(08-30-2016, 11:34 PM)Threed Crowley Wrote:(08-30-2016, 08:55 AM)Yssen Wrote: It is incorrect to say that no one at SE is batting an eye when they called for people to report house flipping and selling plots for profit in a live letter. Clear as day in a live letter. SE is not to blame for you not doing as they asked when someone violates the terms of service. Further, the fact that a similar behavior is allowed on the market board, does not mean that house flipping is in anyway justified when they have said "We don't like this, don't do it." It is specious reasoning to say that they don't care at all when they have bothered to clarify the point in a live letter, and given a method of action that you as a player can take to help them solve it. One can come up with as many reasons as they like as for why a behavior against the ToS might be justified in their eyes, at no point does this truly justify anything. It also doesn't change the fact that a behavior is against the ToS.Â
One's personal experiences with a GM do not encompass the entire experience of everyone who has reported anyone for any reason. I'm sorry you have had a negative experience with a harassment claim, but that does not justify people breaking the ToS at any point. Houses are moving still, sure. People still buy gil with real money and bully people with parsers, too. People speed all the time on the road irl, but saying "everyone else was doing it" is not a defense that holds up in court, ever. Someone getting away with something is not an indication that SE doesn't care. It is just an indication they haven't been caught yet. If they are not being caught because you refuse to report the people doing it for reason x, then you have given them tacit approval. In doing so, it can be argued that you become part of the problem.Â
Snatching up a house to inflate the price to make a large level of profit when relinquishing the plot is about the same sort of act as when that douche bag bought the rights to an AIDS treatment medication and jacked the price up. Yes, you can argue that it is simple supply and demand, and that it is all SE's fault for a flawed housing system. This does not make the action right. Particularly when the people who created and own the game say it is wrong. Flawed systems do not absolve an individual from making bad moral or ethical decisions.
Dude, are you kidding me? How is flipping a pretend video game house for pretend internet money even remotely close to someone jacking up the price of AIDS medication???
In that it is that one is using the exact same thinking to justify and proceed with the action. One takes advantage of a flawed system to the detriment of others in a community. While knowing (i hope) that what they are doing is wrong, but proceeding anyway because profit. This would be why there was the qualifier of "about the same."
But if you have an argument for how snatching up a house soley for the purpose of exploiting other player's want of housing for a massively inflated profit isn't using the same sort of douchebag logic as the above example, i'm open to hearing your argument. Yar.