On September 30th, 2022, I received a notice of account closure from Blizzard support for “Exploitation of game mechanics.” This was surprising to me since I have never abused bugs or glitches and primarily played competitive with my friends.
I opened a ticket to appeal the decision, asking for an explanation on what “abusing game mechanics” meant. Unfortunately, I received the same generic response, stating that my ban was upheld with a link to the terms of service.
I had been an active player since April 2021, logging hundreds of hours and enjoying the game, primarily playing Doomfist. This happened just days before Overwatch 2’s release. Despite several attempts to appeal the ban and understand what I did wrong, I have been met with automated responses saying “This penalty has already been upheld. Any further requests on this topic will not be reviewed.”
I’ve looked around online and realized I’m not the only one who’s faced this issue, dozens of other players have received the same ban for “Exploitation of game mechanics,” along with the same responses from staff. I wanted to share my experience around these issues in the hopes that an actual support staff sees this and even if they decide to keep up the ban at least give me a proper explanation rather than just spitting in my face with a copy paste message
It’s clear they don’t care about their player base, and this experience has been very disappointing.
Wow that was some time ago. Other players have indicated that they requested that the evidence be provided and had some luck with that in at least knowing what it was that did it, not necessarily that it was right, but at least knew.
This explanation is about as ambiguous as it gets! I would expect exploitation-of-game-mechanics to be something done in MMO’s to trivialize boss or raid fights, but no clue how it could be applied to PVP. Widow shooting from unreachable positions was done at the streamed pro-level matches, so at that point it was too late to put the genie back in the bottle.
It’s always been “rules for thee, not for me” with pros and popular streamers. They get to film themselves exploiting bugs, account sharing, throwing, harassing players, witch hunting, etc. and I guess that’s all fine as long as somebody’s making money.
Yea I’m going to be honest I don’t even think they’ve read my tickets, based on their response to them. I asked for some clarification and just received this :
“This action has been taken in accordance with our Terms of Use and our In-game Policies ( Blizzard's In-Game Code of Conduct - Blizzard Support ), which all players acknowledge and agree to prior to playing. These policies and conditions allow us to maintain a fun and safe game environment for all of our players.”
Which really is just a fancy way of saying they don’t care about my ticket and didn’t bother looking into it.
The customer service at this company is horrendous. I have requested several times for chat logs to show me what I said that was so egregious that it warranted a perma ban. I too get the same old you are banned we won’t change it. However I have never asked for them to unban my account, simply show me the chat logs. How is it that hard?
I quite honestly doubt they have any actual staff working on tickets related to bans, last time I talk to an actual staff was because I purchased the Watchpoint Pack back before Overwatch 2 release and it showed I didn’t own it in the store. So I made a ticket about that asking them about the issue and got what felt like an actual human response (as in they actually looked into it, and let me know what was going on and helped), then got banned a few days following that interaction.
You were lost for words for three years? Why have you waited? They might not even still have your account details on hand anymore.
You got a perma… nothing beforehand? That kind of treatment is usually given out to people who cheat or boost/derank. It is also given out to people who play with cheaters/boosters/derankers.
Now, whilst we know that they love their copypasta at CS, when it comes to cheats/exploits, they usually don’t give out too much information.
Now what exploits were around at this time? Let’s see, the main ones at that time were…
I have been trying to appeal my ban for three years and only talking about it now because I am sick of the lack of actual support present at Blizzard.
I have not cheated nor played with cheaters, or deranked/boosting.
I was for the most part a Doom otp who was hard stuck in diamond/masters. Even now to this day I still play (on a new account) and though it is a little sad to admit still stuck diamond/masters.
The only reason I could see as to why I would be banned would be because Doom was a broken character at the time (still is) and I probably got reported more than a few times while playing him. This is mainly just my guess since I never got an actual answer as to what I was being banned for from the support team.
And no, I have never taken part in those exploits.
I have a hard time seeing why a player should be punished for using the bugs in the game. Maybe a disqualification of some type in comp makes sense because it borders on cheating, but this is really on Blizzard to patch game breaking bugs.
Any of your friends lost their account? If they did the answer lies in there.
If not, could be related to something you did repeateadly and wasn’t endorsed by Blizzard. They usually inform stuff on several channels about it, although not always are accessible. Considering they usually don’t use their own channels.
Ow2 was messy for at least an year and a half. Which had some issues on mechanics like knockdown by example.
It is on Blizzard to fix it, but in the meantime, does that make it okay for a player to abuse a game altering bug every match they can? I agree that a temp ban to make a point would be enough.
It’s one thing if it’s the weird bug that’s only cosmetic, like the one where Moira becomes some kind of weird backrooms legged creature when she stands still, but another if you get a positive benefit from it that affects the outcome of the game.
It depends, someone casually using once or twice is understandable. Someone using 10-30 times is intentional.
They’re forgiving on casuality, not on intentional. Also keep in mind that they have historical data of your wrongdoings someone who does with certain frequency and keep doing are chronical one.
If the repetition reach specific thresholds isn’t accidental but on purpose. They take action on the later not on the former, although the former is an historical log to find chronic behaviors.