Abusing the Automated Ban system -- please give me your opinion on my suspension

General Discussion
21

You’re truly set on taking some moral high ground here, for someone who seems to be pretend to be so impartial. I honestly don’t care if you’re going to be pedantic and get hung up on the word “proof” because that is being dishonest, ignoring the issue at hand, trying to derail what I’m saying

Getting suspended because multiple people report you does not mean I am guilty of breaking their rules. It means that a lot of people reported me. Given how salty a lot of people get, it’s not unreasonable to assume that they’ll report anyone who is communicating. If I just sat silent and ragequit the game like a ton of people do, I can guarantee you nothing would happen to me.

I asked Blizzard to give me specifics on what got me banned. I again got an automated response:

Chadomysyae
Thank you for your follow-up contact. An additional review of the previously communicated action taken against the Overwatch account has been completed. Unfortunately, we have confirmed our initial findings. The account action will not be reversed or amended.

We base all of our actions on the severity of the violation, and take previous violations into consideration. This action has been taken in accordance with the Terms of Use and our In-Game Policies Blizzard Support - Blizzard's In-Game Code of Conduct which all players acknowledge and agree to prior to participation.

_Please keep in mind that when we verify these reports this means we have found instances where these policies were violated. Keep in mind that inappropriate language, and derogatory remarks against someones ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation is not acceptable and is actionable. _

_While we understand that you may disagree with some of the policies or conditions, the bottom line is that they allow us to maintain a fun and safe game environment. _

We hope this has resolved any concerns you may have had. Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

See that paragraph about “when we verify these reports we found instances of violations”??? That’s complete blsht.
Please, I’m asking for a Blizzard employee to put me on blast here. Tell me what specifically got me reported that is bannable. I’m serious.
I DON’T disagree with your policies. That’s the thing. My point is that I DID NOT VIOLATE any this time. Inappropriate language? Show me. “WTF” is the worst I’ve said in chat.
Derogatory ethnicity,gender,religion,sex ??? NEVER

At this point I couldn’t care less about game anymore. Whether or not you’ll try and justify that Blizzard is in the right, they’re just not here, and can’t even spend the time to point out WHAT got me banned.

Reading their posted article:

### Behavior

Behavior that intentionally detracts from others’ enjoyment (such as griefing, throwing, feeding, etc.) is unacceptable. We expect our players to treat each other with respect and promote an enjoyable environment. Acceptable behavior is determined by player reports and Blizzard’s decision, and violating these guidelines will result in account and gameplay restrictions.

While we encourage you to report players that are behaving in a disrespectful manner, falsely reporting another player with the sole intent of restricting their gameplay is also unacceptable and will result in penalties to your account.

Griefing throwing feeding? Never. Treating people with respect? Again, if telling someone “Mercy heal your team and not just your duo partner” is disrespectful, than I’m done with this alternate reality.

But will they investigate false reporting for the sole intent of restricting their gameplay??? Of course not. You can’t automate something like that.

So that’s that. Because I like to use chat, I’m now banned – never using a single derogatory term, defending others when they were actually bullied, and generally positive. I’m sure the community will be better off with everyone throwing around reports without consequence though.

Just as a side note, I was also reported for using the in game voice lines. How do I know? Because the person who was furious told me he did.
It was an arcade game where everyone was spamming dumb voice lines. I had junk rat and spammed “BRRING” after getting a kill. The one guy got so mad that after I was finally killed, he all chatted BRRING, and told me how voice spamming was reportable. Before he ragequit he let me know he’d report me.
My response to him was not to insult him, it was “you can’t report people for using voice lines”
But I’m sure that report counted just the same.

22

I honestly have no idea what you are talking about.

I think the issue of proof and what constitutes as evidence is a very, very important issue, but sure we can disregard it that’s fine.

I’m still not convinced the entire report process is automated. If you have actual proof of that please present it.

I argue if a lot of people report you then you may be breaking the rules. My evidence is the thousands of players who do not break the rules and do not deal with suspensions like you are.

I think that is entirely unreasonable actually. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an example of this. If you do this then fine, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us do.

Sure. I don’t do that though and almost nothing has happened to me. Care to explain?

Even if the response is automated that doesn’t mean the process of reviewing the action you did was automated.

I’d love to believe you. Do you have anything beside your word to back up this position? Because you know as well as I do that anecdotes are insufficient evidence.

Look, I agree with you. They should be transparent with exactly what you did wrong so you know not to do it in the future. I was banned exactly once and I honestly do not know exactly what it was for. It was probably for inappropriate subject matter in a game I was in, but I don’t know because they won’t show me.

I’m not saying they are right necessarily.

You don’t know that they aren’t looking into false reporting.

I legitimately cannot believe you I’m sorry. The massive amount of people who do not get banned show that if you actually do this then false reports are not an issue.

I don’t have the link but I also remember a blue post confirm that there is an actual person that goes over your appeal attempts, but you will probably disregard that which ends up being a bit conspiratorial, but that word has to much baggage.

In the end I agree with you when you say you want more information about why you were banned. I think you are entitled to know exactly what action made it happen.

That’s about all I agree with though.

23

I never asked you to believe me. What I asked was, if what I’m saying is true, how would you take this scenario. You don’t have evidence that I’m lying, nor that I’m telling the truth. So treat it like a thought experiment, since clearly blizzard doesn’t give 2 fks about whether or not actual justice is upheld, since they will go for the pragmatic approach of “this works generally, and we’ll be ok with losing a few negative cases”.
Blizzard’s first “reply” told me to contact them again if I had any further issues (despite there being no link for it).
I opened a new ticket asking them to show me what exactly I did was wrong (not asking them to review it or overturn it), and got an even more insulting reply that “the decision has already been upheld”.

It’s clear to me that this is no longer a company I can support if their customer service department can’t spend 2 minutes looking into why I was banned and giving me clear feedback. If they do in fact have actual people looking them over, they are clearly not spending a lot of time, and are way too eager to ban.

Like I said, I type a lot in my games. This has clearly made me an easy target. Whether or not you believe me is really not important to me, as this was really the last straw. The fact that you yourself told me you got banned over nothing just confirms my suspicions. You seem like a well reasoned individual, and while this doesn’t mean you can’t be toxic, from the way you’re discussing this here, I’d wager you’re generally similar to my own demeanor in game. I’d love to see one chat log where they can catch me with profanity, or derogatory comments.

I just wish they would actually post the chat logs, because in that last game I had, the person reporting me insulted me directly.

I appreciate you actually taking the time to respond. I see where you’re coming from, but I’m really more disappointed in Blizzard with the company they’ve become, even though I’ve seen the writing on the walls for years.

Take care.

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24

The report system is not only unbalanced and unreliable, but LITERALY broken and glitchy, for instance, I took two suspensions already (I REALLY need to hold my tongue better) but the point isn’t the punishment, but the fact the warning messages that should come BEFORE the punishment came, guess when, AFTER the suspension ended. Something got out of order. And the second glitch, which I shouldn’t complain, but it’s important, is that the forum suspension, which comes alongside the game suspension, doesn’t come until the very, veeeery end of the game’s suspension. I learned my lesson during this period, but imagine how a salty player could just transfer all his toxicity onto the forums while unable to play! I tried to write a ticket to the devs telling it, but they didn’t read one single word and just gave me the canned response “punishments are not up to discussion” when I was clearly talking about something ELSE! Truth is, they won’t fix the report system, they follow the “snowflakes” that get easily offended. I’ve played MMOs like Wakfu and DCuniverse which, work perfectly fine, and, gasp! Don’t have a report system! (at least not for common offenses) and people aren’t rioting because of that, they are just being sincere amd dealing with it.

25

How I undesrtand things is text chat is more often ignored than used, and if you type something inside, people will be upset because that means you’re unhappy with them, and they can’t allow that, justified or not. It doesn’t matter how you phrased it, or if you were targetting someone in particular or no-one. If you don’t use a mic, they expect and want you to be quiet.

I’m aware there are two extreme opposites of people when it comes to reporting. I used to watch my brother play two years ago and I got upset when he was being insulted because he never wanted to answer, even to try to calm things down, and absolutly refused to touch the report button. I’m sure they are many other players like him that just believe it’s useless. And then there are those who will report for anything and everything.

You probably ran into those from the second category more often. And some horrible teammates with very offensive things to say that don’t even try to be decent will bump into the others and won’t get punished despite deserving it.

26

Try with “guys we need to push”.

27

I muted all communications on my smurf, I still got banned for “abusive chat” because apparently, tea-bagging, spraying and winning is toxic.

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