Another example of marketplace manipulation, just with outside help.

They will harvest 1000s of cards however they can. (WBC Glitch) Resellers then sell them off on the marketplace, often close to quick sell. They will not quick sell them because of the attention that would draw. (Like SDS can't see the 100s of cards being sold for less then quick sell after tax.)
When the player buys stubs from one of the websites it's individual people selling them through that site. They take control of your account, go on the marketplace, take a card that has no buy or sell offers, they will then 'buy' the card with your account and turn around and resell it to their account for ever how many stubs are needed. That is why all these sites offer around 10% free, because it's never a exact number.

With that said... it's an easy fix. Find the 'players' selling 100s of cards at a loss and that would cut down the vast majority. There SDS, problem solved, I'll wait on my check.

@SDS_JoeK_PSN said:

We don't "manipulate the market" as is implied every so often. I just want to clarify that.

I can tell you all that the team is working hard to continue to get the bot situation under control so that the marketplace experience is the best it can be.

As we all know, it's an ever-evolving process.

You also said that the people that got Bunny packs instead of Ultra would get the Ultra packs. "That would make the most sense" I believe is how you put it. Well you might want to tell that to Miguel who sent me a 200 word e-mail, that basically said 'f-off, deal with it'.

That is marketplace manipulation 101. If you needed any more proof, there it is.

@SDS_JoeK_PSN said:

We don't "manipulate the market" as is implied every so often. I just want to clarify that.

I can tell you all that the team is working hard to continue to get the bot situation under control so that the marketplace experience is the best it can be.

As we all know, it's an ever-evolving process.

Good luck. I feel like I’ve wasted a tremendous amount of time trying to bring some these problems to the “teams” attention and I’m hesitant to spend anymore time talking about things that I think should have been taken care of a long time ago. There was some progress made keeping bots out of the marketplace, but all that was suddenly rolled back, which makes me wonder if we are even talking about the same problems here. Since sds has been pretty much silent since before the all star game, I tried to google some answers to things and came across lots of sites with articles about the game. Some of them are actually pretty insightful. I was surprised to see that a couple of those sites sell stubs for this game… a few even sell the actual player card in the game. Each of these sites had similar info about logging into your account for 10-15 minutes and presto chango, you get what you pay for. Seeing all this actually made me even more confused over why all filters and changes put in place that were blocking bots were rolled back. I don’t think sds is manipulating the market to act in certain ways. But it’s certainly not preventing other parties or influences from manipulating and corrupting the marketplace. It seemingly isnt doing much of anything… Good luck here, I’m really rooting for you guys.

@LIONED-33_XBL said:

@SDS_JoeK_PSN So SDS spends months saying nothing, but you'll come out and defend SDS when people accuse them of manipulating the market....so what are you actually doing to fix this issue. Thats all we care about. Crickets by SDS. We are the ones suffering not SDS.

And if it's not crickets it's lies. Looking into fixing the market lol thats a good one.

They aren't and won't do anything about the market, it is what it is. The bots can post 125 items at once and we just have to accept it because SDS is incompetent.

@SDS_JoeK_PSN said:

We don't "manipulate the market" as is implied every so often. I just want to clarify that.

I can tell you all that the team is working hard to continue to get the bot situation under control so that the marketplace experience is the best it can be.

As we all know, it's an ever-evolving process.

Haha, is this satire? The bots have been a issue for years, you have done nothing about them.

You have impeded and banned us (real people) from the market place though, luckily not myself.... yet.

So you can understand when i say i have a hard time believing you will do anything about them now.

Not long ago you could tell there were people there that honestly cared about this game. Now... well let's just say that's not the case.

@PriorFir4383355_XBL said:

I'll say this again. There are reasons why legitimate (meaning real world) trading markets are tightly regulated. The reason traders who have direct access to the computer-based stock and commodity trading systems are limited in number and very tightly regulated and vetted, is to prevent just the sort of bot manipulations the MLB The Show community market has suffered.

Point?

I've seen SDS devote more time and effort to trying to correct the abuses of the community market than they have spent fixing the many basic gameplay bugs that have plagued this title for years. I'm not going to criticize SDS for trying to fix this -- just the opposite. I appreciate the effort. But, it's like trying to pound sand into smaller rocks!

Perhaps it is the best idea for SDS to recognize the situation and remove the community market and replace it with different options.

First, vice award specific cards, instead award card vouchers. People can earn them only through quality of online and offline play and then redeem them for their choice of any player's card whose attributes match the level of the voucher so earned. This means customers can get the cards they most desire, but based not on trading in a virtual market filled with nefarious influences, but on the quality of their individual play in the game.

Second, fix something that your competitors long ago recognized was an ill advised tactic. Stop tying equipment to attributes. And by ending that practice, make all equipment freely available in the game. This entirely removes all motivation to put equipment or any other items like it on a market. People can tailor their game appearance and avatar players any way they wish. Equipment becomes what it really should have always been -- a purely cosmetic reflection of the desire of the paying customers for their game copy.

Third, stubs are removed from the game. They would serve no purpose. Continue to have customers earn tokens in RTTS that they can then use to tailor avatar player attributes, but continue to make those tokens earnable only through quality of play in RTTS with the avatar player, based on customer game control pad inputs.

Conclusion: make the game more fidelis to the concept of instant and accurate reaction in the game to human player inputs on the control pad. In short, simplify through removal of game code layers and return the title to direct human control without delays and make the quality of the control pad input the sole determination of play outcome. Make the game's reward system strictly based on quality of customer play within the game. Devote your energies to making the game code reflect basic physics of ball to bat, glove to ball, and hand to throw inputs as well as common sense principles of how baseballs react to weather environments such as wind, temperature, humidity, and rain.

You said make the game's reward system strictly based on quality of customer play within the game. You do realize this game has a huge cheating problem that has not been addressed. It's already a huge problem in Weekend Classic.

Point?

I've seen SDS devote more time and effort to trying to correct the abuses of the community market than they have spent fixing the many basic gameplay bugs that have plagued this title for years. I'm not going to criticize SDS for trying to fix this -- just the opposite. I appreciate the effort. But, it's like trying to pound sand into smaller rocks!

The unalterable truth is that real markets do not allow millions of unvetted people to access their trading systems! The best way to secure the integrity of any marketplace is to put the emphasis on controlling those few who do directly access the market system. Once the tide of mass and unvetted market access is unleashed, it is impossible to regulate the result.

Perhaps it is the best idea for SDS to recognize the situation and remove the community market and replace it with different options.

First, vice award specific cards, instead award card vouchers. People can earn them only through quality of online and offline play and then redeem them for their choice of any player's card whose attributes match the level of the voucher so earned. This means customers can get the cards they most desire, but based not on trading in a virtual market filled with nefarious influences, but on the quality of their individual play in the game.

Second, fix something that your competitors long ago recognized was an ill advised tactic. Stop tying equipment to attributes. And by ending that practice, make all equipment freely available in the game. This entirely removes all motivation to put equipment or any other items like it on a market. People can tailor their game appearance and avatar players any way they wish. Equipment becomes what it really should have always been -- a purely cosmetic reflection of the desire of the paying customers for their game copy.

Third, stubs are removed from the game. They would serve no purpose. Continue to have customers earn tokens in RTTS that they can then use to tailor avatar player attributes, but continue to make those tokens earnable only through quality of play in RTTS with the avatar player, based on customer game control pad inputs.

Conclusion: make the game more fidelis to the concept of instant and accurate reaction in the game to human player inputs on the control pad. In short, simplify through removal of game code layers and return the title to direct human control without delays and make the quality of the control pad input the sole determination of play outcome. Make the game's reward system strictly based on quality of customer play within the game. Devote your energies to making the game code reflect basic physics of ball to bat, glove to ball, and hand to throw inputs as well as common sense principles of how baseballs react to weather environments such as wind, temperature, humidity, and rain.

I can tell you all that the team is working hard to continue to get the bot situation under control so that the marketplace experience is the best it can be.

As we all know, it's an ever-evolving process.

While I agree, if it was proven to be SDS they could get sued big time. I think it’s more likely bots from third party sites farming stubs. No matter what it’s just icing on a crappy sundae at this point. Really frustrating to see how messy this whole game has gotten.

@I23SAVAGE23I_XBL said:

The high numbers make me wonder if it isn’t SDS manipulating the market and their algorithm is messed up.

This isn't a new thought, sadly. With how much they're trying to force people into the MTX store for stubs instead of flipping/investing- manipulating the market to nuke margins wouldn't be beneath them, unfortunately.

The bulk sell orders has really only been a thing for a few weeks and is really odd to me.
I've seen some cards have up to 450 sell orders, sometimes at prices only 1 or 2 above quick sell (which makes zero sense).

@Parr99_XBL said:

So tonight I was trying to sell some Topps Now cards and saw some new strange activity. When I canceled my order and tried to enter a lower amount I was instantly under cut by 1 stub. The interesting thing was the number of orders. It was 150 orders 1 stub below mine entered in 125 seconds. When I lowered my order again it happened again. 150 orders in 125 seconds. This went on for at least 30 minutes. What is going on here? I've watched the bots get steadily worse for a year now but this is a new one to me.

The high numbers make me wonder if it isn’t SDS manipulating the market and their algorithm is messed up.

How could anyone else have 150 or 250 of any card to list instantly?