Question about Alliances and Policies in the Terms of Service

EbbtideEbbtide Member Posts: 292 ★★
in General Discussion
What are the terms of Service for an Alliance? I know as players it's against the rules to share your account, and especially to sell it, but can you sell an Alliance?

I ask this because, to keep it anonymous, I'm aware of a team that decided to kick 2/3s of its members in order to bring in 20 players that have bought the Alliance from the leader. This is definitely a unique experience, and I'm unsure what the view of Kabam is on this. I'm just wondering if this is within the rules of the game.

I'm unsure what value this gives. Maybe Alliance War placement or rating? Treasury surplus? I'm unsure of their reasoning, and I understand that teams can remove players as they decide, I'm just curious as to the company view about actually selling a team.

Comments

  • DNA3000DNA3000 Member, Guardian Posts: 19,841 Guardian
    Under the TOS, you can't sell anything in the game to another person.
    2. Limited License and Right to Use the Materials. The Websites and Services are provided for your enjoyment, and unless otherwise specified on or in the Websites or Services, solely for your own personal use. Kabam hereby grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, limited license to access and use the Websites and Services for your own non-commercial entertainment purposes, subject to your complete compliance with the Terms and any and all other terms and policies set forth on or in the Websites or Services, including without limitation on Third Party Platforms, Kabam reserves the right to revoke your right to use the Website or the Services at any time as further set forth in Section 11 herein. You acknowledge that the time that you spend on or using the Websites and/or Services including without limitation on any Third Party Platforms, is solely for your personal entertainment purposes, and that no monetary value can be attributed to such time and that, but for the license granted herein, you are not entitled under the law to use or have access to the Websites or Services and/or the Materials. Except as expressly provided herein, Kabam does not grant you any other express or implied rights or license in or to the Materials, Services and/or the Websites, and all right, title and interest that Kabam has in the Materials and/or the Websites rights not explicitly granted to you by Kabam or its licensors are retained by Kabam or its licensors, respectively. Except as expressly set forth in the Terms, you may not modify (including without limitation making derivative works), copy, adapt, reverse engineer, de-compile or otherwise reduce to human perceivable format, distribute, frame, reproduce, republish, download, scrape, display, post, transmit, transfer, license or sublicense, publicly display, or sell in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, Materials without Kabam’s or its licensors’ express prior written permission. This includes, but is not limited to scraping user locations, power levels, or utilizing any non public information about game play or other users and migrating that data anywhere.

    I'm unaware of Kabam levying punishment against any player for selling something like an alliance, but it is technically against the terms of service to do so.
  • EbbtideEbbtide Member Posts: 292 ★★
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    Under the TOS, you can't sell anything in the game to another person.
    2. Limited License and Right to Use the Materials. The Websites and Services are provided for your enjoyment, and unless otherwise specified on or in the Websites or Services, solely for your own personal use. Kabam hereby grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, limited license to access and use the Websites and Services for your own non-commercial entertainment purposes, subject to your complete compliance with the Terms and any and all other terms and policies set forth on or in the Websites or Services, including without limitation on Third Party Platforms, Kabam reserves the right to revoke your right to use the Website or the Services at any time as further set forth in Section 11 herein. You acknowledge that the time that you spend on or using the Websites and/or Services including without limitation on any Third Party Platforms, is solely for your personal entertainment purposes, and that no monetary value can be attributed to such time and that, but for the license granted herein, you are not entitled under the law to use or have access to the Websites or Services and/or the Materials. Except as expressly provided herein, Kabam does not grant you any other express or implied rights or license in or to the Materials, Services and/or the Websites, and all right, title and interest that Kabam has in the Materials and/or the Websites rights not explicitly granted to you by Kabam or its licensors are retained by Kabam or its licensors, respectively. Except as expressly set forth in the Terms, you may not modify (including without limitation making derivative works), copy, adapt, reverse engineer, de-compile or otherwise reduce to human perceivable format, distribute, frame, reproduce, republish, download, scrape, display, post, transmit, transfer, license or sublicense, publicly display, or sell in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, Materials without Kabam’s or its licensors’ express prior written permission. This includes, but is not limited to scraping user locations, power levels, or utilizing any non public information about game play or other users and migrating that data anywhere.

    I'm unaware of Kabam levying punishment against any player for selling something like an alliance, but it is technically against the terms of service to do so.

    Thank you. Like you, I've never heard about this being an issue Kabam has done anything against, but I've never even heard of this sort of thing until now.
  • Darkstar4387Darkstar4387 Member Posts: 2,145 ★★★
    I see people trying to sell their accounts on golbal all the time and laugh at it because it's stupid and will get both parties in trouble.

    Under no circumstances may you use another person's account or let someone use yours and you should buy one either and you definitely shouldn't be using in wars if you did since it will get your alliance docked and you banded temporarily or permanently
  • EbbtideEbbtide Member Posts: 292 ★★
    Darkstar4387 wrote: »
    I see people trying to sell their accounts on golbal all the time and laugh at it because it's stupid and will get both parties in trouble.

    Under no circumstances may you use another person's account or let someone use yours and you should buy one either and you definitely shouldn't be using in wars if you did since it will get your alliance docked and you banded temporarily or permanently

    That's not what I'm asking.

    I'm asking about an actual Alliance. Not the accounts, the thing itself. The War Rating, the Treasury, the name even. I've never heard of this before, but it just happened to a team I know. I assumed it was like a player profile, where someone should not sell it, but this was so unheard of. Basically the efforts of 30 people could be sold by a Leader if they so decided, and the team could potentially be powerless over it.

    I was just really curious if Kabam had a stance on it, or if they had ever done anything about it, or if they even could. Considering all of the exploits happening in Alliance War Seasons, I didn't know if this is some new strategy being adopted during the off season.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Member, Guardian Posts: 19,841 Guardian
    Ebbtide wrote: »
    Considering all of the exploits happening in Alliance War Seasons, I didn't know if this is some new strategy being adopted during the off season.

    Acquiring alliances is not a new strategy. Long before alliance war seasons was a thing, people were using "shells" to manipulate rating and rewards.
  • EbbtideEbbtide Member Posts: 292 ★★
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    Ebbtide wrote: »
    Considering all of the exploits happening in Alliance War Seasons, I didn't know if this is some new strategy being adopted during the off season.

    Acquiring alliances is not a new strategy. Long before alliance war seasons was a thing, people were using "shells" to manipulate rating and rewards.

    I know about that happening, and how it really hurt the spread of progress. I meant is this a new thing from AW. In the AQ situation, teams swapped because of the Pyramids, so they would place high in the Second Tier, get the top rewards, but in the First Tier they would be in the bottom the next series, where the rewards are worse. So they would swap with a lower team to let them drop in First Tier, and they would take that teams Second Tier Week so they could exploit getting the 2nd Tier Rewards Weekly.

    But in this situation I can't understand why someone would outright buy an established team.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Member, Guardian Posts: 19,841 Guardian
    Ebbtide wrote: »
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    Ebbtide wrote: »
    Considering all of the exploits happening in Alliance War Seasons, I didn't know if this is some new strategy being adopted during the off season.

    Acquiring alliances is not a new strategy. Long before alliance war seasons was a thing, people were using "shells" to manipulate rating and rewards.

    I know about that happening, and how it really hurt the spread of progress. I meant is this a new thing from AW. In the AQ situation, teams swapped because of the Pyramids, so they would place high in the Second Tier, get the top rewards, but in the First Tier they would be in the bottom the next series, where the rewards are worse. So they would swap with a lower team to let them drop in First Tier, and they would take that teams Second Tier Week so they could exploit getting the 2nd Tier Rewards Weekly.

    But in this situation I can't understand why someone would outright buy an established team.

    I can think of a couple reasons, but that would require discussing ways to manipulate alliance war I'd rather not openly discuss. But if you want a hint, consider you're trying to cheat the system. What's the one situation in which having control of two alliances is superior to having control of only one? There is only one. Now ask yourself if it is possible to engineer this situation far more often than it is ordinarily likely to occur. That's probably your answer.
  • Darkstar4387Darkstar4387 Member Posts: 2,145 ★★★
    Ebbtide wrote: »
    Darkstar4387 wrote: »
    I see people trying to sell their accounts on golbal all the time and laugh at it because it's stupid and will get both parties in trouble.

    Under no circumstances may you use another person's account or let someone use yours and you should buy one either and you definitely shouldn't be using in wars if you did since it will get your alliance docked and you banded temporarily or permanently

    That's not what I'm asking.

    I'm asking about an actual Alliance. Not the accounts, the thing itself. The War Rating, the Treasury, the name even. I've never heard of this before, but it just happened to a team I know. I assumed it was like a player profile, where someone should not sell it, but this was so unheard of. Basically the efforts of 30 people could be sold by a Leader if they so decided, and the team could potentially be powerless over it.

    I was just really curious if Kabam had a stance on it, or if they had ever done anything about it, or if they even could. Considering all of the exploits happening in Alliance War Seasons, I didn't know if this is some new strategy being adopted during the off season.

    It's not new and could really backfire on on the people involved if kabam catches on, they really don't like that stuff and I'm pretty sure there are threads on it just don't have them bookmarked and not sure where to begin with searching it since my search barely works right most of the time.

    Like a high ranking officer in one alliance contacts a different alliance in their bracket under the orders of their leader and buys an alliance and the current leader steps down.

    Then everyone is at their mercy of the new leadership and when they meet the leader is filling in their old leader and basically tell them everything and colloude with each other with out the knowledge of the rest of the allaince they are suffer for it when kabam find out. Or they play a shell game shuffling their members into a different alliance by saying it's another one or a sister alliance or that it's a merger or whatever.

    Since seasons started this has been on the rise apparently and all kinds of other stuff is going on since then and actually some people here on the forums made a thread basically going can you allow us to win pretty please lol that did not go well.

    They made a really cutthroat competitive environment that is just getting worse and worse as time passes, some of it was because their lack of urgency in dealing with all of this and letting it all go on before the seasons started and letting continue into them before they really started to crack down on all this.

    They need to make an example of the higher allainces who are doing literally everything that's illegal in kabams world if they want it stop for good they made a step in the right direction but were a bit to light with some of the punishments they handed down and it didn't stop some of them since some are still doing what got them punished and docked in the first place.
  • Dj_mphDj_mph Member Posts: 72 ★
    No body is going to sell an alliance! The leader probably just kicked everyone because he was bringing in stronger More active players.

    People can start their own alliance and you would be crazy to buy one with existing members that could leave at any time.

    I think you and your guys just got kicked for being not as strong as the new guys coming in. It happens all the time with mergers.

    Have fun and start your own alliance
  • LeNoirFaineantLeNoirFaineant Member Posts: 8,675 ★★★★★
    Dj_mph wrote: »
    No body is going to sell an alliance! The leader probably just kicked everyone because he was bringing in stronger More active players.

    People can start their own alliance and you would be crazy to buy one with existing members that could leave at any time.

    I think you and your guys just got kicked for being not as strong as the new guys coming in. It happens all the time with mergers.

    Have fun and start your own alliance

    People have absolutely sold alliances before lol.
  • EbbtideEbbtide Member Posts: 292 ★★
    Dj_mph wrote: »
    No body is going to sell an alliance! The leader probably just kicked everyone because he was bringing in stronger More active players.

    People can start their own alliance and you would be crazy to buy one with existing members that could leave at any time.

    I think you and your guys just got kicked for being not as strong as the new guys coming in. It happens all the time with mergers.

    Have fun and start your own alliance

    Again, for the sake of anonymity, let's just pretend that this happened. Let's also pretend that the Leader of this Alliance made it clear they had sold the Alliance. Let's also pretend that one (or maybe more players) took a screenshot of this posting in the chat. Let's also say that the leader not only deleted that message, but deleted the entire chat because they were made aware someone had screenshot that post of theirs, and the only way to remove the post was to completely delete the thread.

    Considering if all of that were true, would you still believe no teams get sold? I totally understand your perspective. Prior to this, I would not understand how or why it would happen. Just start a new team, or just kick people and recruit, or take yourselves to a new team. Buying a team seems so odd. But that's why I'm trying to understand the concept here.

    If the idea is to somehow have purchased a team that you could manage to trick matchmaking into fighting your other team, you'd still have to have profiles with prestiges and war ratings high enough to always fight you. You'd still have a losing team that was always dropping, making it impossible to fight you always. You'd still need to manage a whole other team. So I don't believe that is the case, but I cannot understand what is the point of it.

    But beyond that, if someone did hypothetically have a screenshot of the Alliance Leader explaining that they had sold the Alliance, that chat is a 3rd Party App, which Kabam would not see as legitimate evidence. Even if the times matched, and the movement is suspicious, there's no way it could be proved to Kabam, so that's not what this is about.

    I guess what I'm worried about is that so much cheating has been exposed in team based content, that if literally you can just buy an opponent, I just don't know if there is anything Kabam could actually do about this. All of the interactions happen outside of the game itself, so it would be impossible to provide proof to Kabam.

    I'm trying to have a discussion here because it does seem really concerning. It took a long time for Piloting to be addressed, and even then it's clear that those caught can still be rewarded, but this is a whole new level of pay to win.
  • Dj_mphDj_mph Member Posts: 72 ★
    edited October 2018
    It’s very strange and i talk with a lot of the big guys in the game and have never heard of this. Good luck man. Sorry this happened
  • DTMelodicMetalDTMelodicMetal Member Posts: 2,785 ★★★★★
    edited October 2018
    Ebbtide wrote: »
    Dj_mph wrote: »
    No body is going to sell an alliance! The leader probably just kicked everyone because he was bringing in stronger More active players.

    People can start their own alliance and you would be crazy to buy one with existing members that could leave at any time.

    I think you and your guys just got kicked for being not as strong as the new guys coming in. It happens all the time with mergers.

    Have fun and start your own alliance

    Again, for the sake of anonymity, let's just pretend that this happened. Let's also pretend that the Leader of this Alliance made it clear they had sold the Alliance. Let's also pretend that one (or maybe more players) took a screenshot of this posting in the chat. Let's also say that the leader not only deleted that message, but deleted the entire chat because they were made aware someone had screenshot that post of theirs, and the only way to remove the post was to completely delete the thread.

    Considering if all of that were true, would you still believe no teams get sold? I totally understand your perspective. Prior to this, I would not understand how or why it would happen. Just start a new team, or just kick people and recruit, or take yourselves to a new team. Buying a team seems so odd. But that's why I'm trying to understand the concept here.

    If the idea is to somehow have purchased a team that you could manage to trick matchmaking into fighting your other team, you'd still have to have profiles with prestiges and war ratings high enough to always fight you. You'd still have a losing team that was always dropping, making it impossible to fight you always. You'd still need to manage a whole other team. So I don't believe that is the case, but I cannot understand what is the point of it.

    But beyond that, if someone did hypothetically have a screenshot of the Alliance Leader explaining that they had sold the Alliance, that chat is a 3rd Party App, which Kabam would not see as legitimate evidence. Even if the times matched, and the movement is suspicious, there's no way it could be proved to Kabam, so that's not what this is about.

    I guess what I'm worried about is that so much cheating has been exposed in team based content, that if literally you can just buy an opponent, I just don't know if there is anything Kabam could actually do about this. All of the interactions happen outside of the game itself, so it would be impossible to provide proof to Kabam.

    I'm trying to have a discussion here because it does seem really concerning. It took a long time for Piloting to be addressed, and even then it's clear that those caught can still be rewarded, but this is a whole new level of pay to win.

    Great post that alludes to how some players may be beyond rehabilitation
  • Kabam DijonKabam Dijon Moderator Posts: 337
    Hello there,

    Selling accounts, alliances, or any in game item is a violation of our TOS and is very much against the rules. If you think that a player is attempting or has sold game accounts, items, etc. Then please contact support to report them. Do not post that information to the forums, as it will be removed.

    We will be closing this thread for now, Thank you.
This discussion has been closed.