I disagree. I've never had to give my Account Information to anyone to move me, and I have a life. It's not acceptable, and that fluidity is exactly the reason people are so shocked when it's addressed. It's always against TOS. If you aren't available, you can't move. Sometimes people have to accept facts rather than look for ways to justify bending the rules. It's not fair to people who are playing by the rules. You have more than one person running Accounts, doing double-time, when there is a natural occurrence that is meant to happen when people aren't around. Moving on the Map is not an excuse. The game will still be there when you get back. If the Ally can't understand that, then they care more about Rewards than Players. That's my view.
Try playing map 6 at 10k prestige and see if moving is absolute necessary and you have to be dead on time.
Doesn't matter what Map it is. You have a few options. Find an Ally that understands that people have lives, play a different Map, or continue to break the rules and try to justify it.
The heck it done matter what map it is. Some people are better at the game and have been playing longer. The harder things are, the more time they take. Kabam needs to change their "rules" to something that makes sense. Or they could focus on actually making the game work good instead of hagging people about something that is harmless. I completely agree with no account sharing in war or doing someone's personal quest. AQ account sharing should be allowed though. The rewards aren't great anyways, and it won't make much of a difference if someone controls an account. If they are able to monitor who is playing, they should be able to monitor what is being played.
I often play my account from two different devices. (Personal cell phone and work cell phone). Would this show up as "Account Sharing"? Do I need to use only one device?
I disagree. I've never had to give my Account Information to anyone to move me, and I have a life. It's not acceptable, and that fluidity is exactly the reason people are so shocked when it's addressed. It's always against TOS. If you aren't available, you can't move. Sometimes people have to accept facts rather than look for ways to justify bending the rules. It's not fair to people who are playing by the rules. You have more than one person running Accounts, doing double-time, when there is a natural occurrence that is meant to happen when people aren't around. Moving on the Map is not an excuse. The game will still be there when you get back. If the Ally can't understand that, then they care more about Rewards than Players. That's my view.
Try playing map 6 at 10k prestige and see if moving is absolute necessary and you have to be dead on time.
Then don't! Jeez, people, the reasoning is totally backwards.
Can't complete map 6? Map 6 not for you. End of story. No cheating of any kind allowed. Play map 5.
What if all the piloters formed an alliance together? They all have enough time to play, so nobody will be held back. I am sure they won't have to worry about staying at the top.
And the weaker players, the piloted, can form an alliance too and play at their level. I am sure they won't get the rewards they used to, but frankly, they don't deserve them!
So what are you gonna do about the players making "how to" videos on an alliance members account because they don't have the champ that the alliance member wants a video on?
For example, I have an ally member that doesn't really know how to use her nebula as she should be used. I do not have a nebula. So said ally member has allowed me to make a video on how to use nebula using her account.
Are you gonna ban me for trying to help someone understand how to use a champ in a fight simply because I do not have that champ and need to use her account to make the video?
What if you use multiple devices? how would that work? I go from tablet, to phone, to ipod, to another tablet lol....
Multiple devices and multiple accounts are allowed. You just can't play on an account that doesn't belong to you
Yes, but what I'm saying is how can they tell the difference between having multiple devices and account sharing?
We can, but we're not going to be discussing our methods.
I like that you confirm this, but I don't believe it. I think this entire threat was blind and that you can't tell the difference. I think this threat was only to appease the lower end player base that can't compete with the upper half.
I'm not sure why you would believe that. I can't say with any certainty what Kabam knows or does, but I can say with certainty that any iOS developer worth anything could tell you there are lots of ways of telling the difference. Some of those techniques are even mandatory to implement in order to get your app approved by Apple in the first place, so it is literally impossible to write a game like MCOC and be unaware of them.
So what are you gonna do about the players making "how to" videos on an alliance members account because they don't have the champ that the alliance member wants a video on?
For example, I have an ally member that doesn't really know how to use her nebula as she should be used. I do not have a nebula. So said ally member has allowed me to make a video on how to use nebula using her account.
Are you gonna ban me for trying to help someone understand how to use a champ in a fight simply because I do not have that champ and need to use her account to make the video?
Answer these questions: Did your ally mate provide you with the log in information for their account? Did you then log on to their account on your device? If yes, then yes that's account sharing and as such a violation of the ToS. You risk a ban if you do that. What you do when sharing is irrelevant.
They have said more then a few times that this is a completely fine senario. Unless your account if found logging in one minute in America and the next minute in China, your completely fine. (This is obviously an exaggeration, but still how it works). As long as your IP address on login has you in the same location your not a target. The problem arises when they see people clearly account sharing with others when different IP addresses are all trying to access the same account.
In other words, you can feel free to pilot as long as it’s with someone you live near, kabam can’t determine who is logging on, only where it is being logged on from. (Not saying you should implement this tactic, don’t shake your account with others.... just saying you can technically do it without getting caught)
This is not how this works. IP address has nothing to do with determining you are account sharing, or exonerating you from account sharing. This is a rumor amplified by ignorance and misunderstanding.
There are lots of ways to do this, and because Kabam isn't discussing the technical details I'm not going to articulate them in an in-depth manner either, but here's just one thing to make mental note of. When you write an app for Apple iOS, in order to get it approved you must follow their policies for device sharing. One of them explicitly states that if you charge for you app you must not charge twice to load the app on multiple devices owned by the same person. Apple specifically provides iOS APIs to allow an app developer to be able to tell when an app is being used on multiple devices owned by the same person to specifically satisfy this requirement.
Nobody uses IP addresses to identify device or app usage any more. That died in the mid 90s with the rise of digital cellular networks. Cellular network operators do not consistently honor geolocation for their subnets.
At some point, I wonder if it would be better to stop correcting this bit of misinformation and let the people who believe it get caught and banned. At the moment, I would prefer to warn people instead.
I think that banning people for piloting is a great idea. I also think removing energy from AQ would make a lot of sense and prevent the "need" for piloting. 1 hour timers is absolutely ridiculous for the length of the maps and since there is no way to buy movement, it doesn't seem like it even benefits kabam to have these requirements. Should just do away this and then hopefully most of the justification for account sharing disappears.
I disagree. I've never had to give my Account Information to anyone to move me, and I have a life. It's not acceptable, and that fluidity is exactly the reason people are so shocked when it's addressed. It's always against TOS. If you aren't available, you can't move. Sometimes people have to accept facts rather than look for ways to justify bending the rules. It's not fair to people who are playing by the rules. You have more than one person running Accounts, doing double-time, when there is a natural occurrence that is meant to happen when people aren't around. Moving on the Map is not an excuse. The game will still be there when you get back. If the Ally can't understand that, then they care more about Rewards than Players. That's my view.
Try playing map 6 at 10k prestige and see if moving is absolute necessary and you have to be dead on time.
Doesn't matter what Map it is. You have a few options. Find an Ally that understands that people have lives, play a different Map, or continue to break the rules and try to justify it.
The heck it done matter what map it is. Some people are better at the game and have been playing longer. The harder things are, the more time they take. Kabam needs to change their "rules" to something that makes sense. Or they could focus on actually making the game work good instead of hagging people about something that is harmless. I completely agree with no account sharing in war or doing someone's personal quest. AQ account sharing should be allowed though. The rewards aren't great anyways, and it won't make much of a difference if someone controls an account. If they are able to monitor who is playing, they should be able to monitor what is being played.
Notice in their message they specify Alliance War only. It seems like to them the biggest offenders of account sharing is piloting in Alliance Wars. That was the only game mode they mentioned and sounds like the biggest target of their crackdown on fairness.
Of course they’re never going to state outright “Account sharing in AQ is okay” but they didn’t bother to acknowledge it in their message. Their stand on account sharing has always been “Account sharing of any kind is not allowed”. I’m not advocating anyone to break the rules, but I don’t think the alliances occasionally moving other people in AQ are the target of the ban hammer. They also specified the punishments in order: war rating reduction, season score deductionion, account bans. It’s pretty clear what the message is.
I’m not advocating anyone to break the rules, but I don’t think the alliances occasionally moving other people in AQ are the target of the ban hammer.
It is probably a question of priority. If you're going to implement a ban wave, you're going to sift the data looking for the strongest candidates to ban. *Part* of that data analysis *might* include the activity datamined to occur between different login sessions that appear to be the result of account sharing. So if all you did was log into someone else's account and moved them and then logged out, there's a decent probability you might not show up in their analysis reports.
Then again, you might. You might not be a high priority target, but if you become a target of opportunity you might get banned regardless. The police usually do not stake out intersections looking for jaywalkers to ticket, but if you happen to jaywalk right in front of a cop coincidentally, they might decide to stop you and ticket you, even if you are not their highest priority task on that day. Maybe all you did was log in and move someone. But maybe someone else in your alliance piloted another account, putting the entire alliance under the spotlight for further analysis. Maybe several other officers also logged in and only moved that guy, but it was the cluster of many different logins that was detected.
And you never, ever know with certainty, no matter how much you think you know, if the person you are logging into and moving is themselves doing ban-worthy things besides. If they catch him, they catch you too. And because account sharing is prohibited, if you log into an account that is modding, Kabam is allowed to make the presumption that everyone who logs into that account is culpable for the misdeeds of that account. In other words, if an account is using mods and you log into it, you ARE the modder.
The message has always been that Account Sharing is against the rules. It doesn't work that way. You can't have acceptance for AQ and not War. It's not allowed, and calling it a lesser offense for AQ is encouraging it in all areas. It's equally as detrimental. Neither are allowed.
I’m a British teacher working in China. My IP Address is all over the place because I need to be in contact with my family on messaging applications via VPN. I have a feeling that I’m going to be banned because it’s going to look as if I’m sharing my account.
They need to be consistent with their punishments across the board if they are going to follow through with this. Otherwise be transparent with whatever tiered system they possibly have...
I’m not advocating anyone to break the rules, but I don’t think the alliances occasionally moving other people in AQ are the target of the ban hammer.
It is probably a question of priority. If you're going to implement a ban wave, you're going to sift the data looking for the strongest candidates to ban. *Part* of that data analysis *might* include the activity datamined to occur between different login sessions that appear to be the result of account sharing. So if all you did was log into someone else's account and moved them and then logged out, there's a decent probability you might not show up in their analysis reports.
Then again, you might. You might not be a high priority target, but if you become a target of opportunity you might get banned regardless. The police usually do not stake out intersections looking for jaywalkers to ticket, but if you happen to jaywalk right in front of a cop coincidentally, they might decide to stop you and ticket you, even if you are not their highest priority task on that day. Maybe all you did was log in and move someone. But maybe someone else in your alliance piloted another account, putting the entire alliance under the spotlight for further analysis. Maybe several other officers also logged in and only moved that guy, but it was the cluster of many different logins that was detected.
And you never, ever know with certainty, no matter how much you think you know, if the person you are logging into and moving is themselves doing ban-worthy things besides. If they catch him, they catch you too. And because account sharing is prohibited, if you log into an account that is modding, Kabam is allowed to make the presumption that everyone who logs into that account is culpable for the misdeeds of that account. In other words, if an account is using mods and you log into it, you ARE the modder.
That's the risk you take.
Those are good points and analogies. I do think though Kabam will be monitoring alliances more so based on players reports rather than active data mining analysis. Like if they receive a bunch of reports/tickets saying an alliance is piloting, they will individually look into the actions of that alliance. Rather than scanning all login information and taking action on the top violators. This is just my opinion of course and no one knows their method but Kabam.
But either way, for someone/some alliance to receive punishment I believe there would need to be clear evidence that someone else logged into their account to do multiple fights in AW. And this was a common occurrence for them and multiple violatiors in the alliance for penalties against that alliance. We will all have to wait and see what the first action taken looks like and how hard they crackdown on users. But I do think they understand the time requirements of playing this game and will have leniency to the non-AW offenders.
how can you just now do this? Why arent you trying to eliminate the people who already pilot there way to the top to get unfair advantage in season 1 and are heading with those rewards INTO the new season?
Welp, if it took this long to parse the data to see inconsistencies, we could just go to a war a month and wait for the data police to check everyone's stories.
Account Sharing is against our terms of service, and always has been. We understand that this might come as a shock to some players, but this is something that many players have been discussing since the beginning of Alliance Wars Season 1, if not long before. It is not fair to allow some players to break the Terms of Service, while others that are playing legitimately are at a disadvantage.
You are allowed to have more than one account, and as long as you are playing your own accounts, you do not have to worry. If you're not breaking the Terms of Service here, you shouldn't be worried.
Why dont you just ban the modder alliance sitting on the 7th rank first?
We do not discuss ongoing investigations or actions taken on others accounts.
That's not really a discussion point, per se, but a suggestion I suspect.
What if you use multiple devices? how would that work? I go from tablet, to phone, to ipod, to another tablet lol....
Multiple devices and multiple accounts are allowed. You just can't play on an account that doesn't belong to you
Yes, but what I'm saying is how can they tell the difference between having multiple devices and account sharing?
"egregious" location disparity. 30 guys in a room all trade phones with each other and play each other's accounts? Not egregious. Login from VPN, then Australia, then VPN, then Turkey in the same hour? Egregious...
What if you use multiple devices? how would that work? I go from tablet, to phone, to ipod, to another tablet lol....
Multiple devices and multiple accounts are allowed. You just can't play on an account that doesn't belong to you
Yes, but what I'm saying is how can they tell the difference between having multiple devices and account sharing?
"egregious" location disparity. 30 guys in a room all trade phones with each other and play each other's accounts? Not egregious. Login from VPN, then Australia, then VPN, then Turkey in the same hour? Egregious...
If I gave you my login information and you logged into my account on your phone while sitting in my kitchen, if Kabam wanted to they would be able to detect that fact instantly.
I’m a British teacher working in China. My IP Address is all over the place because I need to be in contact with my family on messaging applications via VPN. I have a feeling that I’m going to be banned because it’s going to look as if I’m sharing my account.
Should I be worried?
Mistakes can always happen, but I wouldn't worry. I log into multiple accounts on multiple devices in multiple locations and I travel, and I'm not particularly worried. Also, Kabam addressed the issue of using VPNs in the past and they've said that VPN usage is allowed. And most importantly, no one looks at (or should be looking at) routable IP address to determine account or device sharing. There are much better and more reliable ways of doing that.
My IP address changes constantly just sitting at my desk when I'm on cellular internet.
It's way too little too late. Plus members of kabam have informed some of the whales they are safe from any penalties.
Highly unlikely. What I mean is, it is highly unlikely you could know that. Even if Kabam made that decision, which is unlikely, and even if they actually communicated that to players, which is even more unlikely, there's no way they would do so in a way that third parties could confirm it.
No Kabam game developer could make such a decision, because game developers do not operate the game and have no control over things like account bans. This would have to be either an executive decision or an operational decision. Whether it was decided by an operations manager or a Kabam executive, they would never communicate that fact through rank and file Kabam employees, because that kind of thing always leaks out.
This sounds more like what some people simply assume must be happening, and not something that could actually have been observed to be happening.
Comments
The heck it done matter what map it is. Some people are better at the game and have been playing longer. The harder things are, the more time they take. Kabam needs to change their "rules" to something that makes sense. Or they could focus on actually making the game work good instead of hagging people about something that is harmless. I completely agree with no account sharing in war or doing someone's personal quest. AQ account sharing should be allowed though. The rewards aren't great anyways, and it won't make much of a difference if someone controls an account. If they are able to monitor who is playing, they should be able to monitor what is being played.
Then don't! Jeez, people, the reasoning is totally backwards.
Can't complete map 6? Map 6 not for you. End of story. No cheating of any kind allowed. Play map 5.
What if all the piloters formed an alliance together? They all have enough time to play, so nobody will be held back. I am sure they won't have to worry about staying at the top.
And the weaker players, the piloted, can form an alliance too and play at their level. I am sure they won't get the rewards they used to, but frankly, they don't deserve them!
For example, I have an ally member that doesn't really know how to use her nebula as she should be used. I do not have a nebula. So said ally member has allowed me to make a video on how to use nebula using her account.
Are you gonna ban me for trying to help someone understand how to use a champ in a fight simply because I do not have that champ and need to use her account to make the video?
I'm not sure why you would believe that. I can't say with any certainty what Kabam knows or does, but I can say with certainty that any iOS developer worth anything could tell you there are lots of ways of telling the difference. Some of those techniques are even mandatory to implement in order to get your app approved by Apple in the first place, so it is literally impossible to write a game like MCOC and be unaware of them.
If piloting doesn't make much of a difference, then there's no reason to risk doing it.
In fact, piloting happens because it makes a huge difference, and the rewards are currently evaluated to be worth the risk of disciplinary action.
Answer these questions: Did your ally mate provide you with the log in information for their account? Did you then log on to their account on your device? If yes, then yes that's account sharing and as such a violation of the ToS. You risk a ban if you do that. What you do when sharing is irrelevant.
This is not how this works. IP address has nothing to do with determining you are account sharing, or exonerating you from account sharing. This is a rumor amplified by ignorance and misunderstanding.
There are lots of ways to do this, and because Kabam isn't discussing the technical details I'm not going to articulate them in an in-depth manner either, but here's just one thing to make mental note of. When you write an app for Apple iOS, in order to get it approved you must follow their policies for device sharing. One of them explicitly states that if you charge for you app you must not charge twice to load the app on multiple devices owned by the same person. Apple specifically provides iOS APIs to allow an app developer to be able to tell when an app is being used on multiple devices owned by the same person to specifically satisfy this requirement.
Nobody uses IP addresses to identify device or app usage any more. That died in the mid 90s with the rise of digital cellular networks. Cellular network operators do not consistently honor geolocation for their subnets.
At some point, I wonder if it would be better to stop correcting this bit of misinformation and let the people who believe it get caught and banned. At the moment, I would prefer to warn people instead.
Notice in their message they specify Alliance War only. It seems like to them the biggest offenders of account sharing is piloting in Alliance Wars. That was the only game mode they mentioned and sounds like the biggest target of their crackdown on fairness.
Of course they’re never going to state outright “Account sharing in AQ is okay” but they didn’t bother to acknowledge it in their message. Their stand on account sharing has always been “Account sharing of any kind is not allowed”. I’m not advocating anyone to break the rules, but I don’t think the alliances occasionally moving other people in AQ are the target of the ban hammer. They also specified the punishments in order: war rating reduction, season score deductionion, account bans. It’s pretty clear what the message is.
It is probably a question of priority. If you're going to implement a ban wave, you're going to sift the data looking for the strongest candidates to ban. *Part* of that data analysis *might* include the activity datamined to occur between different login sessions that appear to be the result of account sharing. So if all you did was log into someone else's account and moved them and then logged out, there's a decent probability you might not show up in their analysis reports.
Then again, you might. You might not be a high priority target, but if you become a target of opportunity you might get banned regardless. The police usually do not stake out intersections looking for jaywalkers to ticket, but if you happen to jaywalk right in front of a cop coincidentally, they might decide to stop you and ticket you, even if you are not their highest priority task on that day. Maybe all you did was log in and move someone. But maybe someone else in your alliance piloted another account, putting the entire alliance under the spotlight for further analysis. Maybe several other officers also logged in and only moved that guy, but it was the cluster of many different logins that was detected.
And you never, ever know with certainty, no matter how much you think you know, if the person you are logging into and moving is themselves doing ban-worthy things besides. If they catch him, they catch you too. And because account sharing is prohibited, if you log into an account that is modding, Kabam is allowed to make the presumption that everyone who logs into that account is culpable for the misdeeds of that account. In other words, if an account is using mods and you log into it, you ARE the modder.
That's the risk you take.
Should I be worried?
Kind Regards
Lyngate
Those are good points and analogies. I do think though Kabam will be monitoring alliances more so based on players reports rather than active data mining analysis. Like if they receive a bunch of reports/tickets saying an alliance is piloting, they will individually look into the actions of that alliance. Rather than scanning all login information and taking action on the top violators. This is just my opinion of course and no one knows their method but Kabam.
But either way, for someone/some alliance to receive punishment I believe there would need to be clear evidence that someone else logged into their account to do multiple fights in AW. And this was a common occurrence for them and multiple violatiors in the alliance for penalties against that alliance. We will all have to wait and see what the first action taken looks like and how hard they crackdown on users. But I do think they understand the time requirements of playing this game and will have leniency to the non-AW offenders.
Welp, if it took this long to parse the data to see inconsistencies, we could just go to a war a month and wait for the data police to check everyone's stories.
That's not really a discussion point, per se, but a suggestion I suspect.
"egregious" location disparity. 30 guys in a room all trade phones with each other and play each other's accounts? Not egregious. Login from VPN, then Australia, then VPN, then Turkey in the same hour? Egregious...
If I gave you my login information and you logged into my account on your phone while sitting in my kitchen, if Kabam wanted to they would be able to detect that fact instantly.
Mistakes can always happen, but I wouldn't worry. I log into multiple accounts on multiple devices in multiple locations and I travel, and I'm not particularly worried. Also, Kabam addressed the issue of using VPNs in the past and they've said that VPN usage is allowed. And most importantly, no one looks at (or should be looking at) routable IP address to determine account or device sharing. There are much better and more reliable ways of doing that.
My IP address changes constantly just sitting at my desk when I'm on cellular internet.
Where are you getting that information?
Highly unlikely. What I mean is, it is highly unlikely you could know that. Even if Kabam made that decision, which is unlikely, and even if they actually communicated that to players, which is even more unlikely, there's no way they would do so in a way that third parties could confirm it.
No Kabam game developer could make such a decision, because game developers do not operate the game and have no control over things like account bans. This would have to be either an executive decision or an operational decision. Whether it was decided by an operations manager or a Kabam executive, they would never communicate that fact through rank and file Kabam employees, because that kind of thing always leaks out.
This sounds more like what some people simply assume must be happening, and not something that could actually have been observed to be happening.