What you need to do
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And by “you,” I mean SDS.
At some point (now), there needs to be actual human oversight of the marketplace. If you can build an automated system that reliably detects and removes bots, great. Until then, some cards are nearly impossible to move with buy/sell orders.
The patterns are obvious. Bots instantly outbid or undercut orders, and when you cancel your order, they often react immediately and maintain position. Today I watched multiple orders appear above mine before the app had even finished refreshing the order book. It didn’t matter whether the price made sense or not—three new orders magically appeared.
At a certain point you stop asking, “How do I compete with this?” and start asking, “Why am I even bothering?”
A human monitoring the market over time can identify suspicious behavior, review accounts, and investigate clear patterns that persist for hours. That’s something automation doesn’t seem to be accomplishing right now.
I’ve seen countless reports of players being restricted for marketplace activity—including myself. What I haven’t seen is a marketplace that doesn’t feel dominated by bots.
We’re constantly told AI is the future. That’s fine. But until AI can actually clean up the marketplace, there needs to be human oversight.
I’d rather be playing the game than writing forum posts about the marketplace. The fact that I’m here doing this instead should probably tell you something.
