icon Author: Opius
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Sanctions on Russian OP Accounts
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Due to the ongoing level of fraud, account hijacking, point farming, multi-accounting and abuse of exploits with our website and content, we have sadly decided to close the door to new and existing users from the Russian Federation.

During the conflict in Ukraine (which we personally and professionally stand strongly against), we had considered early on whether to put sanctions on Russian customers, ultimately we decided not to do this as we didn't feel comfortable putting restrictions on innocent, legitimate and anti-war residents that have been customers with us for many years, we were one of very few European companies who decided not to take this stance.

However, lately, continuous streams of fraud and crowd-organised events that led to hundreds of accounts cashing in their farmed points have left the company financially crippled and have left us either needing to consider the closure of the store entirely or taking drastic measures to significantly reduce our risk of future fraudulent and T&C breaking activity in future.

From this day forward, all Russian accounts will / have been permanently closed, this will, unfortunately, include a few false positives. Any historical orders can be accessed via email.
This decision was not made lightly and we tried everything possible to avoid such a measure. Unfortunately, this was our only option and will not be reversed under any circumstances.

This is a sad day for the Opium Pulses team, our site has been a place of leisure, fun and community for people all around the world since 2012 and Russian residents have always been welcome to our platform. Thank you for the years of support afforded to us by any and all Russian users who respected what we were trying to achieve.

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Comments
  • Malokosos
    September 14, 2022

    Make Halyava great again!

  • levag88377
    September 14, 2022

    у админу обидна да?

  • ERKYNIS
    September 15, 2022

    I will never use your platform again and I don't want to do it.

    Russian users are not to blame for the fact that you have not thought through any restrictions on spending points. We used only the site's capabilities, this is your disadvantage.

    You have suffered financial losses because of your own mistake, not because of Russian users.


    The best solution would be to set a limit on spending points and receiving them, rather than blocking anyone from accessing the site.

    I hope that you will listen to me and make a better decision in the future. But it is unlikely that Russian users will want to use your platform after that.


    I hope that the platform team will respond adequately to my comment and not just delete it, but also listen to it.

    • Thank you for expressing your opinions and concerns. Abusive messages will be deleted but yours is honest and civilised. 


      The truth is, this latest crowd-organised mission to all spend years of accumulated points at the same time has been one small event in years and years of fraud, exploits and attacks on our site, the vast majority of such being from Russia. This is just a simple fact and not one we wanted to publicly state before now as it's not a nice thing to admit.


      Yes, admittedly our points system has been open to abuse in the past but the vast majority of abuse has also come primarily from Russia. 


      Below are two articles over the years that show not only have we been public about the amount of fraud and abuse we receive, but also examples of where we have tried to rebalance the system and put restrictions in place to help us avoid making such a big decision. 


      https://www.opiumpulses.com/article/245/op-points-disabled-in-store


      https://www.opiumpulses.com/article/480/op-achievements-balancing


      We tried everything we could but at this point, we were getting to the point that it wasn't worth our time, efforts and well-being to keep fighting such levels of fraud forever, we needed to either close the store entirely or take drastic measures to reduce our risk and hopefully continue on, we chose the latter.


      We hope given a more detailed explanation and the articles above, you can begin to understand our position a little more as no community, least of all OP, would ever shun an entire community of people unless our hand was forced. 


      For now, Russian users still have access to our articles, arcade, videos, podcasts and Discord community.


      Kindest regards, 

      The Opium Pulses Team.

  • Lili124578
    September 15, 2022

    Nice! <3

  • Eugene22
    September 18, 2022

    Well, since you don't want to reply to the letter, let's discuss the situation publicly.

    You have explained in detail your position on the genocide of your own users that you committed. Now let's look at the situation from the other side...


    I signed up for opiumpulses over 6 years ago.

    I visited the site EVERY day. I participated in all the activities you suggested. And I was glad that I found such a wonderful site.

    I have accumulated tens of thousands of points. But I didn't spend it, I trusted you completely. After all, what could go wrong?


    On September 14, 2022 the site told me: "This user account is disabled. Contact an administrator."

    Okay, I wrote to the administrator. In response, I received a template reply Ctrl + C / Ctrl + V about evil Russian hackers and an offer to create a new account. After that, the administration of Opium Pulses stopped the correspondence. Create a new account... Why? For you to f**k me again in 6 years?!


    From the news on the site, it became clear that Opium Pulses lost the war with unscrupulous users. And they did not come up with anything smarter than to ban about 200 MILLION law-abiding users, current and potential.

    Moreover, they banned everyone in a row: both Russians, and Belarusians, and Ukrainians and God knows who else.


    What about scammers? Nothing... They will turn on the VPN, create new accounts and continue to accumulate points. For some of them, it will become a matter of principle to rob you. The only thing OP gained from his solution was some time. But he got that time by cheating a bunch of people like me. We honestly accumulated points for years and were left with nothing. OP, tell me, how are you different from the classic scammers in this situation?


    Guys, this crazy anti-advertising action is worthy of the Guinness Book of Records. You only need to apply.

    • "genocide"

      That is a disgusting word to use ,especially knowing what  is happening to the Ukrainian people at the moment.


      What happened here is the same thing that happened to trading cards on Steam and also the same problem that Alienware has suffered from in the past and is now suffering from again as bad actors have shifted over there on mass..

      I wouldn't be surprised to hear it also played a part in other sites restructuring or completely closing down.

      To try and blame the site owners for your criminality ,well ,no surprise there.......

      The action taken to stop the constant targeted abuse of fun gaming giveaway sites like this does not in any way equate to "genocide" and to suggest so is just shameful and speaks volumes about how certain people's minds work.


      We can only hope that one day soon russians will improve their standard of living (and thinking) and they won't feel the need to commit crimes and ruin what is a  fun pastime of gamers around the world.

      • Blah blah blah ... What beautiful and completely unrelated to what happened here, the words.


        Okay, I'm not from Russia. What do you say to the residents of Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine, whose accounts were also banned?


        And what do you say when Opium Pulses bans you? They really don't like to fulfill their obligations, you know. There is no user, there are no obligations... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • denileming
    September 21, 2022

    you did not act fairly, I hope you reconsider your decision

  • Dunia
    September 24, 2022

    Russian users are like their government. If somewhere someone does something around the rules using hacking, deceit and abuse, then it is always Russians.

    It is high time to close the entrance of this contingent of people to all the world's Internet sites.

  • SassaS
    September 24, 2022

    Surprised by the incredibly measured and restrained policy of the site administration. It's incredibly difficult these days. However, trying to be liberal with a bandit nation is always a losing stance. Once again, I am convinced where the Russians are, there is fraud and theft.

    • your opinion is imposed by films and the government, in reality it's not at all like that