Does banning bots bring additional revenue to Anet?

Well, I dislike bots etc., and fully support Anet's efforts to stomp on as many as possible. I fully believe Anet does it primarily in the interest of maintaning the community. However, up to today, I also believed this was also a financial benefit to Anet, since a botter would be forced to buy a new box, generating new income.

However, I have today read this today, Gaile's reply to someone claiming the bots make sales. I found the answer most surprising:

Well, that was certainly not expected. So, anyone care to comment, or perhaps even provide more information?

Why is it surprising? It's like in real-life: our police and justice system cost a lot of money to the society at large. It's not different in the virtual world, because there's always the possibility that what Anet and GW GMs thought was a bot is actually a real person (I remember a while ago someone saying that he behaved like a bot, farming repeatedly for long hours, he seemed honest but he could be leading a gold-selling company and defending his parasitic business model). They have to be carefull, gather information, possibly make a case against an independent entity (NC Soft?).

I've also read where Gail stated that most bot accounts are trial key accounts.

A user will create a 55 MOnk on a 10 hour trial key, supply it with what it needs from a main or alt account, run it where it needs to farm and then at 9:45 mins strip it of everything it farmed as well as the equiptment it was given. (ie Runes, -50 cesta, ect) rinse repeat.

Often with several going on at once. Some botters have 4-5 machines running at once. Yes it takes a bit of time to do the set up, but unfortunatly ANet has made it esier for bots, purly by accedent. Skill and equiptment templates as well as Elite Tomes have really cut down on set up time allowing more true farming time during the 10 hours. Imagine the time saved not having to run a bot out to cap SoJ.

You can get trial keys for free or I've seen them for $2 at some game stores.

Not surprising at all - I think it highly likely that banning bots does cost A-Net, rather than making them money.

In any case, why does everyone assume that botters BUY new copies after they are banned? I think it highly unlikely that botters are honest, scrupulous people who play by those "rules". Far more likely that they buy existing accounts from players (maybe using virtual money), hack/steal accounts, and use whatever other exploits are available to gain free access to the game.

This is what I remember Gaile saying as well. It's also hard not to notice those spammers in towns wanting to trade their gold for accounts and trial keys.

Er, aren't the trial accounts supposed to be unable to trade with other players? I think I remember it mentioned as a method used to prevent the botting.

Also, botters don't always buy new copies.......sometimes they hack someone's account and use that.

trial key accounts can't trade...but they can still enter an instance drop gold/loot and let someone else pick it up...or i think they can...

No they can't

^ VERY constructive

Hmm, Also, it costs Anet 80$ too ban a guy? Lol...

Look, levelling up to level 20, equipping the guy, getting him to the farming spots, etc. This alone will consume more than half the trial key...

And even so, 7-8 hours of farming, is that worth it? And on top of that, you can't even trade?! No, I'm pretty sure it is what the guy said, Anet is making money of this. Why would they not? "Because they care about the community?", YEAH! That's why they have a own forum, or that's why they actually listen to the PvP-community, Heck, that's why there is SOO many satisfied support customers...

I'm not a hater, Gaile, but don't lie, please...

P.s. for all the people who think they use "second"(Ebay)/hacked accounts. Lol.... (If you have no common sense/clue what you're talking about, then don't )

Yea I'm not surprised to see that it costs more to ban someone than it would be to make profit off a free game. Especially with prices dropping more and more on all guildwars games. Makes complete sense.

If your argument is it costs them more than 'free' to ban someone then you're right. It doesn't cost them an average of $80 to ban one guy or even $50 to ban one guy unless they are terribly inefficient. It costs even less now that the report system is in place and players help out.

However, I don't think they make decisions regarding bots to make profit. It's probably just an area with limited resources allocated. If you see an obvious bot, use the report system and make it simple for them to find. If you see a guy spamming for gold sales in Ascalon, report that guy with the 'spamming' option of report. Then don't worry about it because you did what you could to help.

They aren't losing money from support doing what support gets paid to do.
If you get paid a salary and say, work at a company's help desk/suport center, whether you get 10 calls one day and 120 the next, your salary remains the same regardless of the number of calls processed.

Unless their support gets paid by the hour or by number of tickets opened/closed that claim is complete bullshit. Perhaps they're using logic like "if we didn't have a support team then we wouldn't have to pay them."

And other than trial keys, there are at least some new bot accounts that come from existing players' accounts. They buy/scam them for in-game gold or get their login info somehow. The unsuspecting player then logs in to find him/herself banned for botting or stripped if they manage to get the account back.

If you don't know what the hell you're talking about, stfu.

Pull logs, review parameters, check chat logs, appraise trade histories... if you're looking somewhere specific due to a /report (which has the time logged) I don't see the sum of these actions taking more then 10 minutes on average. For arguments sake, lets say a low level support guy makes $20 an hour has as one of his tasks... we're looking at $3.33 spent for a ban.

Smarter time spent is getting a programmer to write in stuff which auto flags potential bots based on behavior. However, this is a one time thing... you do this once and it's in effect forever after, and once it's in it's the exact same example as above, a low level support guy verifies and bans or doesn't ban.

I hope Anet makes more then $3.33 per sale of GW.

.... This doesn't look like the Warcraft for-- oh, wait, it's not.

It's the same thing for every game. Some people think the company makes money off bots, allows bots to stay because it's profitable for the company, the conspiracy theorists abound in every MMO.

No one knows but the accountants of the company.

Most bot accounts are purchased online using stolen credit cards so in the end anet loose out on money.

You're basing your math on assumptions that it takes this supposedly low paid support guy only a few minutes when you really have no idea what his job duties entails or what it takes to ban someone.

Having a programmer "write in stuff" is highly technical. I'm sure after they (won't) read this post, they'll get right on that. Because it isn't like a company that wants to make money wouldn't have thought about it when it came to banning bots, which Anet admits, are bad for business.

Accounts: 1-time purchase, the earlier the campaign, the cheaper the discount. $5 says Botters don't buy their accounts from PlayNC or the neighborhood store. I bet it's a place that gives accounts away for pennies on the dollar when they aren't selling.

Staff: Year-long payroll deduction. If you look at the amount of time they have to spend on botters v. the amount of money being made by accounts x. the amount of work Anet is having to do to make sure that bots don't RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO up the economy... We're talking taxes, accountants, supervisors, supervisors to supervise the supervisors. Oh, lawyers. Lets add programmers and their bosses too, just because you brought them up.

Yeah. It's math dude. Don't assume. You either play a game where bots cost everyone money and are therefore stigmatized by the community and the company (a good thing) or you play for a bunch of liars who secretly want the bots to keep botting (bad) even though it brings in an unatural amount of in-game gold that makes it harder for the average joe (us) to play so we rage-quit and go play WoW.

I'll assume that bots are stigmatized and avoid WoW, thx.

It does only take a low level support guy to check log files. This is a reasonable assumption. If you disagree, explain why a low level support guy wouldn't be able to handle making a ban.

Here's another thought. Active players have support costs also. If an account gets banned, it no longer has those support costs.

It is more technical but you only have to do it once for the game. You dont have to keep doing over and over again to ban the next guy. It's likely in the game already. The point I'm making is that you dont factor this in to a price per ban, or if you do then you divide the one time cost by all the bans made in the game.

I'll agree with you, if botters buy accounts they likely buy them second hand. However, this makes no difference on what A-net got paid for the account originally.

Case 1 - Bot guy buys a new account for 50 bucks, he gets banned. A-net made say 35 bucks originally off the account (they don't make the full retail price)

Case 2 - Bot guy buys a used account off someone for 10 bucks. A-net still made 35 bucks originally off the account because that's what the original guy paid.

This is overcomplication and makes the assumption that the whole A-net company is working on bans. Break your case down into a cost per ban like I did if you really think this is the case and I'll point out where I think it's unreasonable. Importantly, you shouldn't add in costs that A-net would have anyway without making the same ban.

Also, like mentioned above, every active account also takes money to maintain. You can point at the people above for active players as well. If the account gets banned then this cost is removed.

Straw man argument. Everyone agrees that it costs money to combat bots. Nobody questions this or the fact that it's important to do. The question in this thread is 'Does the action of banning an account cost more then the money A-net made from selling the account?'. Gaile says yes, I say no.

I say: Toss the free trial keys. What I've heard, GW2 is being released in the summer. Why do you need new players for Guild Wars?

Also, I don't think it could cost $80 to ban a bot. Seeing that not too many bots are banned (look inside some outposts, they are loaded with bots), AND also the fact my friend was banned for "botting," when in fact, he was being quiet, not replying to whispers, and constantly farming, it doesn't mean he's a bot. Real players have a BIG difference from bots. An untrained eye can see the difference.
Ways to spot a player:
Don't always run to the exact same spots (bots use signs to find outpost exits, such as Deldridmor Bowl)
Don't run in strait paths, as no bot can use a keyboard (bots use the mouse to move).


Easier way you can update to spot bots:
On character creation, make a certain hairstyle, color, height, and face the Default, as when making a bot, the creator will not customize it.

This one wins a nomination for the 'dumb post of the year award'.

Lets have a little example.

You don't combat bots at all, no support staff time is used on this. Support uses approx 300 man hours a week (a figure pulled from my behind to illustrate a point). Assuming a 37 hour week that's 9 support personnel.

Now you combat bots, lets be really generous and say that takes 80 hours a week extra. Those 9 support personnel just turned into 11.

The difference, two extra salaries, recruiting costs and all the other costs involved with employing people.

No, I don't think Anet profits from combating bots. Yes stolen accounts are used, yes stolen cards are used to purchase accounts (with the inherent problems of chargebacks) and even if a bot herder buys a second hand account, Anet are still not profiting from combating bots. The account was already bought, the money already in bank, the transfer of the account to the bot herder brings no further revenue to Anet.

Another thing to consider is that all of these online game companies don't just on site ban bots/haxx. They watch it. Study it. Learn how to circumvent it so that particular bot doesn't come back in the future. Then ban everyone using that bot and run the game with improved scripts.

Where did this figure come from?
I remember reading somewhere that developers usually get around 10-20% of the publisher's profit in royalties. This would translate to a developer income of well under $5 per game sold, probably more like $1

Have you ever looked at a log? If you think that you can be "low level support" and understand logs, I think you don't understand the logic behind them. They're not a list of nice messages (e.g. "the user did this", "the server did that") but usually complex sequence of command input and output.

Support is not specifically allocated to one person. I remember when I issued a ticket a long while ago, I dealt with 3 different people.

Banning costs money in support and possibly in additional things to implement (for example the /report command, or the outpost redesign so that path finding is more difficult)

Not true: some players will never need support, and the fan forums like GWG are actually part of the support. Look at the Q&A section where we currently are to convince you of that.

And we should give you more credit because of ... ? Honestly, either you write a perfect mathematical inequation disproving Gaile's statement (you'd have to know exactly how much Anet earns, the employee salaries, cost of maintaining servers, etc.), or you're simply giving an unfounded subjective opinion (which is your right, but it should be treated as an opinion and nothing more).

hmmmm..... bots.

I use to play another mmo, Silkroad. I left coz of the impossiblity to lvl up because on the overwhelming number of bots, the lack of support(fixing bugs, banning bots, undating skills), the way people bot openly and without any mesure taken by the game company, the fact that buying goodies from the ingame store will give you a huge advantage over other players. I came to GW after serching the big G for entries about GW+bots. The result was: not too many result. Now if you really want to know what botting is try Silkroad. If you're able to log in(next to impossible on certain servers without paying for a premium access ticket), go in any town at the potion shop and watch the huge rows of GoldBots coming in and out.

GW as got great support, they are listening to players and are always looking for ways to improve game play.

The cost of banning bots, making money or not out of banning them is of no importance. ANET is doing something about them and that is to me the only important part.

This is untrue. The support team may get paid the same regardless of the number of tickets, but the size of the support team is going to be determined by how many tickets there are to work on average, not on a single day. If the support personnel are only working 10 tickets a day, then you probably have too many personnel. The company probably has to justify their budget for support by how many tickets are worked, and that justification is probably broken down by what kind of tickets they are working, and possibly even how many hours are spent on each type of support. So there is probably a very real and easy way to estimate the cost of working "botting" issues.


...
This is true. The logs for even simple networking programs are often quite complex. If the log has enough information to determine that the person is a bot and not a real person, then it has a lot of information in it. And someone with enough skill to review that information and come to a correct decision has got to spend the time to reach that conclusion. Sine I haven't heard much about a-net incorrectly banning bots, I have to think that they analyze these logs carefully. I suspect they actually have an initial reviewer and then someone who double-checks the review and issues the ban, at the very least.

In addition to the fact that I think you are underestimating the amount of time they spend reviewing the logs, you also have to realize that an employee who makes $20/hr costs the company a lot more than that. There are federal taxes and fees that have to be paid by the company (the amount that is witheld from your check for income tax is not the entire amount that the government makes from your employment). Also, all full time employees are given benefits, which have some cost for the company. I suspect an employee who makes $20/hr costs the company closer to $40/hr. So if that employee spends even 1 hour reviewing logs, then they've probably spent more than a-net makes off of one sale of prophecies (which is retailing for about $30 now, so there's no way that they could make $40, even if they got 100% of the cost, which they don't).

Don't think they spend one hour reviewing logs of each bot. If they did it would be horribly inefficient. Here's why:

1. Support guy gets the user name of a player suspected to be a bot via automated methods.
2. He checks if they're online, if not leave them on the list and go to the next guy
3. He finds a guy online and messages them. "Hey, this is Anet tech support. Please talk to me and let me know if you're a bot". Have the gw code make it obvious this is coming from an admin and difficult to miss.
(wait 1 minute)
4. Observe that the player is doing stuff/farming. Message them again. "This is Anet tech support. I'm going to have to put a ban on your account if you don't respond. Please let me know you're here."
(wait 1 minute)
5. Give a final warning
6. If they kept farming and didn't answer any of these or change behavior then place the ban. Log the time for reference if they challenge it.
7. Go back to 1

Done in under 5 minutes. Anet doesn't do this (I assume, cause I've never heard of anyone being questioned in game). Here's the point... why doesn't Anet do this? The implied answer is because this is more work then Anet currently spends on determining who is a bot. If they were spending more then five minutes on making the ban, they would do this and save money.

You don't need the CEO, or a programmer, or even a high level support guy to do the steps above.

"Perfect mathematical inequation". Hehe.

You should give me credit because I point out the reasoning behind what I say. You're using a logical fallacy called Appeal to Authority. Things aren't right or wrong simply based on who said them.

I disagree with the second part of your statement about needing exact numbers too. Do you really need to pull out a tape measure to verify that two inch shoes won't fit on your feet? If I told you Beijing was 2 miles away from Los Angeles, would you need to measure the exact distance between Beijing and Los Angeles in order to say I was wrong? Would that just be your 'unfounded subjective opinion' until you did measure it exactly?

You can estimate to see if something is way off. That's what I'm doing here.

Because there's such a thing as bot tenders waiting to respond to such a prompt. Because such responses can also be scripted. Because there's also such a thing as a language barrier. Because one can turn off all chat and set their status to offline. Because one can be playing for so long they don't even realize someones talking to them, or being spammed with whispers/guild/alliance chat. Because there's also such an excuse as that they are playing on an old crap machine and are horribly lagged. And a half dozen other excuses I'm too tired to think of/make up.

Banning something is not something to be done lightly. So support has to go through log files and go through them more then once. You are right about one thing, it is very very inefficient, which means time is wasted, along with money.

And while we are on that subject, have you ever seen a log file? Do you honestly believe its something as simple as a text file that reads "player a moves right y times, moves forward z times, mashes button x times, etc..." Its in code, with a crazy number of other information all jumboed in a mess that will make your eyes bleed if you stare at it long enough. 10 minutes is no where near enough time to read a log file.

Bottom line, bots are bad for the game. They introduce excessive amounts of gold into the game and ruin economies. That means bad publicity, which means less games sell, which also means money lost. GW is also set up so that rather then paying a monthly subscription, those fees are paid for by people buying additional campaigns, botters don't do that, which again means money lost. Then theres the stolen accounts which support has to spend time tracking user activity, pulling up account info/keys, verifying owners, reissuing keys, and then repeating on all the accounts that have had contact with it, which means money lost. Accounts brought with stolen cards have to be refunded, authorities contacted, more info tracked down, bandwidth/server space wasted by accounts that shouldn't have been, more tracking of user activities and those they've traded with. It adds and adds and adds, thats all money being spent and wasted and of no benefit to Anet.

Yes, I've always found it amusing the theories on why they make money from bots. The vast majority of arguments against it show a severe lack of knowledge on how costs are figured in a business. Take the line "Also, I don't think it could cost $80 to ban a bot." - yea sure, all the money you pay for the game goes into support, there are no fixed costs, no overhead, no publisher, no retailer, no infrastructure, no transportation cost - nope nothing all goes into support and banning bots.

Of course, that is why a great deal of people never make it into management and even then stay in low to mid level positions. It is also why they tend to think their bosses stupid and almost always find that their promoted co-worker "betrays" them - there are many people I would *love* to see put in the management position they think they know so well.

So what kind of fallacy is this? I can now judge that your statement is way off the reality of Anet's business because I think they're not paid as much as you think. Or because you underestimated their server costs by a factor of 10.

Until you've tried the shoe on your feet, you can tell me your opinion about whether it fits you, but it's all very subjective. How many people claiming "this is going to work" but then it does not work?

Once more, until you put your subjective opinion into number, it will remain what it is, i.e., an unfounded opinion, and nothing more.

lmaolmaolmaoWAITwaitwait.
It costs Anet more to ban someone than the purchase of a new game?
uh....whos doing these bans? They're getting paid too much.

Maybe you should listen to your own advice. If you think ANet "makes" 80$, or $50, or whatever off the sale of a game, you obviously don't know what you're talking about. Any retail venture, including an on-line store, has costs - only a portion of the sale price is actually "profit". Do you actually think that Wal-Mart sends the entire $50 to ANet when it makes a sale!!

Fix'd
After the hilarity of whiny fools like Chunky Monkey and, recently, the 117, that guy deserves a raise for all the giggles he's given us Gurus

Harsh, blunt, but very to the point.

I wouldn't. There's too many of them in those positions as it is. We need more of those that can handle such positions.

To be fair, I didn't mean for them to be a permanent position, just long enough to fail miserably

I think you're missing the point. This was a response to Xylia's implication that it is currently taking A-net hours to tell if somebody is a bot or not. I suggested a theoretical cost effective way to catch some bots. The really, really lazy bots where they don't do all those things you suggest. There's not a solution where you're going to catch every bot. There are solutions where you can catch some bots that don't require somebody to look at logs for hours.

Perhaps you never the congo lines of bots they had at altrumn, granite citadel, bergen hot (bot) springs. The bots likely did none of the stuff you suggested above and you could go and see full lines of these guys at any time of the day. Come back in a week and they would be there. If a dead obvious bot wasn't getting banned, why waste time building a smarter one?

By the way, you are using a Perfect Solution Fallacy argument. Seat belts don't save 100% of the people who get in car crashes but they're still good to use. Every solution doesn't need to fix the problem 100% to be worthwhile.

Since this is the second time this has been asked... yes I have seen log files. I have written programs that write log files. In the case where somebody other than a programmer will need to look at said info then it's standard practice to write a 'log reader' app that parses through the information and just shows the important parts they would need to see.

The support guy wouldn't be expected to go through logs directly. He would use the log reader.

The description "in code, with a crazy number of other information all jumboed in a mess that will make your eyes bleed if you stare at it long enough" doesn't apply to any log I've ever seen. Even logging just intended for the programmer. Possibly if you weren't looking at a log at all but directly at network packets. Nobody's going to do that for each and every case of a potential bot. Not at A-net, not at any MMO.

Straw man. Who said bots are good for the game? Oh, that's right... nobody. Except the straw man you set up right there.

I said 'estimate' and you switched it with 'judge'. And then you forgot the estimate. I backed up what I said with reasoning and you didn't. Please do so. How much do you think they get paid? If you don't know and can't even make a guess then how can you use that as the reason for why I am wrong?

I estimate server costs are higher for an active player then a banned player. This is based on the fact that something > zero.

Hi, I'm Fril Estelin. That ruler in your hand isn't a foot long. Until you've measured it at the subatomic level and "you put your subjective opinion into number, it will remain what it is, i.e., an unfounded opinion, and nothing more."

No you didn't. (your reply is FULL of non-sense: I didn't "switch" a word in your reply but I used a different one in mine; instead of answering what you think ANet staff is paid you're asking me to tell you how much, while you're the one discrediting Anet's statement; did you know that "foot long" is not "measured at the subatomic level" but is a convention?) Reasoning has to be based on facts, and your only fact is "something > zero", which cannot counter the fact stated by Gaile that "cost of banning an account > cost of buying a new account" because you have absolutely no idea what the "cost of banning an account" is.

This is the last time I'll reply to your dummy comments.

Going back to post #14 in this thread

Thank you for pointing out the obvious. I'm saying that if Anet's regular support team gets paid a salary then they aren't losing money by them processing bot reports, if it falls under their responsibilities. You're saying that if they didn't have to deal with bots then their support team would be smaller? That investigating and removing bots takes so many resources that it forced ANET to hire more staff than they would normally need or re-allocate other staff to help out?

Well I doubt that. And the infestation of bots we had stands as evidence. Their removal did not appear to be the work of a large team or an important issue and it wasn't until fairly recently that we saw them being seriously addressed. So was it because ANET spent more money to increase their support team or did the issue grow so big (and public) that they were they forced to stop ignoring it and take action with existing support? Only Anet knows for certain but I doubt they would take on the considerable costs that come with additional employees at this stage in the game's life cycle. That'd be pretty foolish.

To continue the trend of pointing out the obvious, remember that this is just my opinion, none of us know Anet's calculations behind the cost of banning a bot VS the profit from a new game (recalling that new bot accounts often come from existing accounts), Gaile is just PR, and forums are a place where people discuss their personal views.

DarkFlame gave 5 because's against your method. Only 2 of them were that bots could avoid your method. The other 3 were ways your method would produce false positives, which is a very bad thing. So I think your method is probably inferior to whatever method ANet is currently using. ANet doesn't use your system because their's is more successful at banning bots, not because it's cheaper. And suggesting a cheaper but inferior method isn't very useful as an argument.

Also, your "estimate" can't be relied upon, because you have no experience to base it on. It's really just a guess. Yes, 2-inch shoes won't fit your feet, but you can estimate that because you can look at the shoes and compare them to your feet. But you don't know how much effort it takes to ban a bot. You've never banned bots before (that's obvious based on your method).