Massive SWG account bans for credit duping scheme

[CooK1E]

ShackNews has brought some very sad news to our attention concerning Sony’s ever popular Star Wars Galaxy MMORPG.

It seems some intrepid entrepreneur’s have found an exploit that allows them to dupe credits used in game to buy anything from supplies to weapons. Verant have found a way to track where the duped credits are being used and by whom, but sadly didn’t realise the extent of a complete server ban on all of the players holding the faked credits would have.

You see, with the SWG universe being just like one massive shop, the duped credits have been released into general circulation, so anyone could have accepted faked credits without knowingly realising the source. It seems that most players that had fake credits in their account were simply as guilty as accepting tips from other players and thus were never actively involved in the counterfeiting scheme at all.

With SOE’s immediate action on the matter came a bigger problem, with reports of the mass ban on all fake credit users amounting from as little as 10,000 people to a huge 45,000 players. Obviously players with alternate accounts (and just generally anyone that was not pleased with SOE’s actions) staged a mass protest, involving mass spamming of complaints to the CSR’s reps. This was met with harsh threats by the CSR’s, which were carried out when they were ignored. Many players have now found themselves teleported to random locations around the galaxy.

One player (who is nameless for a reason) claiming that he was involved in the faking scheme, said that he tipped over 10,000 fellow players just to get them banned from the game – who said respect for fellow players was dead?!

Some quotes from the relevant boards shamelessly nicked from News0r’s article:

Originally Posted by ShackNews

They banned an 11 year old girl that was playing on Kettemoor as a dancer. She got a million credit tip, and just thought she was tipped by a really grateful weaponsmith or armorsmith. Hell, when I quit, I tipped a newbie 500k credits. A friend that still plays on Lowca says that an Imperial guild duped a lot of credits and tipped a bunch of the top Rebel PVPers, and the Rebels got banned

Originally Posted by SOE’s Boards

I come back to my computer. My alt is no longer logged in.

And now, he "can't" log in.

I was so pissed to see the status of this account.

I have done nothing wrong. If I did, my main character would be the one to blame. But seeing as how he is not banned, I fail to see the logic here. I am guessing that maybe he was tipped while I was away, that's the only feasible reason I could see in him being banned.

It's a sad day when I can't even leave an entertainer to play peacefully.

The Shacknews article can be seen Here
And the News0r article can be seen Here

[Brent Rivienne]

Incompetence from sony online entertainment?

I am shocked and amazed, I cannot see how this could occur.

Okay, maybe I should have tried harder with that one.

[Darksaber]

Just searching the SOE forums for SWG now, seeing a few posts referring to bans and duped credits, but am yet to see an announcement. No doubt that its not real though.

Mass bannage isn't a good idea. My account is closed for the time being - has been for a couple of months, I'm waiting for the Jump to Lightspeed expansion, then I might resub.

[Darksaber]

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/b...message.id=245

official announcement

Anyone here got a "dirty" account then?

[Spanks]

A friend that still plays on Lowca says that an Imperial guild duped a lot of credits and tipped a bunch of the top Rebel PVPers, and the Rebels got banned


just lol, thats utter class

[MALLET]

also mentioned here

http://www.trickery.net/bb/viewtopic.php?t=14649

[CooK1E]

yeah i forgot to include that in my post - ophiuchus beat me to the news story as usual

[ophiuchus]

Yeah but you wrote it up better :p

[CooK1E]

Originally Posted by ophiuchus

Yeah but you wrote it up better :p

why thank you

[w33tab1x]

from my view SOE did a very shity job at sorting this out. they could of done better if they just sat down and thought about it. good job i didnt get banned . but i didnt take any tips when it started.

this will stop there overloading servers any way cos 50% of people will quit

[pornstar]

"It's a sad day when I can't even leave an entertainer to play peacefully."

lmfao. shame about the credit system but those entertainers and their macros...