Gifting Badge Discussion [Merged Threads]

ctp1223 · March 2019

Kabam Miike said:

Doomsfist79 said:
Someone may have already asked.. but why not just ban the accounts found committing fraud.. unless they figure it's the entire community.. and that's why everyone is being affected..

This is much larger than just one player to player, and just banning the Accounts that we find guilty of it will not fix the issue. This is a much larger issue that we need to tackle, and this is the first step.

Could you possibly comment on how many people had gifting badges assigned to their accounts? An approximate number perhaps

Mastercris · March 2019

Come on guys, what else should they have done to stop this from happening? It’s the only way until they figure out a way to stop all these “top up” sites, all these bots, etc.
Miike wrote that they want to bring the badges back in the future as soon as they figured out a solution to the problem.

GroundedWisdom · March 2019

Fjolnir said:

GroundedWisdom said:

Fjolnir said:

GroundedWisdom said:

OKAYGang said:

BOSSXL said:
Let’s keep this real. Resource Mercs farm battle chips from arenas on multiple accounts and then sell resources to players at a huge discount. Usually half price. You get $100 worth of resources for $50 sent thru paypal or other source. This does not require sharing passwords or account info and was entirely within the rules of the competition and gifting badges. Most resource mercs we’re playing by the rules. Some may have been using arena bots and some may have been purchasing units from stolen Or fraudulent methods. It’s possible. But the real takeaway should be how many people were purchasing these resources and take notice. It shows your pricing for these items is too high.

You took steps to eliminate the resource drops for AQ. You created a conversion badge to compete with the mercs that join alliances, drop massive amounts of gold, battle chips and loyalty and then leave alliance. It was smart to offer the conversion badge and compete and provide better value. You should do the same thing with the resources from gifting. Slash the prices in half. Provide better value and you will not lose players by the thousands and possibly even gain new spending players and entice F2P players to open their wallets again.
That is smart decision.
This action effects blue collar players much more than any other segment. The whale alliances don’t really care about pricing. They don’t have to. This effect players willing to spend but not able to afford the pricing that you have set. I hope you take notice of this and make a move before the exodus.
True story bro.
I'm sorry, but nothing about that is true. Resource Mercs selling Resources for money is not, I repeat NOT, playing by the rules. It's actually illegal. Regardless of whether they Grinded for Units or not. The game is the digital property of Kabam. It is not for resale.
Blaming the prices for illegal and illicit behavior is about as irreverent as it comes, and shows anything but a conscience about stealing. People are responsible for their own choice to steal. It's not justified by the price of things. Children learn at a very early age, don't take what doesn't belong to you. For some reason, that doesn't stick.
That's not only the situation we are talking about. There is also Fraud happening that involves other people. No amount of gripe with the prices will make this behavior justifiable.
It's flat-out sad that people are so unconscionable that they don't consider other people or the ramifications of their actions. They don't care as long as they make a quick buck and stick it to Kabam. Only, they stick it to themselves and everyone else in the end, and this is the direct result of that.
It is not Kabam's fault it's come to this. It's people who played the system like a well-oiled flute.
“Resource Mercs selling Resources for money is not, I repeat NOT, playing by the rules. It's actually illegal.”

I, for one, am glad that we have a legal expert on the forums, Mr Grounded Wisdom.

Can you please cite what law is being broken when someone purchases in game items from another’s person for $?

You have to be joking, right?
The part where Digital Copyrighted Property that belongs to Kabam is being sold for profit.
Reselling Items in the game is illegal. No one has ownership of said Items to sell them.
Honestly, that should be obvious. The fact that it's not makes me question many things.
Using your vast knowledge and legal expertise , I had asked if you can cite what law is being broken.

Read the Terms of Service closer, buds. That's not just flagrant wording. That's a Legal Contract.

Ebbtide · March 2019

I find it very concerning that these things always get 'discovered' at the end of the Alliance War Seasons. Like with Account Sharing/Piloting and Stolen/Fraudulent Units, the revelation by Kabam comes at the very end of the Season. While not exclusive to the top teams, the top teams overwhelmingly exploit these options, and gain the most from it. Some YouTubers even previously made videos admitting to it, with the same name in-game as their channel. We've seen repeat behavior from these players, and likely if you connected these exploits, you'd see the pattern of it connecting them frequently to the same players.

If we report it, Kabam should be able to take note of it. Sharing accounts, logging in from different devices, at different locations, or gaining rapid items from new, unconnected accounts that aren't friends or on a team with the recipient(s), or from gaining accounts that seem to constantly play Arena 24 hours a day, building excess Units that they then trade off to these 'strangers.'

What happens with the bot accounts? How can this be addressed? And, more importantly, what is going to be done against these cheaters? Alliance War removal? Will they miss out on the season rewards? Will they be banned? Those who used fraudulent units faced a week/weak suspension, allowing them a bye week off season. So where is the penalty?

It should be viewable to Kabam which accounts were bot accounts. How much they excessively played Arena and traded and to whom. Those buying items from the bots were likely using them in things like Variant, Act 6, and in Alliance Quest and Alliance War, as well as for refreshes in Arena. All modes could have been compromised. Arena scores could have been corrupted to prevent legitimate high scores from ranking for fighters. Alliance Wars could have cheating players stocking strong heals, revives and boosts at a discount, and the same with Alliance Quest, allowing them to breeze though fights without jeopardy (including Map 7). The same problems present with Variant and Act 6. Revives, heals and boosts are no concern if they were obtained at a black market discount, and hopefully this will be investigated especially for Legend runs for Act 6.

So another Alliance War Season ends. Once again, cheating and corruption occurs in the community, and legitimate players are left waiting for what Kabam will or won't do to these repeat offenders.

liquidkarma · March 2019

food for thought,
there *are* grey areas.
for example, used record stores or used bookstores.
digital media changed everything, truly.
but you can still sell your physical product to used stores like those. and they are allowed to re-sell what you sold them as well, but neither party has any ownership of the copyright, but it is legal.
even libraries are allowed to sell books if they decide to take them out of circulation.
furthermore, it is also legal to sell items that say "not for resale." i am talking about things like Advance Copies of music albums and books. they are required to be stamped with a not for resale when they are sent out to reviewers or buyers, but once that title has been released to the general public, it is legal to sell them to the general public.
not sure if any of that is relevant, i am just mentioning it because there are so many exceptions to things. laws are an absolute mess.
fwiw, i live in california so maybe our laws are different, i dont know.

GroundedWisdom · March 2019

It's up to the company if they want to pursue it. Piracy, for example, has been huge since the days of Napster, even before. Eventually, people had enough and started shutting those providers down. It's still taking place now, both with downloading and streaming, and in both cases, it's a cat-and-mouse game. They shut them down, they fine them, they lay charges, and a new Proxy shows up. Nevertheless, it's illegal.

DNA3000 · March 2019

GroundedWisdom said:

Fjolnir said:

GroundedWisdom said:

OKAYGang said:

BOSSXL said:
Let’s keep this real. Resource Mercs farm battle chips from arenas on multiple accounts and then sell resources to players at a huge discount. Usually half price. You get $100 worth of resources for $50 sent thru paypal or other source. This does not require sharing passwords or account info and was entirely within the rules of the competition and gifting badges. Most resource mercs we’re playing by the rules. Some may have been using arena bots and some may have been purchasing units from stolen Or fraudulent methods. It’s possible. But the real takeaway should be how many people were purchasing these resources and take notice. It shows your pricing for these items is too high.

You took steps to eliminate the resource drops for AQ. You created a conversion badge to compete with the mercs that join alliances, drop massive amounts of gold, battle chips and loyalty and then leave alliance. It was smart to offer the conversion badge and compete and provide better value. You should do the same thing with the resources from gifting. Slash the prices in half. Provide better value and you will not lose players by the thousands and possibly even gain new spending players and entice F2P players to open their wallets again.
That is smart decision.
This action effects blue collar players much more than any other segment. The whale alliances don’t really care about pricing. They don’t have to. This effect players willing to spend but not able to afford the pricing that you have set. I hope you take notice of this and make a move before the exodus.
True story bro.
I'm sorry, but nothing about that is true. Resource Mercs selling Resources for money is not, I repeat NOT, playing by the rules. It's actually illegal. Regardless of whether they Grinded for Units or not. The game is the digital property of Kabam. It is not for resale.
Blaming the prices for illegal and illicit behavior is about as irreverent as it comes, and shows anything but a conscience about stealing. People are responsible for their own choice to steal. It's not justified by the price of things. Children learn at a very early age, don't take what doesn't belong to you. For some reason, that doesn't stick.
That's not only the situation we are talking about. There is also Fraud happening that involves other people. No amount of gripe with the prices will make this behavior justifiable.
It's flat-out sad that people are so unconscionable that they don't consider other people or the ramifications of their actions. They don't care as long as they make a quick buck and stick it to Kabam. Only, they stick it to themselves and everyone else in the end, and this is the direct result of that.
It is not Kabam's fault it's come to this. It's people who played the system like a well-oiled flute.
“Resource Mercs selling Resources for money is not, I repeat NOT, playing by the rules. It's actually illegal.”

I, for one, am glad that we have a legal expert on the forums, Mr Grounded Wisdom.

Can you please cite what law is being broken when someone purchases in game items from another’s person for $?

You have to be joking, right?
The part where Digital Copyrighted Property that belongs to Kabam is being sold for profit.
Reselling Items in the game is illegal. No one has ownership of said Items to sell them.
Honestly, that should be obvious. The fact that it's not makes me question many things.

Actually, this conduct is not illegal, in the sense of being a criminal act. It violates the terms of service. But you can't sell items that belong to Kabam, because you can't sell items. "Can't" not as in "prohibited" but as in "literally impossible." No one "owns" an Odin's worth of units or the items those units can acquire, and they can't transfer that ownership either. Colloquially, we say we buy things or other people sell them, but that's just convenience. If I pay a merc to donate an Odin's worth of resources to my alliance or gift them to my account, I'm paying for a service, because at the end of the transaction I still don't own anything, and thus neither was anything stolen.

It is within Kabam's rights to prohibit this activity, and they can take action against accounts that violate that rule. You could even argue this is a contract violation. But the agreement between players and Kabam is a civil matter, and breaking any of those terms requires civil remedy. There's no specific crime per se in this case (unless you want to argue unauthorized use of a computer system, and good luck with that one).

Plus, the notion of "digital copyrighted property" is a bit jumbled here. Copyright protects intellectual property, not tangible property. If I break into a Target in the middle of the night and steal a bunch of CDs, I have stolen tangible property - the CDs - from Target. I have not stolen the "digital copyrighted property" burned into them in the legal sense. The copyright owner themselves have no loss or rights violated there. This relates to the difference between the medium, the expression, and the idea. One can be stolen. One can have authors rights violated. One can't be protected at all.

GroundedWisdom · March 2019

DNA3000 said:

GroundedWisdom said:

Fjolnir said:

GroundedWisdom said:

OKAYGang said:

BOSSXL said:
Let’s keep this real. Resource Mercs farm battle chips from arenas on multiple accounts and then sell resources to players at a huge discount. Usually half price. You get $100 worth of resources for $50 sent thru paypal or other source. This does not require sharing passwords or account info and was entirely within the rules of the competition and gifting badges. Most resource mercs we’re playing by the rules. Some may have been using arena bots and some may have been purchasing units from stolen Or fraudulent methods. It’s possible. But the real takeaway should be how many people were purchasing these resources and take notice. It shows your pricing for these items is too high.

You took steps to eliminate the resource drops for AQ. You created a conversion badge to compete with the mercs that join alliances, drop massive amounts of gold, battle chips and loyalty and then leave alliance. It was smart to offer the conversion badge and compete and provide better value. You should do the same thing with the resources from gifting. Slash the prices in half. Provide better value and you will not lose players by the thousands and possibly even gain new spending players and entice F2P players to open their wallets again.
That is smart decision.
This action effects blue collar players much more than any other segment. The whale alliances don’t really care about pricing. They don’t have to. This effect players willing to spend but not able to afford the pricing that you have set. I hope you take notice of this and make a move before the exodus.
True story bro.
I'm sorry, but nothing about that is true. Resource Mercs selling Resources for money is not, I repeat NOT, playing by the rules. It's actually illegal. Regardless of whether they Grinded for Units or not. The game is the digital property of Kabam. It is not for resale.
Blaming the prices for illegal and illicit behavior is about as irreverent as it comes, and shows anything but a conscience about stealing. People are responsible for their own choice to steal. It's not justified by the price of things. Children learn at a very early age, don't take what doesn't belong to you. For some reason, that doesn't stick.
That's not only the situation we are talking about. There is also Fraud happening that involves other people. No amount of gripe with the prices will make this behavior justifiable.
It's flat-out sad that people are so unconscionable that they don't consider other people or the ramifications of their actions. They don't care as long as they make a quick buck and stick it to Kabam. Only, they stick it to themselves and everyone else in the end, and this is the direct result of that.
It is not Kabam's fault it's come to this. It's people who played the system like a well-oiled flute.
“Resource Mercs selling Resources for money is not, I repeat NOT, playing by the rules. It's actually illegal.”

I, for one, am glad that we have a legal expert on the forums, Mr Grounded Wisdom.

Can you please cite what law is being broken when someone purchases in game items from another’s person for $?

You have to be joking, right?
The part where Digital Copyrighted Property that belongs to Kabam is being sold for profit.
Reselling Items in the game is illegal. No one has ownership of said Items to sell them.
Honestly, that should be obvious. The fact that it's not makes me question many things.
Actually, this conduct is not illegal, in the sense of being a criminal act. It violates the terms of service. But you can't sell items that belong to Kabam, because you can't sell items. "Can't" not as in "prohibited" but as in "literally impossible." No one "owns" an Odin's worth of units or the items those units can acquire, and they can't transfer that ownership either. Colloquially, we say we buy things or other people sell them, but that's just convenience. If I pay a merc to donate an Odin's worth of resources to my alliance or gift them to my account, I'm paying for a service, because at the end of the transaction I still don't own anything, and thus neither was anything stolen.

It is within Kabam's rights to prohibit this activity, and they can take action against accounts that violate that rule. You could even argue this is a contract violation. But the agreement between players and Kabam is a civil matter, and breaking any of those terms requires civil remedy. There's no specific crime per se in this case (unless you want to argue unauthorized use of a computer system, and good luck with that one).

Plus, the notion of "digital copyrighted property" is a bit jumbled here. Copyright protects intellectual property, not tangible property. If I break into a Target in the middle of the night and steal a bunch of CDs, I have stolen tangible property - the CDs - from Target. I have not stolen the "digital copyrighted property" burned into them in the legal sense. The copyright owner themselves have no loss or rights violated there. This relates to the difference between the medium, the expression, and the idea. One can be stolen. One can have authors rights violated. One can't be protected at all.

See, I disagree. I believe they could 100% pursue it should they choose. Someone is not just selling their services. They're selling their services providing discounted MCOC wares.

liquidkarma · March 2019

i don't care, i'm free to play aside from a gifting badge and a few deals here and there, i have no real vested interest.
except for the golden rule, i guess i'm upset that the compensation package was on the measly side.
my last comment was i thought kind of in line with the idea that we are leasing our champs from kabam.
maybe i am an anarchist lol, but i think that humans goofed with the internet. physical media was just so much simpler. none of this cognitive dissonance required. when you bought something, you could do whatever you wanted with it. many of my friends still have books or albums i loaned them years ago.
digital media has isolated humans.
damn i miss board games.

DNA3000 · March 2019

Mr_Holl87 said:

Lormif said:

Dshu said:

Lormif said:

Drooped2 said:

GroundedWisdom said:
To be fair, I understand that people are upset. I'm not trying to snub them off. I'm just explaining what's going on so people understand. This was necessary. People were being scammed and frauded. That goes beyond just the monetary value in a multitude of ways.
Correct I bought a gifting badge and got scammed because I dont have it.

Fixing fraud by committing fraud? That's a new solution for sure
This is not fraud, it is hardly even a bait and switch since the gifting badge had a value of 0
If the badge had a value of 0 why wasn't it available in game for purchase with units or added to all unit offers. It appears to be valued at 30 dollars since that is the only way to get it
It is not valued at $30, 850 units is. As an added bonus you could get the free gifting badge. You get $30 value from the units and a FREE gifting badge.

You still don't get it. The badge could ONLY be purchased through the $30 unit bundle. There was no other way to purchase it. Not a separate real world cash offer, not with units, not in game gold, not loyalty or battle chips. Literally no other way to obtain it but buy spending 30 real world dollars. It WAS valued at $30. PERIOD.

People keep saying this like it matters. Kabam has no OBLIGATION to sell you the badge, or anything else. If they choose to give it away to people who purchase a specific unit package, that is their right. The fact that you had no other way to get the badge is immaterial. You had two choices: buy the unit package, and become one of the players that gets the badge for free. Or don't buy the unit package, and be one of the players that doesn't get the badge. You don't get to say, I want the badge, only people who buy the $30 unit package gets the badge, so I will "buy the badge" for $30 and that means Kabam is selling it for $30, because I say so.

As a business operator, I have the right to give anything away to anyone I want, for any reason I want. My customers have no right to demand that I sell that thing. If I choose to give it away to customers that buy a certain product or service, that is my right. No one gets to tell me that I "actually" sold it. I actually did no such thing, and no one else's opinion matters but mine as the seller.

GroundedWisdom · March 2019

There's a common misconception of a loophole that you can't sell what you don't own, so it falls under the "providing services" category, but what's missed is it falls under Racketeering.

DNA3000 · March 2019

GroundedWisdom said:
Also, Flagging every comment I make isn't going to make a difference.

Well, whoever decided to flag every one of my posts in this thread as spam made a difference. They compelled Kabam to reread all of my posts. I couldn't do a better job making my posts more prominent to Kabam if I bolded them all and put a dozen exclamation points in them.

The thing about the marketplace of ideas is that the only effective weapons are actually ideas. It must be terrible to realize the only thing they think grants them some power is actually less than useless.

GroundedWisdom · March 2019

Now, I agree with DNA that these things are handled in-house, by Civil means, most probably. However, I think there would most definitely be grounds for a case, given enough effort.

GroundedWisdom · March 2019

DNA3000 said:

GroundedWisdom said:
Also, Flagging every comment I make isn't going to make a difference.
Well, whoever decided to flag every one of my posts in this thread as spam made a difference. They compelled Kabam to reread all of my posts. I couldn't do a better job making my posts more prominent to Kabam if I bolded them all and put a dozen exclamation points in them.

The thing about the marketplace of ideas is that the only effective weapons are actually ideas. It must be terrible to realize the only thing they think grants them some power is actually less than useless.

Good point. I'm not really bothered by it. I just wanted to point out the fact that it has no personal effect on me, if that was the goal. Lol.

Klahador · March 2019

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/profile/Kabam Miike
If the badge have no value and we paid for a unit pack
Then you use fake marketing to make us buy
You offer a permanent badge with it and then you took it back

DNA3000 · March 2019

Drooped2 said:
This is a similiar case you cant resell other peoples copywriter content without permission

The ReDigi case doesn't apply here, but more importantly it doesn't actually say that. The summary you're quoting says that the court ruled the first sale doctrine doesn't apply to digital media, but the court actually ruled something more subtle than that. In Capitol v ReDigi the court ruled that ReDigi couldn't "resell" the digital music because doing so required making another copy of the music which the copyright owner didn't authorize. In other words, if I buy a song and download it from iTunes, that makes a copy of the song. This copy is authorized. If I then load that onto my iPhone, that is another copy of the song and that is also authorized. But when I decide to sell that song to a company like ReDigi, I have to upload that song onto their servers. That is *another* copy, and that copy is not authorized by the seller, since that copy is being made not for my own use. Since that copy is unauthorized, ReDigi cannot then legally sell it to someone else.

The court explicitly ruled that the first sale doctrine itself was still valid, because it stated that at least in theory, a person could resell a copyrighted work if they sold the original authorized copy. In other words, if I purchased a song from iTunes and when I did the very first downloaded copy I made was to a USB drive, and then I copied that to my iPhone and computer, I was legally entitled to sell the actual USB drive with the song on it to someone else. This is silly and impractical, but legal. To quote from the ruling:

Section 109(a) still protects a lawful owner's sale of her "particular" phonorecord, be it a computer hard disk, iPod, or other memory device onto which the file was originally downloaded. While this limitation clearly presents obstacles to resale that are different from, and perhaps even more onerous than, those involved in the resale of CDs and cassettes, the limitation is hardly absurd - the first sale doctrine was enacted in a world where the ease and speed of data transfer could not have been imagined.

The key words are "originally downloaded." The very first original download is, for the purposes of copyright and property rights, "my copy" the one I own. Every other copy is only an authorized additional copy that I don't "own." I can sell the first one, I can't sell any others, nor can I make any others for resale purposes.

None of this applies to what's being discussed regarding MCOC.

Terra · March 2019

I find it hilarious this turned from a outrage about the gift badge removal to people digging up old laws to people explaining the pshyche of man. I love this community

GroundedWisdom · March 2019

When you're talking about people sadistic enough to sell discounted Items for real-world money under the company's nose, and call themselves modern-day Svengalis, claiming it's all kosher, then I think it warrants a discussion about legality and Psychology. Lol.

cheifloaded · March 2019

Wakandas_Finest said:
To those asking for a refund of their $30 should kabam also take back the 850 units you received in addition to the gifting badge. The badge was an add on to the package. The units were not an add on to the badge.

You bought units The badge was a bonus.

Why is that so difficult to understand. No one purchased a badge for that amount without units.

Fugitive21 · March 2019

I love these type of arguments when everybody all of sudden is a lawyer, knows the law and an expert in it, knows what a business should and should not do, expects a refund from a purchase that was over a year or 2 ago.

What even more interesting most of the so called lawyers/legal posters are probably order takers working for Mcdonald's. It's hilarious.

GroundedWisdom · March 2019

Anyone else get the irony with that name? Lol.

RedEye1812_357 · March 2019

Thank u again for the information! In case my last post didn’t go through I really do appreciate it!

RedEye1812_357 · March 2019

Been scratching my head trying to figure out how these ppl could abuse gifting! Guess I need a little bit of a warped mind to get it but it’s not a huge loss I mostly just used it to help with my other accts so if it tightens up the game then heck yeah!!

Gifting Badge Discussion [Merged Threads]

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