bureaucracy wrote:Arga wrote:There's no way for AC to control account owernership short of requiring somesort of personally identifiable registration, which is certainly going to raise the barrier to entry in the game.
Shouldn't AC have information as to who payed for a certain account?
Since that sort of thing can't be done anonymously they would be able to spot changes there. If the regitered owner doesn't match up with the person paying for it, wouldn't that create problems in and out of itself?
Paying for the game and the accounts aren't connected, as you apply codes to accounts, but the codes can be purchased elsewhere. Anyone with the email address and password can manage the account and apply codes, even if they were to ask real names, you could in theory just lie, as there's no way to tie the name to an email account. Even if the account was validated to a real person, that wouldn't stop someone else from managing it as long as they have the userid and password.
Personally I like the system now, where payment isn't tied to the account, as it leaves room for in-game selling of time codes like Eve. Also, there isn't anything inherintly wrong with not knowing who really owns the account, unless your trying to enforce something like no account selling or sharing.
As for Email account owenership, personal emails from places like hotmail or google also do not enforce identification of the email owner. So transfer of email user/password would be implicit in the Perp account transfer, even without providing the perp password.
In that thinking though, someone that 'pays' for an account isn't really the owner, as anyone could just give the account owner a code. So in that respect, I agree with Celebro that the account owner is the person who owns the email account it is registered to. But again there's nothing stopping email account ownership from changing hands if that account is 'disposable'. For instance, I couldn't do it because I registered with my long time personal account, which I would never give to anyone, which is also why NOT being able to change the email address associated with accounts is important, or AC would them implicitly be giving permission for account transfers; which they clearly don't want as per the EULA.
Here's the rub, the 'final' account holder is always going to be the loser. In the case where there is a dispute, the only recourse AC has is to disable the account. Its like getting a counterfit bill and trying to spend it, if the store detects its a fraud, they will confiscate it and you get nothing; and if the FBI determine it was an innocent mistake, you win no jail time, but your still out the money.
This, as with anything that is against a EULA, you run the risk of losing the account... at AC's discretion.