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Are multiple 'Game' accounts prohibited?
ukcaptain420
Member Posts: 345 Arc User
During the recent scheduled maintenance a discussion arose about one user having multiple accounts. It was discussed and proven in that multiple forum accounts is prohibited, but it is unclear if this applies to game accounts. Also is a game account and forum account one in the same.
A few people did a bit of digging around and wasn't able to find a clear answer. The most conclusive answer was:
Myself and a few other looked through the PWE EULA, and could see no reference to the one user, multiple accounts scenario.
Could we get some official word on this. With the changes to exchange and mail, this quickly become an important issue.
A few people did a bit of digging around and wasn't able to find a clear answer. The most conclusive answer was:
5 seconds in google, official response on multiple accounts from colored nickname. You're welcome.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=5951181&postcount=4
Myself and a few other looked through the PWE EULA, and could see no reference to the one user, multiple accounts scenario.
Could we get some official word on this. With the changes to exchange and mail, this quickly become an important issue.
SCM - Infected(S) - DMG Out: 11,776,567 DPS: 114,224.70 (28.7% of Team) - Pinky@ukcaptain420
I reserve the right to have a completely different standpoint depending on my mood.
I reserve the right to have a completely different standpoint depending on my mood.
Post edited by ukcaptain420 on
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...... Is metroids gun arm a part of his suit or a part of his arm?
I could be mistaken, but I understand we can only have one install of a PWE game per PWE account. Which I expect to play into the ARC launcher. When it's more common place as the umbrella over every PWE game you play on that specific account.
If I understand correctly, each PWE account must be attached to it's own e-mail address. In theory, you can have ten STO game installs if you have ten PWE accounts - each with their own e-email address - to register the games to.
Each PWE account would open up its own forum user account in a game.
Although I agree, it doesn't specifically answer the query.
This would also apply to a single account as well, so again, doesn't really answer the query.
But thanks both anyway.
Lets say for arguments sake that UserA has AccountA & AccountB and is doing nothing that could be considered a violation of the ToS or EULA.
There are many assumptions that can be made. Firstly and I assume quite importanly, by making 2 accounts you are bypassing the need to buy extra toon slots, for this reason alone I would assume it would be a violation.
The problem is, I can reason in many different ways that having 2 accounts for 1 user is wrong, mutliboxing, avoiding paying for more toons, being able to avoid the 40 limit on the exchange, extra mail storage, but i cannot find anything to say it is wrong. Yet I would still assume it is frowned upon.
I believe there are ways of knowing different machines on a network. But lets say your roommate has no PC, it broke and from time to time uses your PC, how does this appear at the service end, A safe assumption would be that the 'Owner' of AccountA is also the 'Owner' of AccountB
As I said there are many variables that come into play with this, and plenty of people have speculated. I'm hoping someone can provide a link to some ToS or EULA that defined this kind of usage.
To be honest, I imagine, even if it's not already prohibited then it will be soon, as they have been clamping down on used storage, i.e. the mail system, this is just another exploit(using something in an unintended manner) for storage.
I reserve the right to have a completely different standpoint depending on my mood.
If you install the game and never participate in the forums, all you'll ever see and agree to are the terms mentioned in the PWE EULA, which doesn't mention multiple accounts, therefore I wouldn't see any problems with it or think I'd be getting banned.
Same thing goes for other PWE games. Not every PWE community has forum guidelines mentioning multiple accounts, even though they're all using the same PWE account to log in. If you only play Jade Dynasty for example, which doesn't mention multiple accounts in their forum guidelines either, you'll never be confronted with that issue.
Good point, if you don't use the forum you wouldn't end up agreeing to the EULA and therefore aren't bound to them.
Thanks, very logical but still doesn't answer the query.
I'm usually pretty good at tracking down terms and conditions, and i can find nothing about multiple game accounts.
I have to go out for a bit, but look forward to other replies and will do some more digging when I get home.
But at this point, I can find nothing to discourage me from creating another account, to use mainly as storage, but i imagine i'll play through and level up another 3 toons for the fun of it.
I reserve the right to have a completely different standpoint depending on my mood.
forums are a different issue because you can make a post and then use multiple accounts to agree with you, or troll people or whatever. just use one forum account.
The EULA does NOT prohibit creating or playing from multiple accounts. Aside from the fact that an EULA is not legally binding, any written contract carries the "rule of assumption". It is assumed that if it isn't specifically written in the contract, you can do whatever is legal. It is not illegal to create multiple "personas" on the internet, therefore it is legal and acceptable to create multiple STO accounts for yourself since the EULA does not forbid it.
The EULA does not, however, indemnify PWE for taking such action.
Indemnity is irrelevant. You will be assimilated.
Apparently however, you can run mutli-box to you're hearts content, so long as you're not an TRIBBLE and draw unude attention to yourself to the extent of PWE/Cryptic banning you for 'whatever the heck they want'.
They can somehow tell when you're using multiple forum accounts and if they can do that they can figure out if you're using multiple game accounts.
Remember, Account Guard is non-optional and I wouldn't be surprised if it had other uses besides just keeping people from hijacking your account.
I don't think they go out of their way to look for multiple accounts or any other exploit, and there's not much stopping anyone from creating them, but they get real motivated when they catch people bending or breaking the rules or it impacts the game servers.
Thusly why mail is no longer a good place to store things indefinitely, why Foundry exploits got the smackdown, and why a few peeps get instabanned whenever they act up on the forums.
Sure, I'm no Dev and you can take everything I just said with a grain of salt if you want. I don't speak for them.
But I'm not stupid, and I can see what's in Cryptic's/PWE's interests as well as anybody else who doesn't work for them.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that some people are going to take the latest set of mail restrictions real personally and decide to get around them by hook or by crook.
Given what we've already seen Cryptic do when a lot of people abuse a 'feature', I wouldn't bet against them noticing it eventually and doing something that people really aren't going to like.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Uh, huh. And people who get banned are gonna take PWE to court?
I confess, I'd be really interested in following that case.
I've got a strong suspicion that it wouldn't go the plaintiff's way. Actual lawyers are involved in creating those EULA's, ToS'es, and all and I expect they know where the loopholes are better than any layman.
Hint: The loopholes are most likely in PWE's favor.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Back to the thread....
It seems an awful lot of work for creating mule accounts. Given that it's neither expensive or difficult to get additional space, seems like a waste of time.
I did run into a guy who opened up a new account simple to get around the ignore I placed on him. He was using racist language - his right to do, my right to ignore - and wanted to carry on the conversation. I laughed, and ignored him again.
Ultimately it would be cool if ships had cargo holds. Maybe have different sizes based on your ships where the captain could designate space. Heck, I'd even pay for it.
hint, hint Cryptic
My Two Bits
Admiral Thrax
What would you do ?
Try and sell doff's in the zone chat when you can't link them ?
You kind of have to sit and wonder how it worked well for 3 years and then out of all the things they could be working on, they prioritize limiting your mail.
Is there anyone on the forums that don't have a 300 items bug list ?
For someone who says things are going terrific they seem awful pitiful to me.
Killing doff's with the upgrinder and to be continued - killing STF because the drops were too good, charge you for crafting, killing carrier gameplay, nerfing kits and stats and broken boff's, wasting time on ARC and the gateway that never went anywhere etc. etc. etc.
What they choose to focus on says everything.
And you know, the irony of it all, the mail system is still broken. I still can't delete my mails
Was it really worth breaking just for the outside chance people might buy more inventory slots ?
Absolute waste of time and resources
More like again (broken, that is)... I wasn't able to delete them, then I was, and now I can't again.
Really looking forward to a future "Ask Cryptic QA" feature, but I'm not sure they're bold enough to do one...
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
And if they do 'do something', then they 'do something' to prevent the creation/use of such accounts. But that doesn't mean that they will give out penalties to those that have done so already as a violation of the EULA.
They know the IP addresses of every computer that logs in to STO. So they can tell if multiple accounts are using the same computer and/or IP address. However, they cannot tell if the actual players are the one and the same. I know a family where multiple family members use the same computer to play STO (each person with his own account). Cryptic can't tell the difference in this situation.
Account guard ties your account to your particular computer. It reduces the risk of your account being hijacked remotely.
Come join the 44th Fleet.
startrek.44thfleet.com[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
LOL, took em 3+ YEARS to come to the conclusion that mailing stuff to yourself was getting around storage limits. I'm not worried that they might find another free game account linked to my router IP years from now, and account guard ties you game account to an e-mail address, not a computer.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
we have two other accounts in the household one of which is only active on NW
It ties it to both I believe. If you were to get a new computer, you will have to go through account guard verification again. The verification will go through to your email.
Come join the 44th Fleet.
startrek.44thfleet.com[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
EVERYtime I access my account from my office computer I have to verify it with the account guard and my home e-mail address. It doesn't care where I access my account from, it's only looking for the cookie it thinks I didn't erase when I exited my account. I have to do the same thing on my home PC too, the one the game is installed on.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Yahtzee, if you use your second game accounts forum account to circumvent a forum ban, then yes you have broken the rules.
so just only ever post in the forums under your main accounts name and viola.
galacticguards.enjin.com/
Formerly Jewkesman Member from Nov 2009!
There are a number of people who have multiple accounts under Cryptic's previous policy [which was largely, hey you're paying for them, go for it].
This is boiler plate to protect them in court, however it is very doubtful they would Terminate an account that wasn't in violation of a serious infraction.
And i have to beleive that if they decided to say no more multi accounts from one user that they would very well tell us to stop using a second or third or 50thy account first.
not to mention if you think about it unless your logging in to them all at one time, your not realy cuasing quite the drain as you would think.
galacticguards.enjin.com/
Formerly Jewkesman Member from Nov 2009!
They do stop you from making the 4th account, generally. legacy cryptic accounts don't count to this. But if you attempt to make a 4th account, it'll stall out on authenticating the account, and you won't get anywhere. While, yes, you can work around it, it does highlight that they do consider excessive accounts a problem.
Of course, there are always exceptions. For instance, if you have 50 accounts that are all being regularly accessed from one residential IP address, it is fairly improbable that you happen to have 50 people living in your household. I am sure that if they see evidence of abuse, like someone running 20 accounts from the same IP with all the accounts engaged in what appears to be botting, they would take action.
However, if you are obeying the rules and have one or two alternate accounts that you access, they should have no way of knowing whether the accounts are indeed used by the same people, ergo, it should be acceptable.
You do not have you hide your behavior, and it is not illegal or against their TOS. You may create multiple accounts so long as you only use a single identity on the forums.
I fear though I/we are no closer to an official answer than yesterday.
However, it does appear that there is no rule against it.
A few things I'd like to 'nitpick'
1) it is entirely possible to tell different machines, well different network adapters(NIC), each NIC has a MAC address, and your network has an IP address, there is a code that i believe is called a GUID, which is generated from your IP and MAC.
2) (really i'm just being pedantic here) I would imagine, that it is entirely possible for there to be 50 user's on one network playing STO. A suggestion would be people using a mobile dongle sometime share IPs, or perhaps a network provided to students at university where you could have 1000s of users.
3) (Not really a nitpick, more another question) Does using multiple forum accounts gets you banned from the forums only? Or game as well.
Either way I really am only nitpicking.
I have 10 toons, ergo i have space on the exchange for 400 items, space for 1000 duty officers (upgradeable to 4000) and a fair bit of bank space and inventory space. I also have my own fleet(an old storage fleet for an old fleet that disbanded). My answer to storage problems has always been buy more toon slots(why i didn't think of this yesterday when i was asking this question i don't know, i think i got tied up in the debate). 10 toons is starting to be a lot to handle, but at the end of the day, if i made a new account, with 1 fed, 1 kdf, & 1 rom that'd just be another 3 i'd have to manage anyway. Having all my toons on the same account and having the account bank means i can store and use things between toons that are bound to account and easily transfer EC between toons(athough i would like to an upgrade to that, which allow dilithium[i know about the dilithium exchange, would just be easier] and GPL in there too, but that's a different matter). Also any dilithium earned on the other account would be useless to me, as i usually turn my dil to zen and buy things or donate it to my actual fleet.
Although it's not prohibited, i don't really see a good reason to make an alternate account, the same can be achieved with a little grind(pretty easy when you've got 10 established toons already i admit) to get more toon slots, or bank slots, or inventory slots. Also as i have paid at times for my account i have the larger inventory and bank space, so i do remember before i paid, struggling for space.
My recommendation to anyone thinking about making a second account for storage, If you haven't already, pay for 1 month subscription, the benefits are huge, for a start you'll get an extra toon slot, so there's some storage right there, but your level 50 toons will gain the larger bank space, inventory space, you'll gain the account bank, a little more space. If use your extra toon slot and make a new toon while your sub is active you'll get respecs and the enlarged inventory and bank as you level. if you're then still struggling for space, you could use your new toon, and with a few friends help you could start your own storage fleet, and leave only your new toon in it. If you do decide to get the sub for a month, when you get your 500z stipend save it, so you can remove the 10m ec cap, as this gets removed when your sub ends(unless you purchased it before you subcribed)
I reserve the right to have a completely different standpoint depending on my mood.