Community Forum

So SDS is banning regular users, but not the bots now?

@Onix_Savage22_PSN Live series is probably better, when the bots don't own everything there's plenty of places to make stubs.

@aaronjw76_PSN Agreed here. I do wonder how, if true, people were given time outs for suspicious activity if they weren't actually using a bot. There have to be some cases of bots making 10-15 bids a second across dozens of cards...and then there are humans doing an order maybe every 5-10 seconds at best if they are really really fast. Bot activity is unmistakeable.

Just restrict market access on the companion app until you can get a proper control. At the end of the day, SDS is losing stub sales to third party markets as these bots accumulate millions of stubs every day. There are a variety of reasons they should be very incentivized to stop the bots...

@Stinkysman77_MLBTS It's convenient if it works, but how convenient is it really when the bots own the market and you can't actually use the market anyway?

Well it seems like our choices are to have a usable market on console only or not have a usable market at all. That's an easy choice, with the additional bonus of not allowing the bots to make money. People running bots and selling stubs on the secondary market are bottom of the barrel scum of the earth humans and any path to not allowing them to exploit/profit is a positive

@Stinkysman77_MLBTS I kinda doubt it, most likely people claiming they weren't using a bot but really were in fact using a bot or macro or something.

@SDS_JoeK_PSN

Any updates? This issue has existed since launch and in prior versions of the game. It is not difficult to identify the bots, so I'm not sure why they continue to be around if you're aware of the issue

This issue has been getting incrementally worse for at least 3 years now, it's nice SDS acknowledged it but I don't have high hopes of a quick solution.

@Franchize34_PSN It's all part of the plan, they want you to spend thousands on stubs like the youtubers.

@JimLahey246_PSN This keeps getting posted and is just wrong, the 20 card cap has no impact on flipping at all. If the limit was 20 orders at a time, sure. But it's not, a bot is selling any card it buys out relatively quickly since it owns both sides of every profitable flip...it's probably super uncommon for a bot to accumulate 20 of a card it is actively flipping.

SDS ignored the problem for years and now the bots are much better at scanning the market and finding profitable cards to flip. The people that own the bots and are accumulating all the stubs and selling them on 3rd party sites are improving the bots to make even more stubs since it's gone unpunished for so long. SDS should be going after 3rd party sellers legally and additionally playing whack-a-mole with a system that recognizes bot activity and bans them quickly.

@tear4eddy_PSN No human is capable of removing an order and placing a new order within a fraction of a second...without some sort of tool or macro or bot. If you're a really quick human, you might accomplish it in 2-3 seconds.

@Pigsooie-Nation_MLBTS I've been wondering the same and potentially worse. Back in 2021, EA got in hot water over an employee selling high end cards for cash in FIFA. Feel free to google this.

@ChuckCLC_PSN Not all heroes wear capes my guy.

I noticed 2 bots in a bidding war to sell an item and have been keeping a left eye on it. It's going down by about 1-2 stubs per second as they replace each others bids. Maybe SDS servers would have less issues if bots weren't placing dozens of orders per second on the market.

There are a dozen ways SDS could combat the problem. If the store went down theyd devote every resource on the planet to fix it within minutes. Market bots have gotten incrementally worse for years and SDS has not fixed it. Clearly they either can't or aren't even trying.

SDS has made it clear they have no intention of doing anything about market bots, there is no reason not to have one at this point if you want to compete for stubs on the market.

I messaged SDS 3 days ago asking simply if using an automated bot on the market violated terms of service. Their response...

"Hello- Thank you for your message.

We are excited to hear your thoughts! Please visit forums.theshow.com to submit feedback and be involved in discussions regarding The Show."

Can't even say "yes, using an automated bot does violate terms of service". Either their AI customer service sucks or using a bot is totally fine and they won't do anything about it...or both

I sent a very simple question to SDS support using if using an automated bot is illegal in the game or against the terms of service...like 3 days ago. They haven't responded. Maybe it's just allowed now and you all should go get a bot so you can compete...

@The_Joneser_PSN

Bruh, investing and flipping do require "work" and were a part of the overall package of the game. You're right about it being their choice to limit to 20 cards, but making the change without telling anyone is baloney and you know it. Additionally, it's hard to say there's any justification for letting bots control the market to limit flipping. The users unleashing bots are without a doubt selling the stubs they make on the secondary market and that's not just bad for people that like to flip cards, it's revenue lost for SDS on stubs. Communication really shouldn't be that hard and they need to do better...