Originally Posted by
Banjotron
They don't really lose money on a per-transaction basis. That's not the problem they're having.
Lets say player X in Japan and player Y in the US both bought an equivalent amount of Arks Cash, and they both used proper Visa credit cards. The kind of processing used for this kind of transaction would mean that SEGA would get a very similar amount of revenue from both purchases.
This is how it should work, in theory, with the right kind of card. But that's in theory. In reality, a number of other factors enter into the equation when you don't set this up right. In reality, the transaction is not between you and SEGA. It's between your bank or credit card company and SoJ's billing system, which is either internal and built for local transactions or a local contractor. And there are myriad safeguards in place on the institutional level when you use credit cards to make international transactions with a distant vendor set up primarily to handle domestic charges. There are several layers of fraud protection that have been set up either for your protection or because legislation demands it.
In the above scenario, lots of banks have systems which will either A. flag the charges and disallow them during the charge process if they fit a specific patterns, or B. flag the charges and cancel them after the fact at a later date. It wouldn't happen if SEGA had set up their billing properly to handle international transactions, but they haven't. Why would they? They had no reason to assume any significant number of people would import. This is a big reason why many people could not use certain cards, and it's also the reason many people saw charges for purchases coming back to them while they kept the AC. It wasn't SEGA being generous and asking you to have your money back.
Well, guess what? SEGA noticed every time your money went back to you. And in most of those cases, they ended up with a casual inquiry pointed at them from the other end asking what the deal was. These things have to be dealt with for a reputable business, and it's a pain in the ass considering they've already lost money when it happens. And it sounds like they think a bunch of us are deliberately doing it, asking for chargebacks after buying AC, assuming SEGA can't do anything. I'd say it's mostly unintentional, but they lose time and money either way, so they're within their rights to cut us off.
But that's not the problem. As has been mentioned many times, you don't have to pay directly with your card. There are vendors in Asia with services similar to paypal who you can use. You pay a little extra, and SEGA doesn't suffer a big hassle. Problem solved.
The real problem is the impending IP block. And I say impending because there are only two possibilities. Either Sakai is bluffing and will never do it (which I personally doubt), or it will happen with 100% certainty within the next few months.
For all of the talk of importing being the golden way to play, the American PSO2 import community seems to be contain the absolute worst segment of the PSO community at large. Yes, I'm only talking about 10% of us; the remaining 90% are just average gamers trying to have fun. But in this case, it's a 10% so brazenly trollish and annoying that they do enough to color a group twenty times their size.
I think we need to openly talk about this at this point. I've played dozens of MMO's over more than ten years. I've seen horrible, nonstop trolling. I've heard people spout racist spam and nonstop garbage without pause in League of Legends ranked games and WoW trade chat, and I've seen far worse than that in small MMO's. Heck, I played Diablo 1 online for a long time, and I watched people use hacks on me which either killed me instantly or crashed my game, sometimes costing me all of my items. And somehow this one segment of the PSO2 community, particularly the entitled weaboo spammers who think they're an indispensable part of PSO fandom and history, are the most annoying players I've ever seen in any online game, without exaggeration. I would say they're not malicious, but I think many of us have noticed a sharp increase in the amount of elitist venom flowing through the PSO2 forums these days, usually from the same "I'm a PSO god" kind of people. It's a poisonous attitude to have.
And to understand why this means we're almost definitely cooked, you should understand the tone Sakai is taking. This isn't a warning shot "lets be reasonable in the future" kind of warning he gave us. Japanese culture dictates that a person like him be endlessly apologetic and assume all responsibility for ills the players suffer. If you read their releases regularly, you'll see an apology every few lines for every small problem, and if he forgets to apologize for something one day, he will literally apologize for forgetting to apologize the next time. For him to come out and speak in the way he's speaking basically means we're already five steps onto the plank, and he's ready with his sword at our backs to push us over at any moment.
Posting Permissions
Connect With Us