Banned over 7 gold: WoW Forever's beta RMT crackdown, and how game companies catch real money trading

Blizzard has said more than once that on Forever, buyers of gold will be punished along with sellers. On September 28 community manager Kaivax wrote that Blizzard would increasingly take action against buyers' accounts ↗, and that a recipient who knew or should have known the gold was not legitimate could face account action as well. On the October 8 podcast, senior designer Josh Greenfield said the team had closed over 2,100 gold-buying accounts and almost 1,600 gold-selling or botting accounts ↗ on the beta alone.

On October 13 Blizzard added the Temporary Economy Hold, which locks trade, mail, guild bank and Auction House use on a suspected account until an investigation is done. Meanwhile the Blizzard forums have filled up with posts from players saying they were banned without ever buying gold. Below are the cases we found in forum posts and news reports.

Streamers

The streamer controversy started with Ziqo, who took roughly 520 gold from viewers in a couple of trades on stream, a huge sum when the beta had been out only a few weeks. Blizzard wiped almost all the gold on that character but did not suspend the account ↗, and the gold on his other characters stayed. The forums accused Blizzard of going easy on streamers, and it was in one of those threads that Kaivax replied on September 28.

A few days later Payo said on stream that he never buys gold himself and had told his chat to buy it for him, and his beta account was banned ↗. He went on streaming from a new account. Around the same time, Kotaku reported that Supatease had apparently been banned for RMT and reinstated on appeal ↗.

The case that spread furthest was the October 13 ban of Xokas, one of Spain's biggest streamers. A character he did not know had mailed him 7 gold. He tried to return it, but the sender had already been deleted so the mail would not go back. While opening and closing the mail to get rid of it, the gold landed in his bags, and moments later he was disconnected on stream and the ban notice appeared ↗. He already had over 100 gold in his bags. The account was restored within hours, and Blizzard has said nothing about the case.

A forum post then claimed several streamers had been mailed exactly 7 gold, each time by a character with Foreverpvp in its name, and argued ↗ that a participant in The Forever Open dueling tournament was targeting other entrants. According to the same post, streamer Shobek reported the mail instead and it was removed.

Ban reports from players on the forums

On September 22 a warlock posted that he had been banned a few days earlier. He had finished Shadowfang Keep, was asked to summon someone's friend, and got 50 silver and 25 silver in tips from the two players. A paladin alt made only to hold a name had also been mailed 1 gold by a stranger, and he took it. Minutes later the account was banned for being involved "directly or indirectly" in RMT. Post ↗

The same day another player said strangers kept mailing bags, food, elixirs, patterns and 10 gold to a level 1 name-holder. He took everything, assuming the name was close to a streamer's (some of the letters mentioned Big Taunka), and was banned. Both appeals were denied. Post ↗

On October 7 a guild member posted that their guild leader was banned after accepting 20 gold on September 29, and claimed ↗ the sender later bragged on Twitch about buying RMT gold to trigger the ban. Many replies in the thread pushed back that the guild leader had simply bought gold and was lying about it.

On October 8 a player wrote that he listed a weapon won on a need roll in Scarlet Monastery for 50 gold, got a whisper offering 32 gold right away, pulled the auction and traded it, and was then banned for RMT. Post ↗

Blizzard customer support's Vrakthris answered these threads with "Customer Support has no involvement with any actions that are applied to Beta accounts. I'm afraid there are no means of appealing that we can assist with." ↗ In another thread he said a beta restriction applies to the beta alone ↗ and has nothing to do with the overall account, so a beta ban does not stop you from playing at launch on November 4.

Forum opinion is split. Some say taking gold from a stranger is the mistake in itself. Others point out that if clicking Open All in the mailbox can get you banned, anyone can get someone else banned for a few gold. Players keep asking for mail from strangers to be left out of Open All, or for an option to block mail from anyone not on your friends list.

Ban reports from Korean players on Inven

Ban reports from Korean players came in a wave on the Inven Forever board on October 14. One player wrote that about two weeks earlier an acquaintance had given him 6 gold, and the acquaintance could not say where it came from either. A week before, his Auction House and trading were locked, and that morning a permanent ban appeared. Post ↗

One post was a confession. The player had first complained that he could not use the Auction House even though he never bought gold, then, after a permanent ban, admitted he had bought 50 gold on an item trading site. He picked an individual seller rather than a gold farm and disguised the deal as buying a weapon worth about 5 gold for 50 gold, and was permanently banned exactly two weeks later. Post ↗

A seller posted too. He said he had been selling gold he earned himself, skinning, on an item trading site; after a week with Auction House, trade and mail locked, the account was banned with that morning's reset ↗. The same account still logs in and trades normally on retail, he said. In a follow-up he wrote that other players and streamers he had given gold to for free were not banned ↗. Other posts followed from banned players who made a new game account to keep playing the beta.

Enforcement on the Chinese realms

The Chinese realms, which are in beta now, take a different approach. On October 9 the Chinese official site published an enforcement notice ↗: abnormal summoning services using Ritual of Summoning bring a ban of 7 days or more, running multiple clients at once or grouping with large level gaps for long periods bring 3 days or more, and power-leveling or cash-trade ads in World chat get the character muted. The notice says the same penalties will apply after launch.

How game companies find real money trading

Blizzard does not disclose how it detects RMT. Jagex has said it withholds the evidence behind RuneScape bans because showing it would compromise its detection methods ↗. What follows comes from other companies' announcements and research built on publishers' own data.

The most common approach is trade network analysis. Draw every transfer of goods as a graph of who gave what to whom and how often, and gold farms show up as shapes. A 2018 study of about six million in-game trades found that professional sellers form star shapes, where many characters funnel into one, or chains that pass goods through several hops ↗. In 2020 an NCSoft researcher presented a method that builds the trade network from each character's week of trades and sorts the clusters into nine types ↗. A star shape alone was not treated as proof; behavior data was checked too, to keep ordinary players from being flagged.

Researchers at Korea University pushed the idea further with AION data. Behavior analysis catches farm characters one at a time, but following abnormal trades exposes the structure of the whole gold farming group ↗. A follow-up paper used that structure to propose ways to take groups down without disrupting the legitimate economy ↗. CCP's EVE Online security team has likewise described how a single report can lead through a spiderweb of transactions to a huge RMT ring ↗.

Behavior analysis looks at the side that earns the gold: the same hunting and gathering repeated for hours, and the haul handed to a few characters for nothing in return. A 2016 study done with NCSoft combined several kinds of these features and reached 96% accuracy against a list of banned accounts ↗, noting that publishers generally prefer server-side log analysis.

Companies look outside the game too. The 2018 study matched records crawled from outside RMT sites against in-game trades to estimate the size of the market. In 2006 Square Enix set up a task force that investigated about 150 Japanese and North American seller sites ↗ and banned accounts.

Widening punishment from sellers to buyers is also an industry-wide shift. Jagex dropped its more lenient treatment of buyers and said even first-time buyers can be banned and have items removed ↗. Forever's Temporary Economy Hold points the same way. Kaivax described its aim as shutting down the flow of suspicious gold before it is transferred or put into circulation, while buying time to investigate ↗.

What to keep in mind before launch

Blizzard says a warning will appear whenever you trade with strangers. It tells you to be wary of gold from unknown or suspicious sources and that if the other player is engaged in RMT, you could put your account at risk of closure ↗. In the posts above, the gold players say got them banned was small (75 silver, 1 gold, 7 gold) and mostly came from strangers. If gold shows up in your mail for no reason, leave it there and report it.

A Temporary Economy Hold is not a ban. If the investigation clears you, it lifts on its own and leaves no permanent strike. Blizzard itself says the system is new and false positives may happen while it is fine-tuned.