Elden Ring players have been spotted selling the title’s in-game currency, called runes, on eBay and could face potential bans for violating FromSoftware’s terms of service.
On the virtual marketplace of eBay, players have been seen listing runes for a wide variety of prices. The offers range from 1 million runes for $5 to $20 for 20 million runes, with each seller similarly varying in levels of credibility. A report by Eurogamer claims that while many of these offerings are simple cut-and-runs, a few held up their end of the bargain and successfully transferred the runes to buyers.
In Elden Ring, runes can be used for a variety of purposes. With enough runes, you can purchase items and level up your character and skills. The potential listings offering millions of runes, however, would sufficiently overlevel any given player, making the infamously difficult game studio’s latest title significantly easier.
The transfer process requires an immense amount of trust. Since runes can’t be directly wired to a player’s account, the two parties must enter multiplayer together at a pre-set location. From there, the seller must drop Golden Rune items that can later be turned into regular runes. Since it would take an impossible number of hours to farm up the millions of runes that are being listed, it’s heavily speculated that eBay sellers are using duplication glitches.
Both buyers and sellers could face potential bans, however, since using real money to acquire in-game currency is directly in conflict of Elden Ring’s terms of service. As stated in article 10, “No Player shall be entitled to assign to, transfer to, sell to or buy from another, change the name to another’s name of, or provide another as pledge or other security with, any of his/her rights held as a Player, and items, characters and saved data within the game related to the Software which are obtained in the Services.”
Publisher Bandai-Namco has yet to dole out any public bans or issue a statement outside of its pre-set ToS as of yet. Still, for players, more sanctioned means of acquiring and farming runes remain.
