Microsoft guts Microsoft Rewards points, and its fans are outraged::Microsoft appears to be nickel-and-diming users and fans of its Microsoft Rewards program, which gives “frequent-flyer” points that can be traded in for gift cards.

  • @JTskulk@lemmy.world
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    331 year ago

    Let’s make a replacement program for Free software. The more points you get, the more Free software you can install.

  • @kbtaco@lemmy.world
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    71 year ago

    I’m most disappointed with the cooldown between searches. The lowering of points was expected as they were cutting back everywhere else.

  • Pxtl
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    51 year ago

    I mean I’ve bought 2 Overwatch passes using those points. I couldn’t justify paying cash for skins to myself, but MS rewards points I could rationalize. But I basically fire up Edge/Bing to collect the points and then go back to Firefox & DDG. It was obviously not sustainable for them.

  • @Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
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    111 year ago

    Meh. This seems relatively minor, and geared towards people purposely gaming it. Which, yeah, I’ve done at one time or another. Lately I’ve just been getting the points from searching. It might take a couple extra days to get enough for each $5 gift card. Oh well.

  • Free Palestine 🇵🇸
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    1 year ago

    I remember using this (cheating a little bit with VPNs and proxies so I could claim the rewards like 20 times every day, because they are separate in every country) to get some Xbox giftcards

    I also had ~15 Microsoft accounts and I put them all in a Microsoft family so I could transfer points from one account to another, it was really fun lol

      • @grayman@lemmy.world
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        -21 year ago

        They’re giving out made up points and then letting you trade them for copies of digital files. They’re not really losing much.

      • Free Palestine 🇵🇸
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        -91 year ago

        I stopped doing this a few years ago but the system was flawed from the ground up. The fact that they did nothing to this kind of abuse it mind-boggling. No one actually used this the way it was intended to be used.

    • Pxtl
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      11 year ago

      For ones where they give you a code for a non-MS service (eg LoL or Overwatch tokens) couldn’t you bot-farm this and then literally just sell the redemption code?

      • Free Palestine 🇵🇸
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        -21 year ago

        If you actually started selling these, they would probably shut that down pretty quickly and maybe even sue you

        • Pxtl
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          41 year ago

          Obviously. Don’t get caught.

      • @gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        11 year ago

        No, this is why systems that aren’t rigorously designed to preclude exploitation like this simply shouldn’t be released. If flaws like this exist in the system, they will be exploited. It’s not on the users if they exploited a flaw, even if you say “please don’t exploit the flaw”.

        • @lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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          31 year ago

          There’s a continuum between this kind of thing and, say, ransomware attacks. I’m not sure where the line should be drawn.

        • @DesolateMood@lemm.ee
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          11 year ago

          Idk man I get free game pass every month and people much more patient than me have been able to get entire free consoles. I’d call that pretty nice

      • @helenslunch@feddit.nl
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        321 year ago

        I mean in their defense, fuck Microsoft with a rusty nail, and this system was basically designed for exploitation.

    • @stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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      41 year ago

      People like you are why normies can’t buy pax tickets. This isn’t simmering to be proud of, you should be ashamed of abusing a system.