Originally Posted by
BiTzSam
I'll just leave it at this;
I wasn't involved with actually taking action against Duke so whilst I don't actually agree with the length of his jail time- (that being said I don't know what the standard USD jail times are) and whilst yes I agree it sucks for the gang members, ultimately the severity of the punishment is necessary in order to create some way of preventing this from happening again in the future.
USDing has always been an issue, staff are WELL aware of when it happens, and it's pretty obvious to see. Just nothing can really be done about it (despite us wanting to) as most of the 'transactions' occur off Graal, and evidence such as Kik conversations isn't really good enough to take action against most of the time as a result of it being so easy to photoshop/ fake.
Duke can deny that he was selling it and say that he was 'joking' and we can go around in circles, but as he said his clips are still public so go look at them for yourselves. There are multiple parts throughout his stream where he said that "if a player donated him a tier 3 sub, costing $24.99, then he would donate them a skin". Substituting the word sell/ give for donate is not a loop hole that allows you to USD. He isn't a charity, and he wasn't joking. I went back and watched through his stream (and the clips in their entirety several minutes before and after so see if there were any indications that him saying that was a joke) after seeing him claim the clips were taken out of context to see if that was the case. No time in the 2-3 separate instances did he say/ sound like he was joking. He was asked by multiple DIFFERENT players at different points throughout the stream and each time he told them if they donated tier 3 he would give them the skin. One instance a player asked him about donating 4.99 to which duke responded along the lines of that being a tier 1 sub, and that it would have to be a tier 3 if they wanted to get the skin. A pretty specific statement to make for just a joke.
As for anyone being able to grab the skin- I actually don't like it myself purely for the aesthetical reason that I think it looks dumb how there are a few hundred players running around with a purple and black scifi looking gun, that doesn't even visually represent the gun it is meant to be (actually thought it was a BAR skin the first time I saw it). But as said earlier the only other alternatives are removing it from everyone, as if Duke gets unjailed then he'd probably just try sell it again, or whoever took over his gang would try do the same if he doesn't return. Didn't actually expect that we'd ever even be able to enforce the rule against USDers because of how hard it is to physically prove it, however I would hope this happening sends a message to other gangs who have been/ are planning to USD not to do the same now that they know that we will not hold back on enforcing it. I think the main reason most people are using the skin is purely because they like/ dislike Obsidian and because it's something new, so people will probably go back to the default skin after awhile. If not i'll probably eventually remove access to the skin, and just make a new Metalstorm skin to hopefully convince some of those people to stop using it.
I personally think if the jail time is higher than standard USD jail times it should be reduced, but as a warning to Duke, we are aware that you're trying to sell your account so as a warning for anyone trying to buy it, the account will be monitored and if we see any changes in IP/ etc then your money will be wasted as the account will just be reset, and it certainly doesn't help the possibility of you getting unjailed/ a shortened sentence if you continue to try do it.