Item Stack Resale Exploit

EXACTLY!!!

Bioware needs to weigh the punishment with the impact on revenue. There's no doubt what these players did impacted the game, but...was it bad enough to reduce income? Would YOU take less $ at your job to punish these people? Or would YOU pay more to ban them? Credits are already easy to make, there's an abundance of them out there. Companion affection was always meant to be capped...the people who used this simply bypassed an artificial grind that we're all doing anyway.

I'm by no means condoning what the exploiters did, nor am I suggesting not punishing them at all, but those of you just screaming "BAN BAN BAN" are fools. This is a business. Bioware was well aware of this exploit early on and they could have stopped it far sooner, they just didn't prioritize it. If you think they're going to hurt their own income to punish these people severely, you're gravely mistaken.

I think that highlighted part is 100% the reason this game isn't doing better. EA doesn't care about them, Montreal Bioware doesn't care about them...Austin is left to do whatever they like.

So what you suggest is the following: Exploiters should not be banned at all because they bring in money? Good, next time everyone should and most likely will exploit. The gain a player can get out of an exploit is huge and with BWs "no ban police" everyone is safe to exploit like there is no tomorrow.

Maybe a exploiter gets a few days off, maybe they can track everything back and remove all of it. If not = profit.

Reminds me of folks that think the guys at my masons lodge are vampire illuminati when they can barely agree on how to cook pancakes...much less how to fix the leaking roof. I blame netflix

I see reading and comprehension isn't your strong suit...so let me summarize what I actually DID say...

Customers = $ for Bioware Austin
Banning customers = less $ for Bioware Austin

Bioware has set this precedent plenty of times already...they don't care if you get scammed on the GTN, ninja looted in an Ops, they didn't care that you got the best chest in-game last year, that $ and "stuff" is all in-game fake stuff. The only time they seem to get "serious" about exploits or any issue, is when it impacts their actual revenue. Nothing else is real.

If you think they'll accept less REAL $ to punish someone for making fake in-game $, I think you're nuts.

Some players don't just have a reading comprehension issue, they have an issue understanding how the real world works - especially for-profit corporations.

While they can, should, and most likely will ban egregious exploiters (most of which used throw away accounts anyways), they absolutely have to temper any decisions on actions against their revenue.

Only someone totally clueless about how the real business world works would expect to see permanent bans for anyone and everyone who participated.

I know I wouldn't if I were in management at Bioware, as I can imagine telling EA corporate that revenue is off for SWTOR because I banned paying customers who exploited a bug would not be good for my career.

All the corporate finance people I've ever dealt with acted like Pauly in Goodfellas...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGAmPRxV48

Na, i just take a look at the effect on what you are saying.

On a side note: customers leaving the game because it is full of cheaters = less $

I just don't have a lot of confidence in them tracking down people in a timely manner. They couldn't even get the GTN cleaned up of pages of stacks of 99 the day this was released, and tickets go unanswered for weeks - it isn't like dev/admin time is spare, or seemingly very well used.

The problem is very much the reaction time to these things. Thats where you solve them, not by punitive actions. That is a waste of time. And why I was so snarky on the first page of this thread, and throughout. The tone of the OP was that they'd been crafty in laying low and then struck.

When it took weeks. On a bug that was all over the net, easily reproducible (no intermittent nightmares here), where the cause was very very obvious to isolate.

The first evidence this team gets of a dupe ought to mean a late night and many hands on deck. The traffic in Austin is terrible anyway, it won't hurt to keep the team late a day. What, is everyone telecommuting? Or are the content developers that walled from administrators?

Whatever it is is broken if either 1. No one with decision making power in that office groks that dupes are the number 1 priority, of the whole team, until it is fixed...or 2. No one has the ability or resources to matter in that situation.

What happens to offenders is meaningless to me, at least. It is the seemingly sad state of that office.

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You're not wrong...ideally, you're correct...but as DawnAskham points out above, that's not how the real world works. Profit comes before principle.

I didn't/don't cheat. I've never been banned. I'm just being realistic.