Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?

  • Captain Boilo
    Marauder
    Insider

    In the last few days there has been some information going around about a Discord server called Requiem.

    Requiem runs an alliance server on which they use sheer numbers to server-match ships and then lock them down to avoid pvp so they can grind out currencies and commendations for their over 4000-member server. If that's not bad enough on its own, it gets worse.

    Requiem runs a Patreon on which, if you donate $5, you are granted a special role in their Discord called "Supporter." Supporters are given precedence over regular members in that they have first-shot at open spots in the server-wide alliances. Effectively charging money for special access to Microsoft's servers.

    Since this has all come to light, their Patreon has changed some wording to make it seem more benign, but it functions the same way it always has: Pay $5 or more and you can skip the line to get into your pvp-free Sea of Thieves servers.

    I've included the original role benefit description as it appeared up until today:

    alt text

    This potentially breaks some of Microsoft's Terms of Condition:

    Section 8b-iv: "The software is licensed, not sold, and Microsoft reserves all rights to the software not expressly granted by Microsoft under these Terms. This licence does not give you any right to, and you may not, unlawfully:" "publish, copy, rent, lease, sell, export, import, distribute or lend the software or the Services, unless Microsoft expressly authorises you to do so;"

    It may also violate Discord's Terms of Service because they are/were monetizing a nitro booster role.

    alt text

    Much of this information was posted to the unofficial Reddit server for Sea of Thieves, but was removed and its poster banned for 45 days. Posting it here makes the most sense anyway as the Sea of Thieves guys and gals are more likely to see it.

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  • Mc rossco
    Marauder
    Insider

    Server alliances aren't against TOS many many people run them.

    Have you ever tried running a 4000+ person community? Didn't think so it's hard work if people want to support them that's their choice, queue skip isn't a big deal when the queue gets to a certain size they always try and start a new server so everyone can get in.

    Nothing that happens there affects your game / gameplay so not sure why you're bothered.

  • Ghostpaw
    Legend

    @mc-rossco said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    Nothing that happens there affects your game / gameplay so not sure why you're bothered.

    But it does. That many people working on PvE content earning money and reputation on closed servers removes them from the general community. It skews the mix of players working on PvE and PvP. Players in that community can work on content without risks, then when they are satisfied with their progress on rep, tall tales, or whatever, they can return to the normal servers to just focus on PvP. It undermines the game and the balance Rare has attempted to strike between various play-styles. The same arguments against PvE only servers applies in this situation as well. The ones this impacts the most are the players in the general community who are trying to focus on PvE content and have a higher chance of encountering more aggressive crews as a result of this.

  • Mc rossco
    Marauder
    Insider

    @ghostpaw What are you on about? None of that affects your game play, if you look in that server their rules state you can't do tall tales on the server, "That many people" is at most 32 players, the game isn't unbalanced by 32 people being in an alliance. If you'd ever been on one you'd realise most of the time they don't have every ship and do often get attacked by rogue ships, you're just ignorant to the situation.

  • Gundy the Shark
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    @mc-rossco said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    @ghostpaw What are you on about? None of that affects your game play, if you look in that server their rules state you can't do tall tales on the server, "That many people" is at most 32 players, the game isn't unbalanced by 32 people being in an alliance. If you'd ever been on one you'd realise most of the time they don't have every ship and do often get attacked by rogue ships, you're just ignorant to the situation.

    These alliance servers themselves may not be against the TOS, but charging money for priority access probably is.

  • Ghostpaw
    Legend

    @mc-rossco said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    Server alliances aren't against TOS many many people run them.

    Have you ever tried running a 4000+ person community? Didn't think so it's hard work if people want to support them that's their choice, queue skip isn't a big deal when the queue gets to a certain size they always try and start a new server so everyone can get in.

    Nothing that happens there affects your game / gameplay so not sure why you're bothered.

    @mc-rossco said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    @ghostpaw What are you on about? None of that affects your game play, if you look in that server their rules state you can't do tall tales on the server, "That many people" is at most 32 players, the game isn't unbalanced by 32 people being in an alliance. If you'd ever been on one you'd realise most of the time they don't have every ship and do often get attacked by rogue ships, you're just ignorant to the situation.

    @mc-rossco 4,000 is not 32. You can’t have it both ways. Like you said, when one server fills they open a new one. Of course they are not all on at once, but 4,000 players participating in this are not in the general population. This is not a hard concept to understand.

  • Mc rossco
    Marauder
    Insider

    @ghostpaw said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    @mc-rossco 4,000 is not 32. You can’t have it both ways. Like you said, when one server fills they open a new one. Of course they are not all on at once, but 4,000 players participating in this means that many are not in the general population. This is not a hard concept to understand.

    As I said go in their discord look how many people are active in their servers at peek times, at most they have 2 servers going and they don't even have all the ships on those servers, 4000 people aren't all on there at once. lol

  • Ghostpaw
    Legend

    @mc-rossco said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    4000 people aren't all on there at once. lol

    You even quoted me saying that before you said the same thing. I am not really bothered about this group, but claiming it doesn’t impact the game for others, even a little, is false.

  • Ghostpaw
    Legend

    It might be worth it for more aggressive crews to join their group. They would have access to servers populated by passive ships grinding out treasure. Sounds like a way to earn some loot by sinking crews hoarding treasure and expecting to be left alone

  • CallMeBackdrafT
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    Whilst i Wouldnt personally use this or really feel like it would be worth it this is legally not breaking the ToS.

    They are not charging money for the use of Sea of Thieves, they are also not charging money to distribute anything SoT related, the charge money to be a premium member of their community, that has its perks basicly you get first pick to be in a call or chat group with some of the other premium members and thus have an easier spot on a crew.

    If this was breaking ToS, i would be breaking ToS when i would not allow anyone to just join my crew for whatever reason.

    If this was the case any and all tournaments that ask a participation fee would also be dissallowed which is sinply not the case

  • FeudalRaptor
    Castaway

    @callmebackdraft said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    They are not charging money for the use of Sea of Thieves, they are also not charging money to distribute anything SoT related, the charge money to be a premium member of their community, that has its perks basicly you get first pick to be in a call or chat group with some of the other premium members and thus have an easier spot on a crew.

    No officer, I'm not selling sex; I'm selling my time. The sex is just a perk of buying the time.

  • CallMeBackdrafT
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    @feudalraptor we are not talking about any illegal services being done here, no laws are being broken here.

    Its plain and simple, if you dont pay them are you able to play sea of thieves ? Yes

    If you don't pay them are you able to get a ship and sail with anybody you want as long as they want to sail with you ? Yes

    If you don't pay them are you in any way shape or form disadvantaged in playing the game ? No

    They give the option to pay money to get a priority spot with the crews that choose to connect to their discord server, this has nothing to do with Sea of thieves.

    They have created their own sub community with in their own time and have to keep that up and to keep everything going smoothly they might even be using premium discord bots (aka costs money)

    They are in that case easily allowed to ask people if they want to support that community by paying a fee.

    They ask a fee in order to sustain their community, not in order to access sea of thieves

  • Reavantos x
    Master
    Insider
    Founder

    @callmebackdraft said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    @feudalraptor we are not talking about any illegal services being done here, no laws are being broken here.

    Its plain and simple, if you dont pay them are you able to play sea of thieves ? Yes

    If you don't pay them are you able to get a ship and sail with anybody you want as long as they want to sail with you ? Yes

    If you don't pay them are you in any way shape or form disadvantaged in playing the game ? No

    They give the option to pay money to get a priority spot with the crews that choose to connect to their discord server, this has nothing to do with Sea of thieves.

    They have created their own sub community with in their own time and have to keep that up and to keep everything going smoothly they might even be using premium discord bots (aka costs money)

    They are in that case easily allowed to ask people if they want to support that community by paying a fee.

    They ask a fee in order to sustain their community, not in order to access sea of thieves

    incorrect. Their paid priority cue controls the order of who has access those sea of thieves game servers and when. Which is a clear violation of the ToS

    either you didnt bother to research the actual issue, or just trying to cover up for Requiem.

  • Entr0pyD
    Marauder
    Insider

    @callmebackdraft
    Their community is profiting over content that is provided by Rare and microsoft, which regardless of it being morally sound or not DIRECTLY violates Microsoft's TOU.

    At this point it's just safer to not support them at the risk of a later ban.

  • CallMeBackdrafT
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    @reavantos-x nope it does not, they still have to sign on trough sot and microsoft services.

    They gain control over a server, which by rare’s own admission isnt violating anything. They then just play with crews as do we all, the only thing they are saying is: if you want to play sea of thieves as a part of our crews you have to be a member of our community (also not against any ToS especially since athena’s vanguard a similar group of people is now part of rare endorsed communities)

    You dont have to pay them to play with them it just gives you a priority que in their crews and you dont need their crews to play sea of thieves. And paying just gives you a headstart over none payers, however in an alliance server like Requiem and Athena’s Vanguard control the order of joining the server anyway because they have to que up if the ships are all full, if that specific part was against ToS rare would not endorse that sort of community, but they did.

    So TL;DR:

    • Taking over servers as a group is not against ToS
    • Queueing up players so they have to wait is not against ToS
    • if you are not renting out access to the game in an of itself (eg, without them you cant play) its not against ToS
    • if they then choose to offer their community some kind of priority access by way of any sort of monitisation its not against ToS because even without paying you have exactly the same access to the game, you just dont get on any of their crews.

    I never been a part of or have any allegianceto requiem in any way shape or form.

  • CallMeBackdrafT
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    @deenyd who says they are profiting they might be losing money, then there is the fact that if that was a thing no streamer could play any of microsofts games and no youtuber could make any content with them.

    Because since they are playing the game AND are receiving money via:

    • paid promotions
    • subscriptions
    • memberships
    • donations
    • etc etc etc

    That would be against ToS and thus would not be permitted and i dont think its a secret that Rare promotes and helps their content creators left right and center

    And again i have never been part of requiem nor would i ever pay to play apart from the devs themselves, legally there is just nothing wrong with what requiem is doing

  • Approvedjoey
    Ship Mate
    Insider

    @captain-boilo Alliance servers ruin the experience of PvPers looking for action. Its legit extra players no one playing the game properly will ever see on the seas. These alliance servers need shut down for maintenance at a certain time every 3 days!

  • DensestWind9199
    Marauder
    Insider

    this needs to be shut down and their accounts banned

  • Tre Oni
    Marauder
    Insider
    Founder

    @approvedjoey said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    @captain-boilo Alliance servers ruin the experience of PvPers looking for action.

    Like.. do they really though? Effing.. how!?

    No matter what server you end up in if you're looking to PvP, you can go right ahead and start chasing some ships down or whatever.. even if its some group of dudes trying to set up a server. You don't have to comply...

    Whether they want to PvP you or not is irregardless of any alliance situation...

    Jesus these anti alliance claims are getting ridiculous.

  • Xultanis Dragon
    Sailor

    @callmebackdraft

    I think this actually break the TOS. Its a really fine line in this sense as there is no in game economy or items/weapons to farm. However, I think the fact that they are charging players for a service "in game" would be the definition of breaking the ToS.

    Its hard to explain but I hope I didn't confuse you, lord knows I almost confused myself.

    SIDE NOTE

    Rare should really start restarting servers. I don't care about players gathering and taking over a server but locking it down for days or even weeks on end is pushing it. Also I wonder if the servers being open for that long are causing issues. Usually you would need to restart a server to clear some of the memory and refresh the world.

  • CallMeBackdrafT
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    @xultanis-dragon they cant lock down servers for days anymore, after 38 to 72 hours a server is spun down

  • Xultanis Dragon
    Sailor

    @callmebackdraft

    Should be like 24 lol, but thats good then.

  • Dekeita
    Legend
    Insider
    Founder

    @xultanis-dragon They made a change likely partly in response to the OG Grind server over a year ago, where servers shutdown after 48 hours max.

  • Ruigtand NL
    Master
    Insider

    Well this week we tried with 4 starting a galleon each at a countdown and got 3 boats on a server after trying 4 times..

    We had a lot of fun inviting friends.

    Did not seem so difficult.. normally we just ask other crews if we can have the boat if they quit.

    I think its fun and i dont care how others grind this game we are all multi millionaire anyway🙋‍♂️

  • Red0Demon0
    Commander
    Insider

    Is there a way to report this to Rare, even if it might not seem like anything, these people are definitely prospering off of Rare's game. Which I believe might be illegal without Rare's permission (Which I highly doubt they even asked for). @Deckhands what do you guys recommend?

  • ButteryBarnacls
    Marauder
    Insider

    Whatever the other implications, what I see are a bunch of people cheating themselves out of half the fun of the game.
    So they have created their own safe space and grind away at virtual rewards.
    They have missed the purpose of the game and avoided any "unsafe" contact.
    They are not pirates. They are farmers living in a fantasy world that began with their Lego pirate sets. Very safe. Very unchallenging. Ultimately pointless and unrewarding.
    4k members? How many played a while and got bored and moved onto other non-challenging games where they can get a quick fix of being "successful"?
    Congratulations. You have your cosmetics. How about the experience?

  • Dangcafe
    Seafarer
    Insider

    Couldn't imagine how unbalanced this could potentially be if even one normal player accidentally joined this type of server little knowing the whole server was about to come crashing down on his or her head.

  • Tre Oni
    Marauder
    Insider
    Founder

    @dangcafe said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    Couldn't imagine how unbalanced this could potentially be if even one normal player accidentally joined this type of server little knowing the whole server was about to come crashing down on his or her head.

    Stick it out, do your own thing or cause some mayhem with them ruining their plans, or server swap.

    Either way you have a good time, and they either don't because of you which you can take pleasure in, or they do as well when you just leave.

  • Vaca Hombre
    Champion
    Boatswain
    Founder

    @butterybarnacls said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    Whatever the other implications, what I see are a bunch of people cheating themselves out of half the fun of the game.

    So?

    That's their choice. A choice that Rare's game allows them to make. I'm a 100% solo-er. I don't do alliances and I don't do PvP. But that's my choice and it affects nobody but me.

    I have and always will defend other players' right to PvP, but nobody's going to tell me how I'm "supposed" to be playing the game.

  • Sophobiaful
    Master
    Insider

    You guys do realize that Requiem is an official affiliate right? If they were breaking any TOS I doubt Rare would allow them to be an in the affiliate alliance.

  • PithyRumble
    Rogue
    Insider

    @feudalraptor said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    @callmebackdraft said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    They are not charging money for the use of Sea of Thieves, they are also not charging money to distribute anything SoT related, the charge money to be a premium member of their community, that has its perks basicly you get first pick to be in a call or chat group with some of the other premium members and thus have an easier spot on a crew.

    No officer, I'm not selling sex; I'm selling my time. The sex is just a perk of buying the time.

    Uhm... that's how that works now tho. I didn't hire them for sex, I hired them to shoot an adult film with me. Just have a camera rolling lol.

    Semantics is fun.

  • Xultanis Dragon
    Sailor

    @dangcafe said in Breaking ToS and Making Money Off of It?:

    Couldn't imagine how unbalanced this could potentially be if even one normal player accidentally joined this type of server little knowing the whole server was about to come crashing down on his or her head.

    I've actually spawned into these types of servers only twice, my crew have other times.

    Honestly, from a PvP'ers standpoint, its like winning the lottery. You'd be surprised at exactly how bad these types of players are at defending their ships. First off they are COMPLETELY unprepared when a ship that isn't part of the server joins in. Plus their ships are NEVER together cept for the 2 at a FoTD which are always FULL of mega kegs. Then you have one in the devils roar doing athena's and another one doing Tall Tales.

    You are basically a homing missile going after every ship. Honestly I would have NO PROBLEM with ships doing this if there was a way for me to actually get on these servers.....mwuahahahahah. lol

  • SaltLordDude
    Master
    Insider

    I would love to find my way into an alliance server. My crew and I would have quite a good time XD

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