Since the new MMO was announced at BlizzCon 2026, the risk of real-money trading in World of Warcraft: Infinite has been a lingering concern among players. Although Blizzard has taken punitive measures against players suspected of violations, the community is also exploring its own solutions.
If you haven't followed the incident, last week a streamer was reported by players for hoarding gold through real-money trading, after which Blizzard reclaimed $200 worth of gold from their account. Many fans felt the official penalty was too lenient, with some calling for harsher punishments like permanent bans.
But regardless of the severity of penalties, the core challenge remains: how exactly to determine whether a player's gold source is compliant.
Admittedly, cases where large amounts of gold are acquired in a short period—such as those seen during testing—appear quite obvious... but not all situations are so easy to distinguish. However, players have come up with a countermeasure: an addon capable of determining whether gold was obtained legitimately.
This came to light during a Twitch livestream (hosted by Zigo, the content creator whose $200 worth of gold was previously reclaimed by Blizzard), when a viewer commented that they had developed such an addon.
Interestingly, they named the addon IRS, short for "Illicit Riches Scanner." Although the addon isn't publicly available for download yet, the developer has already sent a beta version directly to Zigo.
Zigo himself commented on the addon, saying it ensures that "all gold we receive from now on will be purely hand-farmed," and described it as "an addon for comparing players' gold income to judge suspicious activity"—with "they" referring to other players, of course.
Zigo stated that this addon "still has quite a few bugs," but the design concept is quite interesting. Essentially, it flags all gold with non-compliant sources by comparing an account's historical gold records against normal income data.
The addon also monitors in-game transactions in real time, so honestly, it can effectively identify real-money trading—and yes, it did flag most of the gold in Zigo's account as illicit gains, so take that as you will.
I'm curious about how Blizzard will respond next and whether they will officially recognize this addon once it's formally released. Blizzard has recently been cracking down on various issues like违规 nicknames, clearly keeping a close eye on such matters.