Fellow Adventurers,



as you might already be aware, Albion Online is currently being targeted by so called "Gold Sellers". These are criminal enterprises who obtain stolen credit cards and paypal accounts, use them to buy gold from us and then sell on that stolen gold (or now, silver) to players of the game at a discount. This is very damaging to everybody who has their credit card or PayPal stolen, and of course to us as a company. It's also damaging to everybody who purchases gold or silver from these websites as their accounts will be permanently banned.



To combat these activities, we have tightened up our internal protection measures and will add additional measures going forward.



More importantly, we will try to go after the gold sellers funding source. What really surprised us when researching these websites - involved in credit card and PayPal fraud on a massive scale - is that they actually accept PayPal and credit cards as a form of payment. We are certain that if PayPal and the credit card companies knew about these activities, they'd quickly shut down their merchant accounts. Hence, we have started collecting and compiling evidence of their conduct and are going to directly report the fraudulent websites to the payment processing companies such that hopefully their funds will be frozen and they won't be able to accept credit cards and PayPal on their websites any more. If us contacting the payment processors ourselves is not effective, we will directly contact their headquarters through a specialized law firm. We are not trying to go after the gold sellers directly, as that usually won't work, but rather shut down their means of getting paid and we are eager to find out how successful this will be.



Finally, when it comes to black mail attempts by some of these companies, it goes without saying that we will never give in to them. As every black mailer will know, it's the worst thing you could ever do. Of course, every blackmail attempt and DDOS attack is being reported to the relevant law enforcement agencies, too, though realistically the chance to catch somebody is quite slim. Having said that, sometimes it does happen, and if it does, we will pursue every case to the fullest extend possible, no matter where the offender is based - above activities are a crime in every jurisdiction in the world and it's always possible to find a local law firm to represent you.



Your Albion Online Team