Mass Reporting Leads to Innocent Friend Getting Perma-Banned

Bug Report
1

I’ve been duo-ing w/ a friend for a while. We’re in a strange position where our favorite heroes to play, aren’t our best. I got to diamond lobbies w/ reaper, but I actually want to play Sombra. Likewise my friend really likes Widowmaker but isn’t the best with her, he probably plays at a Silver-Low Gold level. Duo-ing together we end up playing in low Plat lobbies.

Regardless, we prioritized fun and learning over some dumb ego rank, and took our medicore heroes to comp to learn to use them in a comp environment. We lost, a lot, ended up with a 5-12. My friend had chat disabled because he was expecting people to be toxic. I didn’t have chat/vc disabled, but didn’t use it, and pretty much every game, people were hard flaming us (mostly him), and every game we lost (even if it wasn’t 100% our fault) they would at the least call for us (or at least my friend) to be mass reported, or also spam racial slurs and profanity at us.

We took it in stride, and accepted that our mmr would go down, and people would be upset about us losing… and then my friend got perma-banned for distruptive behavior. We tried to appeal but got a bot response that did not elaborate at all on the circumstances the next day, and refused to give any context on the ban.

This is such utter BS. I didn’t know being bad at the game, was a bannable offense. I didn’t know not cowtowing to raging, slur-spamming tempermental 12- year olds and NEET shut-ins when asking you to switch was a bannable offense.

We have done absolutely nothing wrong, and I’d happily put a wager of 10K dollars with any REAL Blizzard Employee to review his account activity and find any bannable-wrongdoing. Hell, I’d wager my entire life savings.

Blizzard, if you’re so confident in your reporting system, why not take up my offer? It’s free money for you.

His account name is LowGroundWid#2653. Review it, for real. Make sure to get in contact w/ me for the wager details.

6 Likes
2

the whole reporting system is all automated and can be abused

all you have to do is mass-report a player, it so so broken

now, back to your topic

you mentioned that your friend account was P - banned

as far as I know here is how the reporting system works

first time - chat banned for 14 days/ vc included

2nd tine - Account suspension

3rd time - P -Ban account

so at some point, your friend must have done something to trigger a 3rd mass report against him

Everyone was toxic at some point in this game, maybe your friend got tilted or you had braindead teammates

keep in mind, the reports might be racking up overtime,

again, I am not saying the system cannot be abused. .

This game makes you toxic, and this game has a toxic player base too ( applies to all online video games)

my suggestion to you is turn off all chats +VC so he doesn’t get tilted by 12-year-old kids/ toxic players + plus he doesn’t have to see all that nonsense from both sides of the chat

However, if it was a mistake, they are unlikely to reverse the ban.

good luck getting in touch with a human. or someone with the power to review your friend’s case

It’s blizzard after all.

3 Likes
3

I can 100% confirm my friend has not engaged in any negative activities, not in the present, and not in the past. And I am more than willing to bet 10K (hell I’d bet more, it’s free money) on it with any blizzard representative. My friend did exactly as you suggested before we even started, he disabled all chats, and just focused on doing his best. I am the only who w/ chat enabled.

Edit: Not only has my friend never engaged in any bannable activity, he has never recieved any penalty whatsoever, other than this permaban.

4 Likes
4

sorry to hear that,
again that proves my point, the reporting system is very flawed.

good luck getting help,

5 Likes
5

OnigiriRice is right. The reporting system is extremely flawed and players can get and continue to get permanently banned due to false, abused, mass reporting.

Your friend isn’t alone. There was a forum thread in this same Bug Report section of the forums with roughly 5,000 views and over 450 replies, filled with players whom also were wrongfully permanently banned discussing this same exact issue of false reports leading to perma-bans, but the forum moderators deleted it for seemingly no reason, as well as also deleting the second forum thread that came up as a result of the first one’s deletion.

Lots of people (including myself) are experiencing this problem, as well as dead-ends with appealing their bans, and for many of us there is no way to get our accounts back.

The best advice I can give for anyone else experiencing this issue is to post about it and make it widely known, and maybe, hopefully, eventually… Blizzard will look into each one of our wrongful bans and overturn them. Other than that, there’s not much else we can do.

If you’re interested, there’s another forum thread in this Bug Report section titled “Comprehensive Thread Of All Top 500/Competitive Bugs” that discusses this same issue, and even has some of the same players posting in it from that older thread that got deleted recently discussing that same thread’s deletion.

3 Likes
6

I’m so sorry to hear about your friend’s false permanent ban. Seconding everyone above, there is currently a oversight with the Defense Matrix anti-cheat system that allows players to be falsely banned if spammed with enough reports regardless of that player’s actual behavior. Twice there have been large threads of players attempting to spread awareness of their falsely banned accounts and twice forum moderators have silenced them. You can read more about that in the recent comments of the megathread linked below. I sincerely hope that your friend is able to get in touch with a human to review your case, but if not, I would highly encourage you to start a megathread compiling posts of others who have had their accounts falsely banned as well. We will not allow them to continue silencing us.

You are not alone in experiencing this bug. Here’s a link to my post in case you’d like to read more about this issue: Comprehensive Thread Of All Top 500/Competitive Bugs. I put your thread under: False Suspension And Ban. Please help in spreading the word about this megathread and other related threads regarding these issues.

3 Likes
7

Hello again.

Hoping we can get an answer from Blizzard regarding these false bans that I’m sure are still occurring, as we still have not yet heard anything about this issue.

A few players were banned recently due to Headphone software, and they had those bans reverted, which is excellent, but other players are still wrongfully banned for other false causes due to other players falsely mass-reporting us for things like cheating or gameplay-sabotage, despite not participating in either of these activities.

We would like to be able to play the game again, as many of us have dedicated many, MANY hours into this game over the past 7 years.

1 Like
8

Unfortunately you will never get an official response here. I would gladly eat my words if that were not the case.

3 Likes
9

If you’re diamond and your friend low gold, do NOT play comp with him. You’re a thousand SR apart. You’ll ruin the lobbies, people WILL report your friend because he’s bad compared to the match average rank. Not to mention the fact that your gold friend is literally holding you hostage. I understand you wanna play with a friend and prioritize fun but go do that in QP. Playing comp like that will not get either of you anywhere, mass reports are the only thing that are guaranteed.

2 Likes
10

The same happened here with me and my wife. I got silenced for 18 days and she got her account suspended for a whole month. With chat muted and her just getting mass reported for no reason, same with me.

Blizzard will only revert the bans of streamers and people who are able to make noise. Look at Chazm, Kenzo, Arrge, Kragie, Dafran, etc.

Also the support responses is funny as hell. They totally “Reviewed the evidence”.

2 Likes
11

To no one’s surprise, the Devs have continued to leave the Defense Matrix false ban bugs unaddressed and unfixed. In good news though, the original falsely banned account megathread is viewable through the the WayBack Machine, but it is unfortunately still hidden within the bug forums. The second megathread I unfortunately do not have a backup for and the link to it on the competitive bugs megathread only leads to an error. Even with how few players there are still playing and reporting bugs about this game, I would still encourage those who were affected to keep bumping and bringing attention to this issue. Who knows, with so few players left playing and reporting bugs, there might actually be a greater chance of a Dev reading and addressing this bug…

1 Like
12

Hello yet again, Forums.

It’s been a few months since this topic has been brought up I believe, and I’m hoping we can get any information on this issue at all.

It’d be great if we could get an official answer on this problem soon, as many players including myself are still wrongfully banned (permanently), and we’d like to be able to play again.

Posting in these forums are many players’ only hope of getting our appeals thoroughly reviewed, since repeatedly sending those appeals in can lead to account deletion as it’s considered spam.

Thanks.

2 Likes