The start of changes at Riot - the end of the referral system?

[Tor1mo]

Riot has been constantly criticized for not acting on the problems community complained about, but it seems that they made a major overhaul and improved a lot. The first move was announcing/moving to the new euw servers in Amsterdam, introducing various "fun" modes, followed by a visual update of summoners rift. Then came an end of the biggest lol circle-jerk - Adobe air client, with the announcement of the new web based client and improved match history. The most recent news - the announcement of fight against black market of league of legends, specifically the skins shops like ace skins etc. They even expressed their dissatisfaction against botting.

It seems that Riot because of its huge and fast growth became a little sluggish and acted slower than normal. Tough it seems it's no longer the case. While I hope its not true, I think referral system as we know is coming to an end. I know I didn't state any real facts that would indicate the removal or change of the referral system and this is mostly speculation but I highly doubt that they aren't aware of this problem and it would be even stranger if they didn't act on it.
What are your opinions on this? Also I recently had a thought - would this shift even more developers that are currently "botting" into creating hacks, exploits?
/endrant

[SparkySin]

Hope they don't do anything against referral services :/

[LeedFor]

I think they can't do smth against the referral abuse because its no different if a bot plays or if you play yourself. The only thing they can do is to stop the Refer-a-friend system.

[€uronymous]

Originally Posted by LeedFor

The only thing they can do is to stop the Refer-a-friend system.

Thats it. Or they restrict rewards / confine amount of possible refs (like 10 or so) / raise the needed lvl to 20/25/30 etc...

[D3luxe.]

How to stop ref System: make accounts require email verification before they are able to login/play, done.

[enthaupter]

I think its very possible that riot will shout down the referral system completely or make it harder through raising the required level, verifiy email. You have to remember that riot is "loosing" money through the referral system.

[PSI497]

Originally Posted by D3luxe.

How to stop ref System: make accounts require email verification before they are able to login/play, done.

it takes 10 sec to create a new email adress

[D3luxe.]

Originally Posted by PSI497

it takes 10 sec to create a new email adress

Abusing the ref system (= ref services) need hundrets, thousands of accs. The point is not that you have to create a new email for each account, but that you need to verify it using a link from the email. It is not easy to automate, and not easy to get such a huge number of emails.
All email providers have captcha protected registrations, some of them even use google recaptcha. It is hard to crack for a human already, and even harder for a bot.
Not to mention that you need to log in in every email account and get the confirmation link.
It would cripple all current account creators (I should know what I'm talking about, I wrote one myself).

[DEXAiM]

Originally Posted by enthaupter

You have to remember that riot is "loosing" money through the referral system.

No they aren't. They can revoke the rewards given - essentially "charging back" and "winning" the "dispute" (an analogy for PayPal transactions). They aren't losing anything. If anyone loses here, it's the customer buying the referrals.

[joaosant]

Originally Posted by RefsPlease

No they aren't. They can revoke the rewards given - essentially "charging back" and "winning" the "dispute" (an analogy for PayPal transactions). They aren't losing anything. If anyone loses here, it's the customer buying the referrals.

Thats true about PayPal..You're right at this point...And idk if they want stop the ref bots atm...Becuase its too easy to do..Idk, well we don't know..Refsplease can u tell me wich ref bot is good atm? I can buy or use free ones im at i7 24gb ram gtx 650

[LeedFor]

Just look for referral bots.

[the_realhardstyle]

Riot will not change the referral system.

[makit]

Originally Posted by RefsPlease

No they aren't. They can revoke the rewards given - essentially "charging back" and "winning" the "dispute" (an analogy for PayPal transactions). They aren't losing anything. If anyone loses here, it's the customer buying the referrals.

Lulz, they're losing money because of this for sure.

1) Money spend on Refs isn't going into Riot's pocket
2) Botted Refs/RP will let you buy stuff for which you'd normally have to pay Riot directly (to get the RP legally in the first place)
3) Easy example (Prices for EUW, paying with PayPal):
a) Illegal with Refs: 100 Refs = 17k RP = 30€
b) Legal over Store: 17k RP = around 91€ (almost 2x 50€ with PayPal go get the same amount)
c) Riot is losing 90€ per user who is buying 100 refs illegaly, because not even those 30€ will go into Riot's pocket.

And unless those users are banned and all the rewards got withdrawn, they won't have to pay for the skins there were buying with those RP, so it's still lost money for Riot. Plus you even have to find those users to ban them, either with an automated system (which costs money to run/to be implemented) or even manually by Riot employees (who also don't work for free).

So yes, your statement is just wrong.

By the way the already posted some news about RAF fraud a while ago and they will surely take further actions into consideration to eliminate all possible ways to commit this fraud.
And you can't blame Riot for not losing money but all the customers do if they get banned if it's illegal in the first place anyways.

[€uronymous]

Originally Posted by RefsPlease

No they aren't. They can revoke the rewards given - essentially "charging back" and "winning" the "dispute" (an analogy for PayPal transactions). They aren't losing anything. If anyone loses here, it's the customer buying the referrals.

When they revoke rewards they have to pay their employees for checking suspicious accounts, so they lose money due work on something that won't be necessary, if there would'nt be any ref abuse.

[LoLRAF]

They would definitely have to remove the refer a friend program all together to stop people from doing referrals