Some thoughts on anti-bot measures, not ingame solutions

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Hey folks, kinda under the weather tonight, but wanted to get started on this thread. Posting this into right now, so I can paste the link elsewhere, and then come back and edit things in.

OK, so what do I mean by anti-bot measures, and why did I point out that these measures are not an ingame solution?

My ideas come from bits and pieces of information I have gotten from all over the place, and over a period of many years, so please bear with me.

Ok, first up, EULA’s and ToS.

End User License Agreements and Terms of Service
Most folks don’t give EULA’s much thought, just some legalese type stuff that you have to scroll down to the end and check the box, in order to install/play your game. AFAIK, none of these EULA’s are legally binding contracts, and cannot thus be used to as the basis to pursue legal action against those that break them!

Think about this for a moment.

Any and every software company is going to have some form of EULA packaged with their software, and who is going to regulate exactly what these contain? No one, that is who. That being said, software companies could put really stupid things into them, and, if they were actually legally binding, folks would actually have to obey whatever terms were written in them, and if nobody reads them, and nobody is overseeing them, well, that is not a good thing.

So, we all wouldn’t actually want to have these things carrying the force of law, and as much as software companies would like, they do not.

My ideas for anti-bot measures center around starting with getting some actual laws passed, that make certain things illegal and tying the laws into just what software companies are allowed to have restrictions on.

Some things we really should have, is positive locations (both physical and IP addresses) for any computer to be allowed access to an online game, and the law should require that this information is verified during the installation and registration process, so that, in the case of misuse of the software, the police can goto the location and sizee the offending computer(s) the game software is running on.

Things that should be illegal:

Real Money Transfers should either be entirely public, and totally within the games software code, and disclosed to all the players of the game, with no allowance for hiding what is for sale, at what price, and how much such sales are going on, or be a legal violation of some e-commerce law, with big fines, seizure of computers, and jail time.

Why?

  1. Many folks would not like to find out that the game they are investing 100’s of hours of playing time, can be secretly using ‘pay to win’ mechanics, and making all their hard work easy to match or exceed, with just a swipe of a credit card. I for one would never knowingly play such a game, as what would be the point of spending hours and hours of my valuable gaming time gathering, when somebody else just buys ingame gold for cash, and then uses that gold to buy as many or more resources than I did after many hours? This part is to protect players against sneaky game companies that claim their game is free to lay, and is not a pay to play game, when it really is. Part of the laws governing this should be for players to be able to demand not only a total refund, but also an hourly settlement for all the time they wasted in game, say something like $10/hour. This would ensure that the gaming companies are compliant with the full and public disclosure of any ingame store transactions (the only way the gaming companies would be allowed to partake of this type of e-commerce), and that every player could use such statistics and demographic info to decide to buy/play a given game, or demand a refund and settlement in the case of violations of the public disclosure laws.

  2. Given #1 above, any e-commerce that involves RMT for ingame items has to be openly done within the games ingame store. With that stipulation in place and enforced, any other types of such can now be prosecuted under the law, and also involve an IRS audit of the offenders, for potential income tax evasion.

  3. If folks decide to engage in ‘out of game RMT’, and the software has the legal requirement to have a positive physical and IP address for the offending computer, the police can go there and size the computer, and take the offender into custody, and keep them until the provider of the ingame items are also in custody, and their computers are also sized and searched for any other illegal transactions, and then the get to deal with the IRS.

  4. If botting is an issue, whether or not any RMT took place, then consider this type of computer program causes valuation loss to the computer game’s publishing company, as well as all the folks that played the game legit, and so all parties concerned get to file a class action lawsuit against the folks that use, distribute, or write such programs. Again, the games software would be required, by law, to confirm the computers actual physical and IP address during the installations and registration process, so the police can go there and size computers using such illegal software to cost the gaming companies their profits, and/or their legitimate paying customers, that quit playing until the botters are rounded up.

About the info that would be collected.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I would be wary of computer game companies collecting even the data I am on about in this thread, if there were to be access to this data by their employees. So I would want the laws written in a way that, while requiring the software companies to write their game code to enable this positive location information for each and every computer that is accessing their game, this information would only be accessible by the software company flagging that computers location, so the police could be dispatched to that location, and sort things out.

If we want to stop botting and RMT and all sorts of other stuff that can ruin our gaming fun, we need laws to be passed that make the things in this thread a punishable offense under the law. And to do that, we need to make the case that it isn’t just a pain in the butt, but that it actually costs the game companies their profits when folks just walk away because of these types of things, and that both the companies, and their avid fans, deserve financial compensation for the development time costs, and the playing time wasted.

If such laws are enacted, bot program users, bot program writers, and bot program distributors could all end up getting some jail time, having their computers sized, and face massive class action lawsuits from the folks that got ripped off.

So, I know these are extreme (and perhaps even Draconian) measures see a bit much, but the alternative is putting up with RMT, bot’s, and all sorts of stupid.

In other words, welcome to todays online game reality. :slight_smile:

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Would that not work only for countries that adopted the laws?
A lot of RMT is done in countries that don’t care about other countries’ laws. Just like China doesn’t care that their companies are pirating and reverse engineering western company technologies.

So a sample scenario: AGS in America asks the Philippine police to go seize whoever is using a particular computer at an internet cafe.
How’s that even going to work?

Honestly the best anti-bot anti-RMT measure is:

  • the devs sell mats and other pay-for-convenience
  • delete PvP

If PvE wants to ruin their game experience by pay to win, they can do so without affecting anyone else much. What can you do now that you have bought your way to uber power? Carry other people in dungeons? Big deal.

It’s always PvP that complains about pay to win and it’s always PvP that looks for pay to win avenues, including subscriptions to cheats, and buying RMT to buy goods instead of playing the game.

And grindy games have pay-for-convenience cash shop features precisely because it is grindy. It’s part of the game revenue model and game design. Whereas NW has grindy crafting but no pay for convenience.
Not to say that I want pay for convenience, but if it would remove more bots and RMT from the game world, that would make for a better experience for those who don’t want to pay to zoom.

An even better anti-bot anti-RMT measure that also solves a lot of issues is balancing the game around private instances and solo play. Like Genshin Impact. They made more money at launch than NW and doubled that in just a couple of months – where as NW’s population got obliterated just a couple of months in.

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Dude no government is going to make laws about what people can do in video games! On the silly posts meter this one is up there in ranking. Christ lawmakers can’t even name a damn post office now!

Also there are many legally binding things in software EULA’s. One being you can not decompile and edit the code as it is owned copyrighted material.

The only way to fix their god damn bot problem is to enforce their TOS and remove the accounts of gold buyers PERIOD!

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Yes, and therefor some things would have to be done within what is now regional stuff, like no playing outside the region where you access the internet.

Make playing in a region, just for players that live in that region. If China doesn’t want to play by the rules, shutdown the servers that allow Chinese players access to the game.

Good point, but I must not have made clear, no mobile devices, no VPN, no nothing, so in order to to get registered, you would need to verify the physical address in some way, perhaps a disposable USB drive, that requires tracking to be enabled, in order to get your software registered, that shipped next day air to the home address that you provide, no post office box nonsense. Game would only be playable from home, not work, not a friends house, not an internet cafe.

I wouldn’t delete PvP, but rather just separate pvp from the rest of the servers, so anything those folks want to do, they can, but it has no effect on the server I am playing on. If that couldn’t be done, then I would delete PvP.

I wouldn’t want to play in a server where folks could just buy victory, nor have all 200 every skill on day one. Not that I’m all into being a seller of the trading post in game or anything, but I don’t want BiS gear on there right from the start, so the people that I play with have to work for their items and ingame achievements.

So I am not ok with the server I play on allowing RMT. Just saying.

For me, an openly pay to win game is of no real interest, and a stealthy pay to win game is of even less interest.

Not familiar with that game, to be honest, NW is my first and only MMORPG to date.

Well, yes and no.

Legally binding things in EULS’s, are things that are bound in laws, which gives the EULA it’s power. Not the EULA, but the under lying law. There is a reason we have copyright laws, and these are not restricted nor enabled by any EULA’s. The point I am trying to make here, is that EULA’s and ToS are not voted into law, they are just written by companies that want some more control than what they are legally afforded by the actual law.

Well, I agree that the gold buyers need to go, but also the gold sellers, the BOT’ers, and the dupers have to go. But first we need to identify them, and this requires their location to be known, and then having the right of the police to go and arrest the folks and size their computers.

So when I said that governments make laws for what people do on their computers (as opposed to what they can do in video games), we have to get the law to consider copyright infringement, un-reported income from e-commerce/tax evasion, and loss of profits because of third party/unauthorized automated activities, that cost legit companies their legit players.

So while I agree that the ToS needs enforced, it has to be based upon actual law, not just some text that any and every company could just whip up on their own.

@GrailQuest @FlyNavy_1271 I would like to follow you to on these forums, but I have not looked into how that is done here,

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China and the rest of Asia are huge markets. No way any publisher will want to cut them out. More and more games are trying to satisfy their regulations in order to sell to that market.

Unfortunately the trend is TOWARD mobile devices. Look at SteamDeck for example. The more restrictions you put, the smaller the market, and despite any possible benefit, publishers are going to weigh against that and accept the current handicaps over expanding their reach.

Many other games do better against bots and RMT. New World is just a newb crew. If you look at forum posts and how they handle things and design things since beta, that much is obvious.

For example, initially they had people post reports of EXPLOITS openly on the forums. They didn’t have a channel for PM to someone to report. So literally the forums were the place to go every day to learn how to do the newest exploit.
Unbelievably dumb move no MMO has done in 20+ years, maybe ever.

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Once you remove the first gold buyer account within a matter of days the bots, sellers, dupers and all the other shit associated with RMT goes away. That first person who burned 100 dollars on New World gold and has his account deleted will be all over these and other forums crying the blues. Word will spread like wildfire among idiots that are thick and dumb enough to buy game currency from shady RMT sites. That business will dry up overnight thus completely curing the bot problem. AGS will gain fame as being the first gaming company to do the only thing that will ever work to positively impact the RMT problem.

I have no idea why the F gaming studios at large so blatantly choose to ignore the portion of their TOS’s that clearly state buying game currency via external sites is prohibited.

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