In this case, Trion reversed the scam in favor of the victim, Player A, which has, you may or may not be shocked to learn, caused outrage in the ArcheAge community, if you can call it a community.
“[O]ur Customer Service policies do not allow impersonation of another player,” explained Senior Community Manager Celestrata on the official forums. “Impersonating someone else, even if it’s by name, to separate someone from their hard earned goods is not allowed and has not been allowed in ArcheAge.”
“In the past, there have been situations where a player impersonated another player, and in those situations, our Customer Service team has reversed the outcome of the scam no matter if it was items or gold. However, this was a policy that has not been made public until now. We realize that this policy has not been made public in the past, but this high profile incident has made us realize that we need to publicly acknowledge and reinforce our stance on name impersonation within the game. This is not a new policy that was made simply for this stream — this is a policy that we as a company have had for the past year and beyond, and it is a policy that is referenced within our Terms of Use (11. Code of Conduct, Rule A.).”
The relevant part of that rule is, “You may not use any name [b]elonging to another person with the intent to impersonate that person.”
Anti-Trion (pro-scam?) players are referring to the incident as an “epic heist” and Player C is calling himself an “Intrepid Adventurer,” claiming that Player A should have turned on the “auto-decline private trades” flag to avoid becoming a victim. Such players accuse Trion of protecting a “whale” with hastily invented rules that haven’t been consistently enforced for scam victims in the past, while others came to the victim’s defense and petitioned Trion to intervene.
Trion: damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.
The scam takes place during the charity stream for Doctors Without Borders, around 46 minutes in.
