@ Little-Juances
That was kinda harsh. Concidering not eveyone is just sitting on 4K CE to unbind and sell something, more often then not the person you're trading with is going to need some CE upfront to unbind. After all, the reason most people are selling something 4 or 5* is because they NEED money, not because the HAVE money.

I was scammed on more than 10x that once. It was justified because I crafted a Decon and that's apparently a waste of energy. Do I care much? No. It's a game. Besides, I'm fortunate enough as it is and I'd have millions if I cared about money but I don't because getting stuff is a lot more fun.

But obviously, money isn't important! I mean, Nick said so when OOO hid it in the Inventory! If OOO says money's not important it's gotta be true, right? Right?

Save your time: OOO *clearly* is not against scammers. Examples:

- On the web site there is written that you can't complain for "wrong trades" (that's the way they call it). I don't know how they could think about such rule, since the majority of scams are exactly wrong trades.

- They remove the names of the scammy players from the forum. As if they don't deserve all the hate possible.

- I got scammed once because of a bug of the trade window. Answer by support: "you should've sent the complain so we could investigate more on the chat". Of course I did it immediately and on our chat there was clearly written the terms of the trade. Of course nothing happened.

- In the rare event they actually do something, a) they don't refund you; b) they don't tell you what action is taken against the scammy guy (I personally assume they don't do anything).

- Trade could be expanded in such a way that unbinding fee could be paid by the buyer at the same time of the trade. This way, trades could be "safe" (this is the word they use) even if the item is bound.

I don't know if they really think that we believe to all the reasons they wrote on the support wiki page. Because it's ridiculous.

Hi!

I'd like to address some of the concerns stated above. Please be aware that all of my statements are general and have no bearing on the specific incident described by the OP.

With regards to "wrong trades", the trades being referred to here are ones in which a player accidentally puts the wrong item in and the other player wasn't paying attention, or trades that both players consented to at the time and one player later decides they don't like after all (for instance, if I gave you ten crowns, and you gave me an item, and I later decide that item was only worth five crowns, the GMs would not make you give me five crowns back.)

One of the reasons we don't allow "naming and shaming" (for any offense, not just scamming), is that it's entirely possible to lie. One of the cool things about Spiral Knights is that it does have a community who, largely, care about other people. Unfortunately, like any online game, it also has interpersonal disputes and hurt feelings. It's not unheard-of for players to want to "get revenge" on someone they feel has slighted them (or that they've broken up with, etc. - there are any number of reasons for hurt feelings) and attempt to tarnish their name and get them banned. The community at large, being caring folks, may then shun, harrass (maybe not as individuals, but getting angry messages from lots of people mounts up quickly) and generally make the game unfun for the person in question. The "naming and shaming" policy is not to protect scammers and other evildoers; it's to protect the innocents who might otherwise be perceived as such.

With regards to refunds, we never guarantee them. There are some situations where we can provide them (a search of the forums will show a few threads in which guilds were refunded in full or in part after someone cleaned out their storage, for instance), but only in cases where it's absolutely clear what happened/what the original deal was/etc. So no, unfortunately, folks who were scammed are often not provided with refunds. Submitting a complaint immediately is very important, because the quicker the complaint is submitted, the more likely the unalterable-and-therefore-neutral chat logs are to contain the details of the original agreement (or in some cases show the scammer saying that an item is magic and causes CE to fountain from the corpses of your enemies, or whatever).

It's also true that reporters are never told the outcome of their reports. This is because of our privacy policy, which blankets everything to do with your account. We would never give the details of your account to anyone but you. Nobody else has the right to know what your support history, payment history, discipline history, e-mail, alternate knight names, etc. are. Those details are confidential. Telling people "hey, so-and-so was banned!" would violate that privacy, and that's not cool. We also occasionally allow banned players to return to the game. We realize that people make mistakes, grow, learn, and change. Someone doing something bad two years ago may not do that thing again, so we're happy to hear them out. I don't know what the success rate is on "people successfully being let back into the game, having convinced us that they're not going to violate the terms of service again", but I do know it's non-zero. While not innocent as in my name-and-shaming example, we still don't want them to be harassed. We do occasionally ban people by mistake (I've clicked the wrong account and hit the ban button myself. Cronus pointed it out and then laughed at me while I sobbed and scrambled to undo it). We catch it pretty quickly, and we definitely apologize afterwards, but imagine how much worse it would be if we'd told someone that that knight was banned. Reputation's intangible, but it's still a thing - you can probably all name players you'd trust more, based on hearsay.

We do absolutely ban scammers when there is evidence that they have been scamming. I'm not sure if actual numbers (i.e. "Hey, we banned X accounts for scamming this week!") are something I can give you, but I've banned scammers, plural, today myself. I was able to do so because of timely complaints that were sent in. I hate banning people. Telling someone that they can no longer share in a fun activity that I really love sucks. While I'm only speaking for myself here, I'm reasonably sure that's a sentiment my co-workers share. Scammers suck more, though.

I realize this is only words - it's up to you whether or not you want to believe them. I've got no reason to lie to you* though. I suppose there's company image, but honestly, "Three Rings values the privacy of its members and is unable to guarantee refunds when players choose to make deals that don't make use of the built-in safeguards against scamming and get hurt by jerks**" damages us much less than "Three Rings has customer service people who lie to their players." Even if it wasn't for ethics, honesty works much better, I'm sure you'll agree.

*About anything game-related, anyway. My parents didn't actually name me Hyperion, I'm lying about my name! Gasp, shock, horror. I'm reasonably sure this is a mistruth we're sharing in, though. ;)
** And choosing not to use our trade system to make completed trades where everything being traded is traded in one transaction - which is what we recommend - does not make the jerk any less of a jerk, or the person who got ripped off any less ripped off.

Because screenshots are easy to fake.

I have never seen a fake screenshot that actually looks legit. Especially in SK. Easy to make a fake, yes. Easy to make perfect, no. And OOO (assuming the person filed a report) can simply check the dialogue to confirm. So screenie + matching report dialog capture = pretty hard to fake. Especially when they track the flow of energy through an account no matter from purchase, trades, or market.

I have a Perfect Mask Of Seerus, now granted it's not in great demand, but being an honest hard working grinder, I don't have 4k in CE right now to unbind. I am asking for X in CE 4k up front to unbind, hell at this point I could do with 2k (well in a few weeks when I have 2k lol)

Point of the above is, situations like this make it hard for me to sell. I have been here 3 yrs, but there is no record of that except maybe in the forums (when I signed up?) so no one in game knows I have been around and I wouldn't all of a sudden go "rogue".

I am sorry for the OPs loss, if he/she was scammed, I hope he gets taken care of, but I just wanted to put in my 2 cents that sometimes people are honest, and really just need the CE to unbind. We can't assume that its a scam till it happens.

Most of us are good honest people, but sometimes there are bad apples.

BTW, great post Hyp. I think it clears up a lot of things nicely (from other threads and other situations as well)

preeeetty sure that no 14 year old child will spend 6 hours trying to fake the image or has the required knowledge to perfectly fake it. 90% of the time i would say, it's incredibly easy to find an obvious sh00p'

and EVEN THERE (cause I don't know why you made that weak argument)
Three rings keeps a good chunk of chat logs, they just very RARELY act on it, I don't care about the privacy policy, it is archaic and secretive, if I get scammed by someone (and believe me, I have, I've even been solicited by a player whom I will not name to legit buy "adult pictures" from) I will not go any more in detail, Nothing happened to the latter person, who by the way, was doing it to everyone in the haven I was in.

In any case, I either deserve to have knowledge that said person has been dealt with accordingly and or my money refunded, many times this game's staff ignore blatant scams and say they can't do anything about it, many times I've also sent screenshots, screenshots sent within 10 minutes at most from the date i took them, chat logs would confirm that but I think gm's either mostly don't care or are severely understaffed, which Is why i come to this idea.

Why can't three rings, offer some sort of observer role to well reputed players? I'm not talking about a role with any real power, but why can't you have a few trustworthy players filter out these scams and send to gm's for further review if needed? We had a great brother duo that actually gave a crud about this community and when they tried to do anything to advance it, you banned one of them and shunned the other into quitting.

This is one of the main things i hate about spiral knights, I run a community for a seemingly dead game, only 1000-2000 people remaining, I never had a problem taking care of issues with less resources, why can't you? Is it the money?

Why can a bunch of 14 year olds be allowed to do anything while gm's stay idle? I'll give one last example, yesterday i walked in the french havens for the first time in months, because a scammer on my friend's account logged into spiral knights to send "free ce links to everyone" to scam them through a phisher.

YOU DO NOTHING ABOUT THIS PLAYER, who was online, in game when i had already sent a message to the gm in this topic who by the way, was idle for 20 minutes at the time and never answered me back, which is a shame cause usually hes incredibly fast (so i don't blame it on him AT ALL) but even when i use zone and trade chat to message that this player is on, I have a very good idea of who this scammer's real account is, I've talked to him for an hour yesterday, he was trying to discredit the hacking and make me of all people look like the scammer (quite counter-productive if that were true really) but to no avail, no response, no quick gm nosing in, not even an undercover or quick check, no acknowledgement, at least you sent a pm to all french players saying to never give their username and password away, but as per three rings "privacy policy" You didn't bother to mention the domain in question or the fact that this domain was hacked by turkish hacker, slyhacker who then gave it away on a hacker forum where a french speaking child took it, I can pretty much say beyond the shadow of a doubt that the guy is from quebec by the way he speaks, being a quebecer myself, it's quite easy.

I got hours of chat logs to help the investigation, i did a-lot of search myself, but three rings will not do anything as it is inconvenient.

I get that you guys are busy but you guys are supposed to do your job, if you're understaffed, give my idea a whirl, it can't hurt.

^P.S If this posts gets me banned, i love you all.

They ban for false reporting? i doubt it

Around january of 2012 there was a girl giving CE anyone who join to her guild and since i didnt accept she wanted myself be banned, so instead giving people Ce to join her guild now she started to give CE to them if they reported me. also she reported with false stuff like i insulted her and things like that, but in the end she didnt get banned for false reporting.

So i doubt GM ban for false reports :S

@Sweet-Hope

A girl payed money just to report you? I hope she knows that if she gives too many false reports against you, she won't have proof since you didn't do anything in the chat log, she'll get banned for false reporting too much and for making a threat against you.

I've witnessed someone getting ISP banned because a player kept threatening players for money. If they didn't pay, he would send people to report him. My friend told me the story, but I don't want to go into further detail because it sounds very scary.