Recently Seth, aka Rumham, revealed some of the issues Supercell face in bringing in seemingly great ideas. The idea discussed in the example was gifting Pass Royale. He talked about two main issues, a responsibility to not encourage fraud, and also the preservation of the integrity of their game. I totally disagree with the first issue. It is not Supercell's job to police society. Frankly, they do not have the qualifications, and even if they did, there would still be criminals. Having a game where people can spend money via credit cards does not encourage fraud. It certainly is another avenue for the criminals to use, but it does not encourage it. It is akin to saying that parking your car in public encourages thieves to steal it. A thief intent on stealing a car will steal whichever car is available. Simply seeing your car does not make them think, "Oh, I might steal a car today". This misconception and false responsibility means that many are missing out on something great due to the actions of a few. It's a poor model for society because the "few" will always exist. I agree with the second point Seth raised. Supercell absolutely need to preserve the integrity of their game. I have been adamant about this in all my Twitter posts. Seth says that Supercell can remove items from an account which bought them via fraudulent means. He then talks about removing them from the account which received the gift. Here, his point is not clear. I cannot determine if he is saying it cannot be done. Assuming it CAN be done, what is the issue? Simply remove the items with a "Sorry, but these were bought by fraudulent means" note. The receiver can have no complaint. Finally, apply some common sense and crunch the numbers. Is it worth denying the community a fantastic tool to prevent a game corruption which, at best, could be calculated as negligible?
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Are you familiar with the blackmarket tourney chests? You know, back when there were 250k-gem private tournaments that gives 15k cards? Supercell had to remove this amazing in-game feature precisely because it created a booming black markets. They sell the tourney slots for the first 30 places and made a huge profit (even if not using stolen credit cards).
It’s incredibly not hard to find 200 people to buy something that normally costs $5 for $3. There are websites that enable these types of things. Part of the reason that the illegal gems were so prevalent is precisely because there is a huge underground market for such transactions, often on very visible gaming market sites that mainly offer such services.
They often use the term “stolen credit cards” to describe all forms of financial frauds that happened because it is easier to explain to the uninitiated. My personal understanding is that there are some flaws / loopholes in App Stores / Google Player store in some countries that allowed for some fraudulent purchases without using valid credit cards — and criminals are using those kinds of bugs to exploit the system.
I think that the point is that someone using a fraudulent credit card could potentially buy $1000 worth of pass and then gift it to 200 people. Let’s say that such person offer to sell passes at $3 each. The regular pass costs $5 so it’s a steal for people to purchase it. Except afterwards it‘s found out that the credit card was stolen and then the person selling got a negative charge back but the passes are gone already and it’s not really possible to charge back those who received it. I believe that this is the loophole that they are trying to stop. (It’s probably additionally very costly to have to keep track of who bought what for whom). By keeping the passes purchase-able by the account owner only, you eliminate this issue greatly as one normally won’t buy a ton of passes so even if the transaction was fraudulent, it affects just $5 — instead of potentially tens of thousands.
I didn’t get the same read as you did. I feel that Seth is merely suggesting that they don’t want to become the enabler of credit card fraud. And the issue is quite prevalent really in terms of gem purchases in games. No doubt Supercell also stands to lose a huge chunk of revenue if they can’t claim them back after a set period of time. I don’t know the exact rules of how fraudulent charges work but I do see it as a relevant reason for them to want to eliminate that risk.