Banning the Sale of Minecraft Accounts

[Lotus]

Hey all,

Recently, MCM made a good step in the right direction by enforcing strict policies against resource leakers and those affiliated. However, in the eyes of many, it was a half-baked effort knowing that this site thrives on the Minecraft TOS violating sales of accounts (and the other range of TOS violating services this website facilitates). I wish to see the removal of accounts as a step towards making this marketplace a platform that actually cares about ethics.

Why would we want to ban the sale of accounts?

1. Legitimize the marketplace. The site hypocritically enforces Rule 5.4 by striking down those who violate product ownership rights heavily, yet turns a blind eye to the sale of Minecraft Accounts which violates Mojang’s TOS. Choose one or the other. Remove 5.4 and commit to being a black market, or equally enforce your own rules across all sections of the forum. Being inconsistent and half-assed only annoys the community even more.
   
   
2. Get rid of our most toxic and notorious members. The accounts market is saturated, comprising of crackers stealing accounts, returning ban evaders and is also the section holding the most linked scam reports often closing due to inconclusive evidence.
   
   
3. The site no longer needs to allocate resources to develop features and moderate the section. "Opportunity cost"
   
   
4. MC-Market will not die. By considering points 1 and 3, MCM can become an even better place for everyone and expand into even more markets. There are far more and far better opportunities out there.

Fun reads :

• https://www.mc-market.org/threads/81435/ (60% agreed)
• https://www.mc-market.org/threads/85005/ Announcement in the past for the removal of accounts.

The site doesn’t need to be plagued by accounts anymore. This site has a bigger future for itself by legitimizing itself into a community that leads others. Honestly, I shouldn't even need to be trying to convince everyone by explaining all the benefits of removing the section. This should not have been even allowed on this site in the first place.

 

[jxhdvn]

:facepalm:
1) Account Selling Section is one of the most active sections if not THE MOST active section.
2) You don't see devs, gfx designers, etc. offering their services for $500 - But the market is good money for many users as a single account can go for that or more.
3) Remove the account selling section, then people leave. What happens when people leave? Less sales to people who do GFX, which means what? They leave too.
4) You want to use money and invest in the resource section. So you take a section that makes users tens of thousands, that actually makes people money and provides an activity to the site and put money and resources into a section that makes people maybe $100 if lucky and isn't the reason of why people join the site.
5) Scam Reports? There are more scam reports for other sections than accounts.
6) Breaking EULA - AFAIK when Mojang tried to mess with Verringer during his ownership, Mojang couldn't find a legal way to take it down, so it's not any negative to the site.


If you want to show that you guys are bigger idiots than people thought you were, go for it.

i can see where you’re coming from and i agree but some of these things you’re saying are either untrue or make no sense

 

[Venture]

i can see where you’re coming from and i agree but some of these things you’re saying are either untrue or make no sense

Please clarify what is untrue or make no sense.

 

[Lotus]

The purpose of my suggestion was to make MC-Market consistent with its rules. It's either committing to being a black-market, encouraging illegitimate behavior, or completely legitimizing the whole market.

This does not only apply to accounts and it is indeed true other sections of the market also violate such conditions, however, I saw that to be too much for one suggestion. One step at a time, although the end goal is to completely legitimize the market.

The current issue is due to not committing to either side and both parties get annoyed by each other. The fact that there is a 60/40 ratio (around 58% disagree as of this post) shows that there are definitely two sides to this suggestion. This isn't a one-sided situation, and for a good reason too. Although comparing post counts (312357 [accounts] / 2922142 [total excluding support forums]) we're only looking at accounts section making up 10.69% of the site's activity. Obviously, this is not an accurate reflection on what impact accounts has made to the site, however, it does give you a rough idea that the community won't simply collapse. Heck, I'm not even including the resources section in this rough calculation. But it does invalidate claims like this -

1) Account Selling Section is one of the most active sections if not THE MOST active section.

One thing I want to make clear is that I don't see the community dying from this. Whilst those who frequent the accounts section will leave, I see this as an opportunity to fill it with a more legitimate userbase. This is an unmeasurable statistic, but how many potential users may have turned away from this site due to its 'shadiness' from all of its illegitimate activities? There's a large open market out there waiting to be tapped, yet if we can't even convince users at Spigot who aren't involved in account sales to trust MC-Market, how else can we gain their trust? How else can we gain the trust of other random people? There is the potential to grow this site from removing all the deterrents, keeping an open-minded approach. This community is filled with more account favoring users because that was the traffic the site is used to attracting, but believe me, there are far far more legitimate Minecraft users out there over illegitimate ones.

There is an opportunity to grow MC-Market to be a home of resources, home to creators and entrepreneurs that can legitimately deal with others. There is too much respect given to accounts, which arguably has brought its own fair share of problems with it, acting as a deterrent and a complication for site administration.

From a business perspective, in my eyes, it is a short-term loss for a long-term benefit. Making the site more 'brand-friendly' is a no-brainer to convince more advertisers to use this site. It creates demand for slots, raising prices and therefore increasing the value of the website. Brand image is important not only for advertisers but us as users too. A friendlier, more ethical atmosphere feels like a nicer community to be part of. Of course, there will be more people willing to join such a platform in that regard. There are too many conflicts with all the different perspectives within our community, and making things clear only helps us resolve so many of the site's current problems.

Grow MC-Market into a community you can be proud of. Make the site more accessible to everyone, instead of making it into a refuge for account sellers and other illegitimate activities, scaring others away. MC-Market can never be a leader in the Minecraft industry unless it changes.

 

[jxhdvn]

Please clarify what is untrue or make no sense.

:facepalm:
4) You want to use money and invest in the resource section. So you take a section that makes users tens of thousands, that actually makes people money and provides an activity to the site and put money and resources into a section that makes people maybe $100 if lucky and isn't the reason of why people join the site.

Resources make a lot more money than $100, and account for a lot of sales.

2) You don't see devs, gfx designers, etc. offering their services for $500 - But the market is good money for many users as a single account can go for that or more.

Developers and other people can charge wayyy more than $500 for something. There have beens devs on here fucked over for $2k+ worth of work. It really all depends.

3) Remove the account selling section, then people leave. What happens when people leave? Less sales to people who do GFX, which means what? They leave too.

I disagree with this and I’ve made money off of here designing and selling accounts - a lot of people that sell graphics on here aren’t really selling to those who are into account selling, mostly businesses/services & server owners

I just think you’re making yourself look dumb for no reason. I got the same stance as you but they’ll respond to this which is very flawed rather than some of the valid points made on this thread. No reason to shoot ourselves in the foot

 

[Venture]

The purpose of my suggestion was to make MC-Market consistent with its rules. It's either committing to being a black-market, encouraging illegitimate behavior, or completely legitimizing the whole market.

This does not only apply to accounts and it is indeed true other sections of the market also violate such conditions, however, I saw that to be too much for one suggestion. One step at a time, although the end goal is to completely legitimize the market.

The current issue is due to not committing to either side and both parties get annoyed by each other. The fact that there is a 60/40 ratio (around 58% disagree as of this post) shows that there are definitely two sides to this suggestion. This isn't a one-sided situation, and for a good reason too. Although comparing post counts (312357 [accounts] / 2922142 [total excluding support forums]) we're only looking at accounts section making up 10.69% of the site's activity. Obviously, this is not an accurate reflection on what impact accounts has made to the site, however, it does give you a rough idea that the community won't simply collapse. Heck, I'm not even including the resources section in this rough calculation. But it does invalidate claims like this -


One thing I want to make clear is that I don't see the community dying from this. Whilst those who frequent the accounts section will leave, I see this as an opportunity to fill it with a more legitimate userbase. This is an unmeasurable statistic, but how many potential users may have turned away from this site due to its 'shadiness' from all of its illegitimate activities? There's a large open market out there waiting to be tapped, yet if we can't even convince users at Spigot who aren't involved in account sales to trust MC-Market, how else can we gain their trust? How else can we gain the trust of other random people? There is the potential to grow this site from removing all the deterrents, keeping an open-minded approach. This community is filled with more account favoring users because that was the traffic the site is used to attracting, but believe me, there are far far more legitimate Minecraft users out there over illegitimate ones.

There is an opportunity to grow MC-Market to be a home of resources, home to creators and entrepreneurs that can legitimately deal with others. There is too much respect given to accounts, which arguably has brought its own fair share of problems with it, acting as a deterrent and a complication for site administration.

From a business perspective, in my eyes, it is a short-term loss for a long-term benefit. Making the site more 'brand-friendly' is a no-brainer to convince more advertisers to use this site. It creates demand for slots, raising prices and therefore increasing the value of the website. Brand image is important not only for advertisers but us as users too. A friendlier, more ethical atmosphere feels like a nicer community to be part of. Of course, there will be more people willing to join such a platform in that regard. There are too many conflicts with all the different perspectives within our community, and making things clear only helps us resolve so many of the site's current problems.

Grow MC-Market into a community you can be proud of. Make the site more accessible to everyone, instead of making it into a refuge for account sellers and other illegitimate activities, scaring others away. MC-Market can never be a leader in the Minecraft industry unless it changes.

The amount of posts don't account for the amount of activity. But say it does, I'll break it down.
-> Minecraft Accounts (312,357 Messages)
-> Appraisals (Over 75% of Appraisals are to do with accounts) - That's another 100k+ messages
-> Gift Codes & Licenses AND Social Media Accounts are also usually "Black-market" as you call it, another 100k Messages
Now, what about the other sections?
Sections like General Discussion are usually with a ton of post farm, so that shouldn't be put into account.

So now you're roughly at 18-20% after removing General Discussion and considering everything else.
Let's Continue, shall we?
-> The average OG Account goes for I'd say $150, whereas the average service offering goes for $10 on this site most likely. You see the difference? The market aspect is supported by accounts, because they keep the most money flow and the richest users.

Let's take something else into consideration: About 17.5% of services from GFX, Websites, and such are for Account Shops as users from other sites tend to find cheaper labor here, so the services are also indirectly involved with account selling. (People who sell other forms of accounts leave, and the service offerers will follow).


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, your other point:
You want the site to become more appealing to users because you want to grow the resource section. You want to compete with Spigot & Bukkit.

Does MC-Market have it's own "Spigot 1.12"(Forgot what this shit is called), No. Does MC-Market have an established community for resources? No. You will suffer a loss of users who brought up the economy here, then you will put in resources and money to grow the site in a different direction, yet competing with a site that is so much richer and successful, that you will simply fail and lose.

 

[jxhdvn]

The purpose of my suggestion was to make MC-Market consistent with its rules. It's either committing to being a black-market, encouraging illegitimate behavior, or completely legitimizing the whole market.

This does not only apply to accounts and it is indeed true other sections of the market also violate such conditions, however, I saw that to be too much for one suggestion. One step at a time, although the end goal is to completely legitimize the market.

The current issue is due to not committing to either side and both parties get annoyed by each other. The fact that there is a 60/40 ratio (around 58% disagree as of this post) shows that there are definitely two sides to this suggestion. This isn't a one-sided situation, and for a good reason too. Although comparing post counts (312357 [accounts] / 2922142 [total excluding support forums]) we're only looking at accounts section making up 10.69% of the site's activity. Obviously, this is not an accurate reflection on what impact accounts has made to the site, however, it does give you a rough idea that the community won't simply collapse. Heck, I'm not even including the resources section in this rough calculation. But it does invalidate claims like this -


One thing I want to make clear is that I don't see the community dying from this. Whilst those who frequent the accounts section will leave, I see this as an opportunity to fill it with a more legitimate userbase. This is an unmeasurable statistic, but how many potential users may have turned away from this site due to its 'shadiness' from all of its illegitimate activities? There's a large open market out there waiting to be tapped, yet if we can't even convince users at Spigot who aren't involved in account sales to trust MC-Market, how else can we gain their trust? How else can we gain the trust of other random people? There is the potential to grow this site from removing all the deterrents, keeping an open-minded approach. This community is filled with more account favoring users because that was the traffic the site is used to attracting, but believe me, there are far far more legitimate Minecraft users out there over illegitimate ones.

There is an opportunity to grow MC-Market to be a home of resources, home to creators and entrepreneurs that can legitimately deal with others. There is too much respect given to accounts, which arguably has brought its own fair share of problems with it, acting as a deterrent and a complication for site administration.

From a business perspective, in my eyes, it is a short-term loss for a long-term benefit. Making the site more 'brand-friendly' is a no-brainer to convince more advertisers to use this site. It creates demand for slots, raising prices and therefore increasing the value of the website. Brand image is important not only for advertisers but us as users too. A friendlier, more ethical atmosphere feels like a nicer community to be part of. Of course, there will be more people willing to join such a platform in that regard. There are too many conflicts with all the different perspectives within our community, and making things clear only helps us resolve so many of the site's current problems.

Grow MC-Market into a community you can be proud of. Make the site more accessible to everyone, instead of making it into a refuge for account sellers and other illegitimate activities, scaring others away. MC-Market can never be a leader in the Minecraft industry unless it changes.

So it’s not the only thing but you want to single it out first, despite it being one of the key things that people come here for? The fact that you think this will better the minecraft industry when a majority of people solely know this forum due to it’s account selling sections is funny. If you’re going to try and be consistent, implement everything at once and don’t just single out something that people are passionate about because it really looks like you and the staff team don’t have the users of your site in mind when trying to implement this. A large part of this community that MCM is are people that sell accounts, gift cards, videogame accounts & items, social media boosting & accounts, and people that contribute in other sections. You’ve indirectly said that they are not friendly and make our community not feel good to be in by saying that by this being implemented said people will leave. With this you do not have the site in mind - the consequences of trying to be consistent here will ruin the site[DOUBLEPOST=1572804976][/DOUBLEPOST]

The amount of posts don't account for the amount of activity. But say it does, I'll break it down.
-> Minecraft Accounts (312,357 Messages)
-> Appraisals (Over 75% of Appraisals are to do with accounts) - That's another 100k+ messages
-> Gift Codes & Licenses AND Social Media Accounts are also usually "Black-market" as you call it, another 100k Messages
Now, what about the other sections?
Sections like General Discussion are usually with a ton of post farm, so that shouldn't be put into account.

So now you're roughly at 18-20% after removing General Discussion and considering everything else.
Let's Continue, shall we?
-> The average OG Account goes for I'd say $150, whereas the average service offering goes for $10 on this site most likely. You see the difference? The market aspect is supported by accounts, because they keep the most money flow and the richest users.

Let's take something else into consideration: About 17.5% of services from GFX, Websites, and such are for Account Shops as users from other sites tend to find cheaper labor here, so the services are also indirectly involved with account selling. (People who sell other forms of accounts leave, and the service offerers will follow).


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, your other point:
You want the site to become more appealing to users because you want to grow the resource section. You want to compete with Spigot & Bukkit.

Does MC-Market have it's own "Spigot 1.12"(Forgot what this shit is called), No. Does MC-Market have an established community for resources? No. You will suffer a loss of users who brought up the economy here, then you will put in resources and money to grow the site in a different direction, yet competing with a site that is so much richer and successful, that you will simply fail and lose.

Please just stop. You’re only worsening the situation

 

[Venture]

So it’s not the only thing but you want to single it out first, despite it being one of the key things that people come here for? The fact that you think this will better the minecraft industry when a majority of people solely know this forum due to it’s account selling sections is funny. If you’re going to try and be consistent, implement everything at once and don’t just single out something that people are passionate about because it really looks like you and the staff team don’t have the users of your site in mind when trying to implement this. A large part of this community that MCM is are people that sell accounts, gift cards, videogame accounts & items, social media boosting & accounts, and people that contribute in other sections. You’ve indirectly said that they are not friendly and make our community not feel good to be in by saying that by this being implemented said people will leave. With this you do not have the site in mind - the consequences of trying to be consistent here will ruin the site[DOUBLEPOST=1572804976][/DOUBLEPOST]
Please just stop. You’re only worsening the situation

Please read the words I use, "average". I'm aware there are people selling services for $200, but equally there are more people offering services for $1.

 

[jxhdvn]

Please read the words I use, "average". I'm aware there are people selling services for $200, but equally there are more people offering services for $1.

Your estimation of services being on average about $10 is far off, you’re entertaining him with everything you post

 

[Venture]

Your estimation of services being on average about $10 is far off, you’re entertaining him with everything you post

Look through the sections yourself and you'll see there are far more cheaper services than expensive ones.

 

[Khafra]

MC-Market can never be a leader in the Minecraft industry unless it changes.

Dude MCM was and will never be a leader because of shit like this, lol.

 

[Terminated]

The purpose of my suggestion was to make MC-Market consistent with its rules. It's either committing to being a black-market, encouraging illegitimate behavior, or completely legitimizing the whole market.

This does not only apply to accounts and it is indeed true other sections of the market also violate such conditions, however, I saw that to be too much for one suggestion. One step at a time, although the end goal is to completely legitimize the market.

The current issue is due to not committing to either side and both parties get annoyed by each other. The fact that there is a 60/40 ratio (around 58% disagree as of this post) shows that there are definitely two sides to this suggestion. This isn't a one-sided situation, and for a good reason too. Although comparing post counts (312357 [accounts] / 2922142 [total excluding support forums]) we're only looking at accounts section making up 10.69% of the site's activity. Obviously, this is not an accurate reflection on what impact accounts has made to the site, however, it does give you a rough idea that the community won't simply collapse. Heck, I'm not even including the resources section in this rough calculation.

The amount of posts don't account for the amount of activity. But say it does, I'll break it down.
-> Minecraft Accounts (312,357 Messages)
-> Appraisals (Over 75% of Appraisals are to do with accounts) - That's another 100k+ messages
-> Gift Codes & Licenses AND Social Media Accounts are also usually "Black-market" as you call it, another 100k Messages
Now, what about the other sections?
Sections like General Discussion are usually with a ton of post farm, so that shouldn't be put into account.

So now you're roughly at 18-20% after removing General Discussion and considering everything else.
Let's Continue, shall we?
-> The average OG Account goes for I'd say $150, whereas the average service offering goes for $10 on this site most likely. You see the difference? The market aspect is supported by accounts, because they keep the most money flow and the richest users.

Let's take something else into consideration: About 17.5% of services from GFX, Websites, and such are for Account Shops as users from other sites tend to find cheaper labor here, so the services are also indirectly involved with account selling. (People who sell other forms of accounts leave, and the service offerers will follow).

Venture has already made a large step in making the claim that it is one of the more active sections of the forums valid but I will add to it.

Lotus if you had read the rest of this thread then you would have seen notable messages by Doge . I will quote a good point about why there are less posts in the accounts section than there should be.

It also happens to be one of the biggest sections with some of the highest user count. There should be many many more posts, but:

1. The old Minecraft account section was deleted in 2016.
2. Many sellers delete threads after selling their accounts.

Lets now take a look at the % of the site which revolves around account selling. as said by Venture , if you total up numbers in multiple sections specifically about accounts *roughly* we get around 20%. Now we put that in perspective with the fact that *MOST* account sellers delete their selling thread after a sale is made, and the fact that all posts prior to late 2016 are also gone?

We are dealing with a large percentage of site traffic, posts and users relating to the sale of minecraft accounts.

 

[Uh]

My reasoning for not posting a response until now has been that I saw this suggestion as an opportunity to see which way the community opinion would go, and I am moderately surprised by the response that there has been. It's clear that my lack of a response has been noticed by some members so I figure that now's probably a good time for me to give my thoughts on this suggestion and the overall direction the site is going to take in the future.

To summarise my thoughts about everything in this thread down to a single sentence, my opinion is that MC-Market is currently not in a position that we can justify such massive changes to the services and platform that we provide to our users.

I strongly believe that removing minecraft account sales would not kill the community just like how it didn't last time we removed them. As much as account sellers like to think it, minecraft accounts do not make up 60% of minecraft-related sales on the website and instead they are only a little bit bigger than our other sections such as servers, builds, and plugins. However, as many users have brought up, implementing a policy to stop unethical trading on our platform reaches much further than just minecraft accounts and will mean that many other forums need to be further restricted or removed entirely.

It still seems unclear as to whether the community feels more strongly for the removal of minecraft account sales or for them to remain. Although the first post has 42% of users agreeing with the change and 58% disagreeing at the moment, Justis' post directly below that has 65% agreeing and 35% disagreeing. I am not sure the exact reasoning of this, but from my perspective it seems that people have been reading the title and instantly disagreeing with the main post before reading the justification and the people that read on are able to recognise the benefits of the change.

This is an incredibly difficult decision to make, I must balance the ethical considerations and community opinions while still wanting MC-Market to succeed from a business perspective. Behind the scenes the removal of minecraft accounts and other TOS-breaking services on our site has been debated extensively. It is not a decision that I take lightly and I would like to receive more feedback on the significant change to our platform that changes like this would bring.

You remove accounts and I don't care if you don't think it will kill this site but it will. 100's will leave this site since accounts are mainly all they care about.

 

[cute]

let’s just close down mcmarket instead

Doge How do you feel about this scam report against you?

 

[Mv_]

Removing account sales will kill the website, it's a terrible move. It would be like Chick-fil-a removing their chicken sandwiches, or Mac Donalds removing their Big Mac.