Article: PSO2 (JP) - SEGA Suspended 188,683 Accounts for RMT & Cheating During December

[Tomeeboy]

SEGA's latest update on its war against cheating indicates that a whopping 188,683 accounts were suspended during the month of December for malicious activity. In related news, somebody, somewhere, has got to be getting ridiculously tired of making new accounts for Phantasy Star Online 2.

We're assuming that the vast majority of these accounts are a result of bots or other automated nuisances, but the number does also include players trying to purchase or sell in-game currency through RMT, as well as those attempting to use cheat programs or commit fraud. While the number does still appear quite large when considering the recent milestone of one-million registered users, SEGA's waves of mass suspensions likely have cheaters and RMTers in a continuous cycle of creating new accounts (it is a free game, after all).

Nonetheless, it's good to see that SEGA continues to bloody its ban hammer in an effort to keep PSO2's servers clean. We'll be hoping to see the same efforts once the game inevitably releases in the West this year!

[Arika]

So from 1 million accounts = around 20-30% = bot ? (since they just ban around 100k last month too, and 200k this month)

[Dana]

On some ships it looks like 30% are those Rangers names "otfrvbnkuytfgnmb" :P
I think it's a good thing.

[subluminus]

Is the new year, are we going there about a release date before March? Seriously? As for account banning, RMT are a big problem on any game. Pay or Free to Play. I have a hard time believing that 300K of PSO 2 Players are RMT. However, I'd imagine the sorts of violations relate to a larger number of Sega's "Terms of Service". There are people out there who get their jollies out of trying to hack/cheat games because they think they are cute and can get away with it. I'd argue "idiots" make up the vast majority of those 300K, rather than RMT accounts. However, RMT is a big business, so they do have the resources to make crap-loads of accounts and have them running non-stop. Personally though, I think the incidences with other versions of Phantasy Star online titles, this seems to be a little over zealous. Unless of course the 1 million subscribers is aside from the 300K worth of RMT, Hacker, Scum bans. I do hope they do protect this game east or west. It would be a crying shame to see such an amazing game go down the tubes.

[Tomeeboy]

Keep in mind, they have not really given an up-to-date count of user IDs since the one-million mark. In addition, if they were to ban an RMT / bot account, that account will likely be recreated many times throughout the course of a month. It's much like with spammers on a forum and they will come back every day on a new account. So, I'm sure this number is heavily inflated, due to the fact that they are likely suspending the same offender many times (even hundreds of times) during a month.

[HyperShot-X-]

what a joke.. at this rate, over half of accounts will get suspended at some point and what's kinda annoying is the fact that those accounts were taking up 30% of server bandwidth at all times, and this is only for JP server yet. I've suspected F2P model was a bad joke to begin with but not to this extent, this after that wtf graphix glitch farce, it's like getting more and more ridiculous even before game getting launched in the West and release on mobile platform.

[FacelessRed]

People who create illegal accounts run 10-20 machines each person that also run several instances of the game automatically. They get banned, they create new accounts. there's thousands of these people. just because you ban 200,000 of em, doesn't mean they don't come right back. It's to slow them down and keep them from being a huge impact. Keep your knickers on.

[subluminus]

That sounds quite plausible that the number is inflated by account spamming.

[BWS-1]

Call me crazy but... wouldn't a ''1$ yearly charge'' for the game with a valid credit card fix a good chunk of the issue? Wouldn't make it FREE to play anymore, but it would sure as hell help narrow down whoever would try to hack it up using mere bots. And they could spend more energy elsewhere on the game. And come on... 1 dollar. A year. You might say ''any hacker could pay that too duh!'' ... Well ''any hacker'' would need to pay that ''mere 1 dollar'' with a VALID credit card, or at least now have to go through the trouble of finding fake ones to pull the crap they are pulling without any trouble at all in the current setup which, if they don't use the fake credit card option, would just make them easy-to-track targets by SEGA! Bam. There you have it. Problem solved. (or at least, reduced greatly)

[Alucadra]

Do we have anymore information on the intended release target for West? I'd assume it would have to be sometime soon like April being the latest.