Financial Fraud

Some of you may have come across offers or auctions on websites that offer World of Warplanes Gold at greatly discounted rates. Be advised that all such offers are fraudulent. We strongly recommend you read this document so that you are aware of it.

First of all, we’d like you to know that everybody, even Wargaming.net employees, buy in-game Gold at the same price as you at the rates indicated on our webpage. That means that all offers on other websites claiming to sell Gold to you at a lower price than on our website are fraudulent and should not be taken seriously. If anybody actually sold Gold at half the usual price to you, they would lose money, and trust us when we say that nobody is that altruistic.

There are three legitimate ways to buy Gold: by purchasing it as part of a Gold package sold on our World of Warplanes website, as a reward for participating in a World of Warplanes event, or as income generated through provinces (as in Clan Wars). In all cases, in-game Gold goes straight to a player’s account and he or she cannot transfer it directly to anyone else. 

Attention! This is how the basic fraud scheme usually works: Tempted by an offer which usually sounds too good to be true, you pay a swindler to purchase the discounted Gold he offers. After receiving your payment the scammer buys the Gold from our website at full price using a stolen credit card (this is called “carding”). He sends you the Gold in form of a gift that you receive in the game. Then, when the real owner of the credit card or his bank notices the unauthorized activity, they withdraw the money from us for the purchase of the gift package which annuls the transaction.

But since the Gold has already been credited to you, we’re forced to temporarily suspend your account as its associated balance becomes negative. To unlock it again you – the initial gift recipient – will need to pay us the full amount of the value of the Gold you received to finally equal out your balance. The defrauder gets your money; you lose time, temporarily even your access, and get stuck with a new bill on top of it all. A less common but similar way of fraud is when the impostor uses a regular bank card and then himself orders his bank to withdraw the money for the transaction claiming that the associated services were not rendered. (This is called fraud). 

What happens when a payment is withdrawn?

As soon as a payment is withdrawn, the receiving player’s game account gets blocked. We charge the withdrawn amount from the transaction in question to the player, which makes his balance become negative. He or she will then need to first equal out their balance before we can unlock the associated account again.

Additionally, we would have to ask you to share all the information you have on the swindler: Where did you find the particular offer and where did you buy from? Did you get in direct contact with the seller? Do you have any information about who this person was? Also, since it’s a fraud case, we reserve the right to keep the account locked, depending on the situation. As you can see, falling for such a fraudulent offer only leads to loss of time and money.

What’s the legal situation regarding such cases?

All claims on fraudulent purchases must be made to the person who sold you the Gold. The World of Warplanes administration does not get involved and can’t be held responsible for your actions or those of others. For example, if you buy fake dollars, the real money for them will not be returned. Same rule applies for when you deal with in-game Gold swindlers.

Therefore, we strongly recommend you to buy Gold only on the official website of World of Warplanes. You can do so here.