FunCom suspends players who bought stolen Secret World Legends currency.

Well, I guess it’s an indication that Secret World Legends is succeeding: gold farming is alive and well. From Facebook:

Over this past weekend, our systems identified a number of accounts that were involved in purchasing Marks of Favour from third-party sites. These accounts are now suspended, and we will continue taking action against similar accounts moving forward.

Please be aware that we are taking a no-tolerance approach to this matter. Currency that these third-party sellers offer comes from purchases made with stolen payment information. This is the case for nearly every instance of this we’ve come across, and this is considered fraud.

I actually saw some of the in-game chat spam ads for this service.  There are currently two major (and one minor) currencies for Secret World Legends (at one point, the old game had something like five or six); this particular scam represented attempts to manipulate the currency (Marks of Favour) that’s used for purchases involving the Auction House. I assumed that the scammers used stolen credit cards to buy the other major currency (Aurum), which they then used to swap for Marks of Favour in the Auction House.

Which is why FunCom is putting the hammer down; they have to pay back the money that was stolen to pay for the Aurum, but if they try to confiscate the Aurum from the people who — perfectly honestly and openly — bought the stuff with Marks of Favour it’s going to infuriate customers who didn’t do anything wrong.  So the best way to deal with the problem is to suspend accounts that probably knew perfectly well that they were doing something that was at best hinky. Might prevent more scams, down the line.

Moe Lane

PS: Of course I didn’t buy any Marks of Favour this way. Although Lord knows I wouldn’t mind getting some more.