In-World Fraud Preventative System Suggestions

Introduction: Fraudulent activities, such as cash shop purchases with stolen credit cards and real money transactions (RMT), can occur. Preventing these fraudulent activities is our goal with these suggestions, which detail specific strategies designed to deter fraud while ensuring that the World play remains balanced, fair, and enjoyable for all players.

# 1\. Restricting Paid Item Trading Between Players

##### Objective:

Eliminate the main avenue the fraudsters use for Real Money Trading (RMT)

##### Implementation:

  * Disable Direct Paid Item Trading: Prohibits players from trading or transferring paid items between each other. This ensures that fraudsters cannot exchange the paid items for real money or manipulate the world’s economy by selling paid items in-world.



##### Expected Outcome:

Fraudsters typically use stolen credit cards to purchase World Coin and use that fraudulent World Coin in a World to purchase paid items. They would then sell the paid item for in-world currency and then sell the in-world currency for real money. This restriction will eliminate the system that the fraudsters exploit and remove the main avenue used by fraudsters. This is a high preventative measure, but if paid item trades are desired in the world for game design reasons, the other suggestions below will help to slow down fraudulent activities.

# 2\. Increase the Character Level Restriction for Item Trading

##### Objective:

Ensure that players have sufficiently invested time and effort into the world before gaining access to paid item trading, which can deter fraudulent or bot accounts from exploiting paid item trades.

##### Implementation:

  * Implement a Level Restriction for Paid Item Trade: Have a level requirement for trading paid items that will require the players to spend several hours in the world before unlocking the feature.



##### Expected Outcome:

This will make it harder for new or fraudulent accounts to access the economy too early. The extra time that a fraudster would need to make each of their accounts viable would slow down fraudulent actions, allowing support teams to detect potential fraud and take action before it happens. This in turn may discourage the fraudsters completely. This restriction helps discourage fraudulent accounts using the world play mechanisms naturally.

# 3\. Implement a Time-Delayed Trade Block for Paid Items

##### Objective:

Prevent the rapid exchange of newly acquired paid items, which can be used for RMT.

##### Implementation:

  * Trade Block Mechanism: Apply a trade block for a certain number of days on all paid items purchased from in-world store. During this period, players cannot trade, gift, drop or sell the paid item in the auction house or through direct player-to player transactions.
  * Transaction Transparency: Creator is recommended to notify players of the trade block period upon purchasing paid items.



##### Expected Outcome:

This mechanism would discourage fraudsters from using newly acquired paid items in fraudulent transactions, making it harder to turn purchases into in-world currency for fraud purposes.

# 4\. Introduce Quest or Achievement/Badge-Based Restriction for Trade or Auction House Usage

##### Objective:

Restrict trading and auction house to players that have a certain achievement/badge or cleared a quest.

##### Implementation:

  * Quest-Based Detection Mechanism: Restrict auction house and in-world trading to players until they have successfully accomplished a particular hard quest or unlocked a particular hard achievement/badge.



##### Expected Outcome:

The quest or achievement/badge detection might discourage fraudsters that would not want to invest too much time and resources on finishing a hard quest or unlocking a hard achievement/badge.

# 5\. Restrict In-World Currency Trades and Auction House Delay Mechanism

##### Objective:

Reduce the potential for RMT by implementing a delay for obtaining in-world currency earned through auction house transactions and restricting direct in-world currency trading between players.

##### Implementation:

  * No Direct Currency Trading: Disable direct in-world currency trades between players. This eliminates the possibility of currency farming and fraudsters exploiting the World to facilitate RMT.
  * Auction House Currency Delay: Implement a system where the in-world currency earned from items listed in the auction house is delayed by a certain number of days before being credited to the seller’s account. This delay reduces the ability to quickly convert items into currency and prevents the rapid exchange of in-world wealth for real money.



##### Expected Outcome:

These measures will make it harder for fraudsters to quickly convert their in-world earnings into real money and discourage currency farming by making it less profitable and more time-consuming.