Community Blacklist

While I dont intend to participate in dogpiling on Saledor I do want to correct some of the things he mentioned here and on other parts of the forum as what he shared here regarding his ban isn't entirely factual. At the same time I'm hoping to shed some more light on how a ban process works from the Staff side of things. I'll write this in chronological order:

• April 26, Saledor obtains the perfect Claymore from the floor, proceeds with his actions, messaged staff, confirmed he can keep it as anyone dropping something means they surrender ownership of the item, even if they didn't mean to do so. This event was not against the game rules and we were aware of this happening.
• Early july we get a detailed report on Saledor regarding his funds not making sense focused on the start of 2023 until july 2023.
• We start an investigation regarding the report, look at previous reports on Saledor, dig into playing behavior and special occasions that may have occurred to boost wealth (for example winning a GM event and selling a peak prize or in his case: his earlier self-reported enrichment of 29B for the Claymore he found).
• Our findings result in Saledor's obtaining and merching around onyx apples being very extraordinary. These items are also often used for rwt so we note down that some of these may have been obtained through illegal measures as the numbers don't add up. This was later questioned in his ban appeal.
• There are other findings from our investigation regarding income and outgoing funds that we can't quite put together and would like him to explain which eventually resulted in his ban for suspicious activity on July 13th 2023.
• July 14th 2023, Saledor appeals his ban, gets questioned about one of the topics we felt was most suspicious (onyx apples) which leads to more chat about his finances.
• July 16th Saledor provides an incoming and outgoing funds breakdown for the start of 2023 until july where he's included the 29B from the claymore, which we were aware of, took into account prior to the decision to ban, and is not against the rules and income from all his other activities like farming onyx apples and merching but is still 29,5B short in his own provided breakdown, which was 30% of the total, as 'unexplained gains'.
• While we understand that no player can precisely remember every transaction they ever did and we don't expect that from anyone, being 30% off for a 130B total evaluation in 7 months time is too large to simply accept as 'miscellaneous income/calculation margins on listed income' so the ban for suspicious activity still stands.
• Between July 20th and August 10th we don't get additional information from Saledor regarding this gap in wealth, only requests for us to look at his appeal.
• August 11th and 12th Saledor decided he should probably add more information for this to go anywhere and provides us with income he suddenly remembers specifically and provides screenshots of: various gifts from friends that quit that he sold for a total over 7B
• Sept 4th~November 1st We still don't have a full logical breakdown and I got too busy irl to spend time on a big case like this to recalculate everything, I only focused on smaller tasks like account recovery and new small investigations like vote abuse.
• November 11th we run through other suspicious activity of Saledor and debunk some other rule breaking theories. We also start our recalculation of his wealth internally in staff including more data from the use of mules for merching etc.
• November 13th we summarize the whole case internally as staff and get our last thoughts out before we decide the outcome.
• November 19th the decision is made: We hold a high standard to permanent bans and we don't keep them up if we're not 100% sure. We'd rather let someone go and find out we were wrong + redo a ban than have someone remain banned that may be innocent. After our latest calculations and Saledor's additional info that he provided mid august the whole incoming and outgoing funds bill is deemed unorthodox, but plausible. We also decide to compensate Saledor for the time he was banned however we do determine that the long duration of his ban appeal is a shared responsibility as he withheld information (gifts and the sale of them) that would help his case for whatever reason.

Saledor was not banned because of finding a Claymore. At no point did we ask Saledor to reveal publicly where he got his Claymore or the 29B that he got for that from. We didn't question him about those funds in particular as he already reported that income. As described above we were looking for another 29,5B that was unexplained for the longest time.
Saledor stated:

Which is false, this Claymore debacle / the 29B he gained from this was not in question regarding his ban for suspicious activity.

Regarding Saledor stating:

I'd like to end this post and make a PSA for anyone in future ban appeals;
If you think you can waste my time by withholding information because you felt like you 'wanted to be banned longer' I have bad news for you: I will simply close your ban appeal and your ban will remain once that comes to light.
Don't make me spend unnecessary time on looking into your case.

Going back on that statement doesn't change how we feel about that:

 

no the remaining amount is largely backed by hard evidence of mule character merchant sales. The eventual difference between calculated income and expenses had a much smaller and believable margin

 

Regardless, Saledor is going to have to be pretty careful now, because most of the community is disgusted by his behaviour and would not hesitate to report him for wrongdoings, and the staff would perhaps be unwilling to waste time on another frustratingly drawn-out ban appeal involving him, only for him to then claim he just wanted to be banned for longer, and to whinge that his compensation did not include his fast travel ticket before tax or whatever it was.