identity v top up channels offering a 70% discount generally involve unsafe operations. For instance, in the case of “EchoFarm” broken by the Philippine police in 2023, the scammers purchased EchoFarm wholesale at a cost of 30% of the official price with credit cards and sold them at a 70% discount from the quoted price. They illegitimately earned more than 500,000 US dollars in a single month, but players’ chances of getting their accounts suspended for the same were as high as 89% (Data source: (NetEase Game Security Center) Similar events have also been happening on a regular basis in Indonesia. In 2022, the players in Jakarta purchased “70% off Echo”, but the actual payment ratio was merely 34%, and 66% of payment cash could not be refunded (Indonesian Consumers’ Association statistics).
Extremely high discounts of 70% are not seen in regular activities. NetEase’s financial report reveals that the most generous direct recharge promotion of “Identity V” in 2023 is the “Anniversary Limited Gift Pack”. The people topping up 300 RMB and above will receive echoes and skins worth 120 RMB with an overall discount rate of approximately 28.5%. The limit of the discount on area activities on third-party sites such as Codashop is 25%. For instance, a Turkish player used the devaluation of the lira (a 44% fall in the exchange rate in 2023) to recharge $100 of echo at the reduced price, retaining the true price at $56. However, due to cross-regional recharge violations, the account suspension rate was still at 19% (NetEase’s 2023 account suspension report).
The technical method of black and gray industries may achieve “pseudo-discounts” in the short term. In 2022, Vietnamese “EchoBot” gang batch-registered the “identity v top up” accounts in cheap regions (such as Argentina) and then transferred the echoes with the help of the gift system within the game for 35% less than the original price. However, NetEase’s risk management system, with features such as device fingerprint identification (92% accuracy) and transaction behavior checks (triggering an alert if the standard deviation exceeds 2.7), blocked over 420,000 such non-compliant accounts during 2023, at an average loss of $28 per user (data source: Vietnam Cybersecurity Agency).
Policy loopholes in regional policies were exploited temporarily. When in-game purchases were made payable in pesos in 2021 by the Argentine government, some players masked their IP addresses with VPNS and recharged at a rate of $0.007 per echo (officially it was $0.012 per echo), resulting in a discount rate of 41.6%. However, with NetEase upgrading its geofencing mechanism (three verifications of IP, payment card BIN code, and device time zone), the accuracy rate of recognizing such behavior was as high as 96% in 2023, and the one-time offense account ban rate reached 83% (data source: NetEase Compliance White Paper).
Most of the “time-limited vulnerability” social media promotions are illegitimate. A specific live-streamer on the domestic Kuaishou platform in 2023 claimed that “30% off identity v top up was accomplished using a loophole in the iOS system”, and thus users downloaded fake recharge SDKs, which led to 12,000 players’ Apple ids being stolen, with the money involved being over 3 million yuan (as reported by Jiangsu Cyber Police). Such hoaxes also disseminated extensively via WhatsApp groups in Brazil. In 2022, users in Sao Paulo lost, on average, 150 reais (about 30 US dollars) when they clicked on the fake links, and the recovery of funds was less than 5%.
The only safe way of buying substantial discounts lawfully is by participating in the activities of officially approved suppliers. For instance, in 2023, Thai baht 1,000 (approximately 29 US dollars) of mobile credit of AIS telecom users could be exchanged for Echo with a value of 1,700 Thai Baht (discount rate of 58%). Due to the quota limit of the operator’s subsidy (only to the first 50,000 customers), however, the quota was fully booked within 37 minutes from the start of the event. Statistics by NetEase show that the security rate of accounts in such collaborative business is as high as 99.7%, but discount intensity is far from the target rate of 70% (data source: Sensor Tower).
Summing up, the identity v top up channel with a discount rate of 70% is almost 100% occupied in fraud or illicit activities. Players need to be careful of the risk of account suspension (likelihood > 85%) and loss of funds (restoration rate < 5%) lurking behind “overpriced discounts”. NetEase officially advocates a recharge via App Store, Google Play and authorized partners (e.g., Codashop, MyCard). Its past year complaint settlement ratio is 96%, and mean arrival time is as fast as 8 seconds (Data source: Consumer Rights protection organization IGEA).