A massive thread on the Warframe subreddit this weekend shows just the sort of problems MMO studios have waded into in their haste to crack down on goldsellers in order to run cash shops themselves.

Apparently, Digital Extremes is tracking platinum sent around the community, and that includes platinum that has been tracked coming from the accounts of people actioned for platinum reselling. The issue is that the Warframe team isn’t just stopping at banning goldsellers and chargeback abusers; it’s also punishing people who traded with those goldsellers, even if those players had no way of knowing the money was tainted.

Redditor lazarus2605 posted an in-game mail from Warframe support that essentially chides him for trading with a plat reseller, warns him that he could have been banned, and informs him that DE is deleting all of the “fraudulently obtained” plat from his account, with no apparent recourse. Worse, when DE reclaims the plat and drives a victim’s account into the red, the victims say they are then expected to pay DE the difference to regain account access.

This isn’t exactly a new issue; players have apparently been getting messages similar to this one for years, with no fix forthcoming. But it’s bubbled back to the top thanks to this thread, as players have pointed out how unfair it is to punish victims, how DE ought to reimburse the victim with whatever he/she had traded away, and how easy it would be to abuse this loophole to gift-grief unsuspecting players. The sad reality is that you’re better off just not trading in Warframe, or trading only with the most reputable players, and turning off gifting from non-friends – which isn’t exactly a great effect for the community or economy at large.