Tag: Scam

Areal Is Back: Stalker Apocalypse Funding Part 2


wwf-project

S.T.A.L.K.E.R is back! Well, actually STALKER is back, and that is an important distinction to make. Earlier this year we saw a Kickstarter pop up for a spiritual sequel to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R franchise called Areal, by a company made up of former developers of said franchise. It didn’t take long for internet sleuths to figure out that the trailer for the game was shot in Unity, using nearly 100% stock assets from the Unity store, and that several screenshots and pieces of concept art were taken directly from Shadows of Chernobyl.

The whole controversy just got strange from then on. Rather than address the claims, West Games began blaming their criticism on everything from western bias, the information war between Ukraine and Russia, and Forbes being sold to the Chinese. They attacked news websites covering the game, and even attempted to dox trolls. Then someone at West Games thought it would be a good idea to post a letter of congratulations and support from Vladimir Putin, and not as a joke. The campaign was suspended by Kickstarter for suspicious activities, and West Games has since disappeared off the radar.

Now the game is back as STALKER Apocalypse on World Wide Funder, a crowdfunding website that seemingly popped up out of nowhere and is currently home to a library of funding efforts, all but a small handful of which are currently sitting at 0% funding. The funding website was just registered in September of this year, and incidentally has been registered anonymously through domainsbyproxy.com.

While the funding campaign goes to great lengths to differentiate between STALKER and S.T.A.L.K.E.R, likely for legal reasons, there are repeated uses of STALKER with objects that conveniently look like periods to make the logo look like an acronym.

wwf-projec

(Source: WWF)

Jagex Removes Dice In Runescape: Fights Scams


Back in 2009 when Jagex created the bag of dice, an item that allows a player to roll a set of dice and broadcast the results to his clan chat, they didn’t exactly anticipate that players would take their invitation of emergent gameplay and go ahead and turn the item into a tool for underground gambling systems run by shady, often fly-by-night operators. And when Jagex threw the nuclear switch and knocked all of the bots offline a few weeks ago, the number of players sitting at the grand exchange (and elsewhere) advertising their dicing services rose exponentially. Barring one shattered poodle, Jagex was forced to step in and proclaim that this is why we can’t have nice things, Pepper.

In response to the growing complaints over spam, scams, and shady business, the dice have been disabled and will be removed upon the next content update. Mod Mark commented:

Don’t gamble! There are too many people who will try to scam you or alter the odds in their favour. It’s never supported by JAGEX unless it’s about gameplay (like the duel arena). It’s likely that dice scammers will move over to another method of trying to scam you, so please, be vigilant and remember… if it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably a lie.

Of course, dicing will simply be replaced by another popular method, assuming one hasn’t already. Still, busting bots and blasting a scam method in succession is rather impressive, even if the latter was essentially Jagex’s own Frankenstein’s monster.

Frogster: Misleading, Possibly Fraudulent Facebook Ads


The Blokes At ROM

I was going about my daily Facebook activities (posting creepy Woody pictures), and lo and behold, I came across the following ad:

You’ll notice that this ad links to “secure.jagex.com,” and I quite honestly expected that this was either A.) a scam ad that managed to get through, or B.) Jagex was advertising on Facebook, which I don’t believe that they do (with my activities, I’ve seen almost every MMO developer that advertises on Facebook). So naturally I clicked on the ad, and was taken here


Really? Runes of Magic? Take one more look at the URL in the Facebook ad. “secure.jagex.com.” The screenshot in the ad appears to be from Runes of Magic, but someone who has never played either game wouldn’t know that. The ad does do a good job of tip-toeing around, but outright claims to be Jagex by inserting a false link to Jagex.com. This isn’t parody like Global Agenda’s ads or Rift’s “We’re not in Azeroth anymore.” This ad is explicitly misleading people into believing they are viewing an ad for a Jagex product, when really they are being directed to Runes of Magic.

Facebook is already aware of the fraudulent ad, and information has been forwarded to Jagex’s legal department. If this is a third party ad agency, Frogster needs to drop them before they wind up on the receiving end of a false advertising (and likely fraud) lawsuit. If this is Frogster’s doing, someone in the advertising office should be getting his pink slip, yesterday.

More on this story as it progresses.

Rules: Why Do They Need To Be Repeated?


Shouldn't need to be said.

While logging into Lord of the Rings Online several days ago, I noticed the above warning on the main page. Turbine is banning anyone who exploits a bug with the skirmish system, without warning (no slap on the wrist) or appeal. They can tell who is doing it, and are watching for those who attempt to slip by.

This, alongside other examples I will get to, continues to make me ask: Why do MMOers need to be constantly reminded not to break the rules? Are we that exploitative, selfish, greedy, or ignorant that we have to be reminded that exploiting the system, cheating in some fashion, or otherwise break the rules is, in fact, against the rules and is punishable? Or does this small minority just have the mindset that they are invincible, that they won’t get caught. To me, this is akin to a police officer who greets with “now you know stealing is against the law, we will arrest you if we catch you doing it,” to everyone walking down the street, because a couple unruly teens in the neighborhood decided to ransack and beat the tar out of one of the older gentleman’s house down the street.

More after the break.

Continue reading “Rules: Why Do They Need To Be Repeated?”

With Scammers At Bay, The Players Will Play


This article has nothing to do with T-Mobile's Sidekick
This article has nothing to do with T-Mobile's Sidekick

All two of you who visited my message boards will see that I am not a big fan of being explicit with rules. In fact, there are three rules on the Orb Boards; Don’t incite a flame war, keep your account secure, and don’t be a spambot. Apart from those basic rules, I don’t think the rest needs to be explained. What it comes down to is: Anything you wouldn’t do in real life, don’t do here. Unless you make a living out of stealing people’s identities, in which case…still don’t do that here.

I often like to see Game Masters getting intuitive when it comes to removing problems that may not warrant a complete rule, or that may be such a special case that putting a rule would be far too generalizing. Say, for example, the issues Aion had when it launched last month. Players were clogging the servers by going away from keyboard so they could sleep, go to school, etc, without being logged off. Rather than pull out the ban-stick and taking things far over the edge, NCsoft quickly released a patch making such an exploit impossible.

The idea is that you don’t have to issue permabans to get a point across.

More on Aion, World of Warcraft, and more after the break.

Continue reading “With Scammers At Bay, The Players Will Play”