November 19, 2013

A Common Scam

Be Clever, Always.

Hi guys. As you know, I don't work on AQW anymore but I wanted to share something with the AQW community. 

Earlier today I got a tweet from a player. Let's call him SKLURP. 

SKLURP is asking for a little help and I like to help when I can, even thought I don't work on the game. As I'm looking at SKLUP's account I see that it was pretty recently created in a country that is about 10,000km from the country where he is located. Of course that looks suspicious so I start asking questions. 

SKLURP says that he BOUGHT the account from "some dude" that he met in Battleon because it was higher level than his, already a member and a 5th Upholder. 

*facepalm*

I let him know that he got scammed. He is of course very confused and upset so I let him know how the scam works. 

HERE'S HOW THE SCAM WORKS

For the sake of our example let's call our scam artist ASC4M4T1ST.

1. ASC4M4T1ST starts an account and buys an upgrade. He even uses the ACs from the upgrade to get a few recent rares. SO far, eveything is cool. 
   
   
2.  ASC4M4T1ST starts advertizing that he's tired of this account and wants to sell it, cheap. (report people who do this when you see it)
   
   
3. SKLURP thinks "WOW, WHAT A DEAL!" so he agrees to pay ASC4M4T1ST (maybe through Paypal or some other money transfer service). 
   
   
4. ASC4M4T1ST hands over the password. SKLURP plays for a few days happily on his shiny new character. Maybe he even buys an AC package to arm him up and make him really nice. 
   
   
5. THEN, the game auto-detects that this account, which was created in South America is now being played from Asia.
   
   
6. Maybe the player just moved across the world so the game checks for a few other things like an e-mail and password being changed around the same time as the new computer started playing this character. It fits all the critera of a stolen account, so the account is automatically disabled by the game engine. 
   
   
7. A few days later ASC4M4T1ST contacts PLAYER SUPPORT and says "HELP, I WAS HACKED!".
   
   
8. Player Support looks at the account and sees that this upgraded account as created in and upgraded from South America but is being played in Asia. Player Support only wants to help our players as much as possible so they return the account to ASC4M4T1ST, resetting the account to the original creation e-mail and passowrd.
   
   
9. ASC4M4T1ST now has control of the account he upgraded, plus the money he got from SKLURP for the account plus the ACs that SKLURP bought for the character while he had control of it. 
   
   
10. ASC4M4T1ST then repeats the process again.

You see, Player Support have no evidence that the account was purchased from ASC4M4T1ST. Even if SLKURP has an e-mail or some sort of recipt from Paypal, it's no help for Player Support. They can't reverse a payment you made in private.

In fact, it's ILLEGAL to sell AQW accounts since they are technically all the property of Artix Entertainment. Player Support has no choice but to see thngs this way. The only thing that SKLURP can do is try to get his money back from ASC4M4T1ST. Good luck with that. 

The Player Support team is doing the best that they can to help everyone out. This is why it's soooo vitally important that people understand that they shouldn't share, trade, give away or especially buy accounts from other players. 

Don't be SKLURP.