The Elder Scrolls Online developer Zenimax Online is encouraging players to name and shame gold sellers and spammers who use the game’s in-game private messaging system to peddle their wares in a move that actually goes against the company’s own rules of conduct.
The move follows the release of the game’s 1.0.6 update, which was released to deter botters from camping public dungeons for loot, by implementing a timer system that prevents players from looting boss corpses for a set duration of time after getting their first loot drop. Further details about the patch can be found here.
The TESO team wrote, “We request that anyone who has received a private message they believe to be from a gold spammer to post the sender’s username as a comment in this thread.”
“Please note that our Community Code of Conduct does prohibit naming and shaming,” the post continues. “However, in an effort to expedite the process of identifying and banning the spammers’ accounts, we are making an exception for this situation. We will investigate each alleged spammer account individually to avoid false reports.”
It’s interesting to note that the studio has blocked the ability to send private messages on its forum as gold sellers were also using the service to spam players. They’re pretty much everywhere, at this point.
Our take: Having logged into the game after a 15 day hiatus, I came back to find my inbox clogged full of spam messages from these gold sellers who managed to find my username, somehow or another. It’s unknown how they did this, but needless to say, Zenimax has a serious problem with gold sellers on their hands.
