Above left: Items as originally available in PocketGacha; above right, items being sold multiple times without permission on the SL Marketplace
PocketGacha creator Oobleck Allagash recently discovered that items in his company’s popular gacha service were being resold on an unauthorized basis in the SL Marketplace, apparently by someone making use of a known exploit that Linden Lab acknowledged existing last month.
“One of the unique features of our back end at PocketGacha is the ability to track players and sales as they relate to each round,” he explains. “So, when we identify what appears to be unusual Marketplace activity with a Gacha from our event we have complete data with which to work with and pinpoint facts.”
This led him to discover the Marketplace page above, owned by a person who’s already “been subject to numerous [DMCA] complaints” from many SL brands, says Allagash. The unauthorized reseller is selling these repackaged items for L$475, when they’d typically be valued 3-5 times that amount. What's worse (and Allagash checked this by buying dozens of copies himself), these are now unlimited copies.
“This person could potentially be selling hundreds or thousands of these and making the equivalent [in US Dollars] off of stolen content. Again, people are getting angry as to why it is now back to a DMCA filing that takes days to be acknowledged and only results in that particular Gacha being taken down but the user to continue to operate in the Marketplace and just repost more again. It's like fighting windmills here.”
Allagash is publicizing this problem partly to point out the slowness in seriously addressing the complaints — and to warn other SL entrepreneurs that the unauthorized item copy exploit has apparently not yet been fixed by Linden Lab:
“So, Linden Lab, are you going to live up to your promise of extracting copybotters as promised two weeks ago? You claim to have patched the glitch that allows this but we are seeing still that the issue exists and your slow reaction to a serious and callous disregard for creator content (which is the very essence of SL's survival) is being ignored.”
Allagash says he understand it will take Linden Lab time to fix the exploit, and that his chief issue is with copybotters taking advantage of the exploit in the Marketplace:
“By only removing the single Gacha after a DMCA, it's as if Linden Lab is missing their responsibility to ban these accounts and set examples to others who see it as opportunistic,” he argues. “At this point there is no real penalty to any botter other than one of their botted Gachas being removed.”
I’ve reached out to Linden Lab for a response and will update this post when or if I receive one. Given the massive importance of gachas to the SL economy, I doubt the controversy over copy infringement will die down anytime soon.
I think your info is confusing SL gacha resellers community. On your article it says that this collection is not allowed to be resold because it is Pocket Gacha collection (as far as I can understan) and that is not true, items are allowed to be resold but the situation here is that this person is copybotting the collection so many times tht is not worth it anymore.
Posted by: Pekeninia | Monday, November 20, 2017 at 04:49 PM
@Pekeninia. Wagner did better clarify it that PocketGacha is resell. It's complex with all these moving parts but the article was updated to better reflect the true nature.
Posted by: Oobleck | Monday, November 20, 2017 at 05:09 PM
" your slow reaction to a serious and callous disregard for creator content (which is the very essence of SL's survival) is being ignored.”
Pardon me, not every creator is part of this greedy 'transfer only' gambling scheme you all got going on.
Some of use still proudly sell copy/mod being a major part of that so-called 'survival'
Good, I hope every gacha sellers goes under from 'Unlimited Sale' these MP cancer dealers they created from greed off vulnerable customers with addictive tendencies.
Certainly is a search cancer, scrolling through the marketplace with all your junkie customers listing everything as copy/mod/transfer with every spam tag they can think to add.
Gacha should be shut down, just like the damn star wars loot boxes was taken down.
I take care of my customers given them the most value for what they purchase, by not being greedy, by not taking advantage of the vulnerable or the weak minded, yes there is a real person behind each of those avatars. SL does not need to be expensive like RL
Posted by: Enemy of Gacha | Monday, November 20, 2017 at 08:44 PM
“One of the unique features of our back end at PocketGacha is the ability to track players and sales as they relate to each round” - Oobleck Allagash, from the article.
While it was useful in this case, it sounds like (but it could be a misunderstanding) that unaware costumers are being tracked by those products without being notified and without authorization. Can you explain that better, Ooblek? I saw no info in the PocketGacha website and no mention that you will be tracked.
Posted by: Pulsar | Tuesday, November 21, 2017 at 10:58 AM
@Pulsar. I appreciate and completely understand your concerns. It's hard sometimes to get every bit of info into pockets of articles and define these definitions. And yes, I could have worded that better, Pulsar.
Our data consists of players, what they played for and what they were delivered. It is unique in that we have all of the information consolidated rather than scattered between creators so can better view this information as a whole. It's no different than what e2v or caspervend have other than we are active and responsive to one event. Still, that is enough to prove much alone beyond the idea of who played what.
So, this person (Tiffanie132) did not ever use or play the PocketGacha HUD. That is still not enough. However, I made the effort to buy her Gacha on MP 50 times in just over a few minutes shortly after the event. With that we were able to cross section the number of rare deliveries (which we monitor in order to assure a fair percentage) and determine that it was impossible at the time of her selling these (and what is assumed to be limitless copies as I did not wish to play further) a vast majority of every rare ever delivered at that time.
I hope this makes more sense. Beyond that our data is limited. We are not LL who could easily enter these accounts to see what are clear violations to the possible. A good deal of our work was actually spending the money to buy her Gacha in many sets and cross section it to the consolidated information we do have.
Posted by: Oobleck | Tuesday, November 21, 2017 at 05:24 PM
Yes, it makes more sense. Thank you for the explanation :-)
Posted by: Pulsar | Tuesday, November 21, 2017 at 10:25 PM
reply to enemy of gacha: well i am a normal customer and i found some very awesome and unique things at gacha sales and resales I never found in any shops here on the grid. I wish, creators would offer such items over normal sales, so that there would be no need for gacha any longer!But as long as such items are not found in normal shops, i have to buy things over gacha! Sorry for my poor english!
Posted by: Tetzel | Wednesday, November 22, 2017 at 04:37 AM
It's worth noting that PocketGacha is a little unusual compared to previous gacha events in that for pretty much all series on its shelves, the option to purchase a full set on a non-transferable but copiable basis exists. More often than not, this option is reasonably priced compared to all the pulls required to get a full set plus the extra effort (and trust, given the implications of the shenanigans in this article) required to recoup part of expenditure on duplicates.
Pretty much the only people who won't go for that option are those who only want specific parts of the gacha and think their luck is good, those who are addicted to the risk-reward of each gacha pull, or people trying to flip rares for a huge profit.
Off-grid authentication systems for gacha purchases are only a matter of time - the limited ability of communications between objects and the Internet as a whole opens up possibilities for people to take control of how they manage access to their productions beyond the simplistic "Copy/Mod/Transfer" that has been bolted in SL. it is a short jump from comparing purchases made through a vendor that records each sale to establishing a database that records how many of each Gacha item a Resident has won and using it to determine whether that Resident has the right to own and open and/or transfer that item to another person via gacha trading.
Given that PocketGacha has admitted to tracking gacha sales made through its systems, perhaps any privacy outrage from this disclosure in this regard can be mitigated by openly disclosing this in future, prior to any L$ or Points purchases of gachas in play, as well as investment in expanding such a system to include 'licensing management' off-grid protect the value of gachas for all in the system: creators, the PocketGacha managers and the player of these fields.
Working out the exact process required to establish ownership and control opening of gachas to prevent the sale of illegally created 'unlimited' gacha is an exercise left to the merchants and event managers of this industry. Good luck: it's never easy to bolt security onto something that was never designed to be secure from Day 1, and Second Life is very much the epitome of such a system, as you've obviously noticed by now.
Posted by: camilia fid3lis nee Patchouli Woollahra | Tuesday, November 28, 2017 at 01:03 AM
>So, this person (Tiffanie132) did not ever use or play the PocketGacha HUD.
>That is still not enough. However, I made the effort to buy her Gacha on MP 50
>times in just over a few minutes shortly after the event. With that we were
>able to cross section the number of rare deliveries (which we monitor in order
>to assure a fair percentage) and determine that it was impossible at the time
>of her selling these (and what is assumed to be limitless copies as I did not
>wish to play further) a vast majority of every rare ever delivered at that time.
ROFL dude, you are full of shit and just obviously a liar. Or do you really want to tell me, you spent 50 times 475 L$ (23,750 L$ roughly 100$) to buy 50 times that one item so you can "proof" it's a scam/copy, freely handling over 100$ to the person you suspect to be scammer? And you do that with every item you suspect to be a "unlimited dupe"?
Dude, who gonna believe that shit? It would imply you need to spend 1000$s of USD per month just to validate it and knowing you never see that L$ again?
Sorry dude, you wanna know what I think?
I think what you realize is: "People rather buy 500 L$ to get the rare item they want instead of spending 2000 L$ and gamble for their luck" and realize: "Oh no, my gambling scheme is not working so well because of resellers"
So you just claim they are cheater, exploiters and botters to get them banned or defame gatcha reselling on marketplace and spread fear so people go back to gambling with your machines and waste 5 times more money to get the item they desire.
You sir, are just a greedy little pig. Same greedy pig like the news publishers are, when they realized no one gonna buy paper news and people rejected overpriced paywalls for online articles.
They just fail to adopt to a new world and instead will sue google forcing Google to pay money to the news publishers for LISTING THEIR RESULTS into Google. But when google removes their result and says, only if you allow us to list it for free, they cry again: "But but google is abusing their monopoly". Eh wtf dude?! They force google to pay and then cry when google wants to delist this results?! Same with the Gatcha scammers (not the marketplace resellers, the one who create the gatcha are the real scammers using gambling to sell products, very morally questionable!)
Posted by: Desy | Thursday, December 28, 2017 at 08:40 AM