arguments put forth by those who believe EU will never crash is the following:

"Massive withdrawals cannot hurt EU, because somebody else had to deposit to buy the skills/gear/whatever, so money comes in to replace the money leaving"

Until two days ago, that argument was difficult to refute. Now consider what has happened during the "ongoing exploit investigation", during which numerous accounts were temporarily locked.

To the best of our knowledge, this "exploit" resulted in an account or accounts, being credited with amounts in excess of the actual deposits made. These "surplus funds" (or imaginary funds, if you like) were then apparently spent in a high-end shopping spree, purchasing numerous expensive items, from skill implants to armour.

So far, not a single avatar has reported that any of these transactions has been reversed. The items and skills are gone, and the ped remain. The totally imaginary, undeposited, fake peds have suddenly become very real, and are available for withdrawal. As far as we know.

So we have a situation where an unkown number of ped can be withdrawn as dollars, without the requisite influx of dollars to balance the system. Where does that leave us? Can we be as confident in the sustainability of this universe as we thought, when we have such a clear example that one of the building blocks of this confidence may be flawed?

Now before you all yell that it's an exceptional case, very rare, and that MA dealt with it swiftly, let me say this very clearly :
I AGREE WITH ALL OF THOSE THINGS.

HOWEVER.
I do not believe that MA has dealt with it correctly.

If the imaginary peds are allowed to remain in EU as real cash, and we have no indication of whether the items will remain in circulation - (remember, they were bought with imaginary peds, so even their TT value is 100% profit to whoever has them, but they have no value to MA as input into the system) - then we must acknowledge that the universe has been unbalanced. Only MA can know by how much, and only MA can tell us how the balance is to be restored, without effectively punishing the NON-EXPLOITING players through reduced loot, increased bug decays and other loss-inducing mechanisms. Oh, and those are quite prevalent at the moment.

I think this is damaging EU far more than many would like to admit. One of my mates described this as yet another "take more" VU, and I'm worried he may be right.

So, feel free to preface your responses with the usual chorus of "the sky is falling", but understand that there are a number of people who are very concerned about how this is resolved.

Since we do not know how MA actually handled it, and what they are still doing about it, it is all speculation...

At this point, a statement from MA about the situation would be useful. Marco? Frank?...

Cheers

[Nor Alien]

Just a quick thought.... Every company has an insurance policy against one thing or another..... Visa, Master Card, You with a house or a car or your life.... Big businesses are no exception... in fact they have the most comprehensive policies around... Protecting them from all sorts of things imaginable. I would expect that they would have this covered as well. They would have to, due to the fact that they are dealing with peoples money. Same a Visa or Master Card. They have insurance to cover the fraud so the card holder does not have to. You can't even get into business without some way to protect your clients.

As for weather or not we would see a decrease in loot or that Mind Ark, as a company, is at risk... that would be speculation at best... So relax and enjoy a beverage... Untill the sky actually falls... we can only ride this adventure with our heads held high, or find a nice corner and cower untill its over...

[aridash]

the premise is incorrect because MA has backed those peds. the balance problem is on thier balance sheet so it matters little unless they wish to punish the community by taking from the loot pool, which i dont believe would be the case. And in any case, we are talking at worse a few $10k which is fairly insignificant on a economy wide basis. and then...

Originally Posted by Rumsponge

If so, someone essentially forced MA to buy a bunch of items which were then removed from circulation. The original owners were paid, MA has the items which they can put back into circulation through loot drops or simply retire from the game.

if this is the case there will be the dollar deposits to back the items. looking forward to a couple of Cronicle drops, great timing for WoF final

[Morat]

Isn't the interesting thing that whatever has happened it is ultimately MA's responsibility - they own the game, code it, manage security and so forth.

However their response is to penalise the paying players - hopefully in a way that will be quickly resolved and not leave these people locked for a long time or perhaps for ever?

And if their loss is ultimately recovered through loot adjustment as some speculate then the whole player base will be paying for their error.

Not the response of a customer oriented company I think - but then I think we know that by now.

I wish they would shape up and value the people who pay the bills - us.

[AJack10600]

There really should be some official communication from MA...

[Pirx Danford]

Originally Posted by AJack10600

There really should be some official communication from MA...

Yes there should.
But given that MA is quite clumsy sometimes in their wording - AND know this - they are smart enough and don't state anything at all, cause if they do and mess it up as usual they face legal consequences from what they disclose.
In business there is nothing like: just a harmless notice.
If you do make any legally binding statements then you have a problem.
And again, MA does know they are not too good on the "communication" part,
at least they have learnt THAT by now

This is not meant negative - I really believe its smart for them not to state anything.
But I hope they will state something soon.

[NightwolfAA2k5]

Speaking of official communication, has anyone seen Marco on the forums lately?

- Nightwolf

[Berul]

Thinks like that have to be adressed fast and clear. MA has to investigate and after make a public statement about what happened with locking accounts and all those items and peds.
But as usual, nothing will be reveleaded, just accounts unlocked and more rumors to the snowball. If MA wants a clear community, can start by themselves first, same history like scammers, case closed.

[Lee]

The main problem here is that everything is speculation and rumour only(other than the known fact that a lot of accounts got locked, many unlocked by now once 'cleared').

It seems that not even those people got any definitive answer about exactly what happened and of course what the company is doing to solve the problem is up to them and very unlikely they will ever tell us (my bank was one of many that recently had a problem with cloned atm and credit cards getting used, we never hear more about that crime or what is being done about it really, just each individual account holder's situation gets resolved and that's that, they don't have any responsibility really to tell us the dirty details, if it is a newsworthy crime we may read it in the news, but not from the banks).

I was told that it wasn't 'fake' or 'imaginary' ped in game, but stolen money deposited in game, ie credit card fraud. Never understood how anyone not directly involved could have even that much information unless MA themselves said it, and I understand they haven't said anything yet, so to me, none of us has a clue what happened, so I won't be watching for the sky to fall just yet

PS I don't see them 'undoing' the transactions either, they will take the loss, they have insurance as someone else said