A piece of code is quicker than the hand

With the upcoming March Madness event, involving playing a lot of PvP battles, for a chance to collect a BWP-1M Puma, I decided to try my luck elsewhere.

I saw another streaming contest http://www.hitbox.tv/maukers and figured I would give that one a look, since they happened to be offering up Puma codes. I logged in, chatted a bit before the broadcast and watched some of the PvE battles in a language I didn't quite understand (at least the chat was mostly in English).

There was a drop box, just above the chat window, that opened where you could vote yourself for whatever prize they were offering. A neat concept, never seen that before, but I am kinda new to this streaming as a participating member of the audience. Of course, I always clicked yes.

Then, they were throwing codes out into the chat window. Three of them came out and despite my speed of highlight, Ctrl C, click on my.com profile, Crtl V the code into redemption box, I came up short, the window telling me the code was already redeemed.

It was after the failed redemption of the third code I made a comment in the chat window, as seen above. I have heard about programs/browser plugins that can snatch a code and copy it out faster than a person can click keys and a mouse, but I was still shocked to see this as an accepted practice. After wasting an hour, three lottery draws and three expired chat codes, I threw in the towel.

Now, I am not trying to present the streamer, their friends nor the mods of this particular event in a bad light. The drop down window lottery was fair and transparent, showing the winners were drawn randomly. The codes were thrown out into the chat window, sometimes with a warning, other times, poof there they were.

It's the folks that have that technological edge which annoyed me and a few others. Granted, I could go out of my way and find these very plugins myself, but I don't plan on taking part in too many more of these type of events now, or in the future. While I could see some people out there being so desperate to collect rare and/or hard to obtain vehicles for their ingame garage, going to these great lengths....

....I firmly believe others are using this technology for financial gain.

And seriously, why not?

I am not promoting this kind of behavior by any means, but by the looks of codes being sold on eBay and other online auction sites, there doesn't seem to be any kind of consequences for the people who are cashing in.

Once again, I certainly hope those streamers and others who are using visual social media to help promote Armored Warfare and bring players into the game, nothing but the very best wishes and continue to distribute these codes in a fair and transparent manner.

To those who are making a quick buck from the codes free ride, enjoy these times. Someday, the gas will run out and the ride will be over.