[UNBANNED] Main account, then alt account, banned same day

General Discussion
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TL;DR: My main account, then an alt account banned the same day for “hacking”, both in the first games I played.

EDIT: I do have HyperX Ngenuity installed. It updated automatically from the MS Store. There are many cases pointing towards version 5.19.0.0 of Ngenuity triggering as a false positive. Please Blizzard review this and unban.

UPDATE 12/06/2023: I received an “Unban” email for both of the banned accounts. They’re still not accessible for now though. To all of you guys who got banned for having updated HyperX, there is hope.

UPDATE 2: WE ALL GOT UNBANNED, thanks a lot for your support, thank you HyperX for contacting Blizzard, and thank you Blizzard for the unban.

Today, 11th of June 2023, I was playing comp in the morning, then my main account got banned for hacking.

I have never cheated nor hacked in in my life. I despise cheaters. I have not used any software or device that would deserve me this ban. I immediately submitted an appeal to the Customer service.

Anyway, a few minutes ago, although I felt very depressed by the ban on my main account, I decide to go in comp on an old account I had, bought in the days of open queue in OW1. I got banned for “hacking”, once again, in the first game I tried to play. I must say that paradoxically, I got reassured because now I’m 100% sure that something is triggering false positives in the OW detection system. Probably something on my PC, but I don’t know what.

I have read this kind of posts countless times, thinking to myself “yeah, right, good riddance cheater, you got caught because you obviously did something”. Now it’s happening to me, I’ll probably be treated in the same manner. Fair enough. I can’t convince you guys.

But please assume, just for a minute, that I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong, which is the case:

I bought my main account in January 2017, and played almost everyday since. Never had an issue. Never got suspended, or anything.

I have 2600h+ on my main account. I have in this account 99% of the OW1 skins (including some of the Blizzcon ones, Raynhardt, Illidan Genji, etc, all the special events skins, the Twitch drops, all the special OWL skins Doom, Mei, Widow, etc., I have almost everything on this account). I have bought all the Batte Passes from OW2 + the Watchpoint pack. I’m an all time fan of this game and have put in hundreds of euros in skins. Why would I even risk this account by trying to cheat ?

I have played this game and on this account almost everyday, for 6 years. I have played Competitive for 1100h+. I started playing when I was 32 years old, I am now 39 with a kid, and I still play when my kid is asleep. I’m way past the age where I want to try anything goofy or stupid by installing hacks or whatever BS. I’m just a honest random guy, who goes to work, who has a family, who plays Overwatch after work trying to improve and rank up. I’ve been grinding competitive for years, sometimes briefly reaching Diamond, but most of the time plateauing in Plat. I’m a random player who has never even thought of trying to cheat. Cheaters disgust me, I’ve been reporting them for years now like you all.

So, I got banned for hacking this morning. I was asking myself if I maybe got reported an unreasonable amount of times (I have been playing a lot this season). I started to blame myself. Although I felt desperate, I decided to play on one of my old accounts I had, so I begin a new comp game : I get banned for hacking AGAIN. This was the first time I had played OW2 with this account, which dated from OW1. There was no way I got banned from reports. So it has to be the detection system who found something on my PC.

There is nothing sketchy on my PC. I’m the only one to use it, I keep it clean. I have nothing much opened in the background: a navigator, Nvidia, logitech drivers, Discord, Keepass… I don’t understand. I’m willing to share whatever technical information with anyone, to find what’s triggered the false positive in the detection system.

I’m seeing on Reddit and on this forum a certain number of persons claiming they wrongfully got banned for hacking in the last hours / the last days… Guys, I’m with you, I believe you, there is an issue somewhere. I hope we’ll recover our accounts.

I’m desperate. I’ve lost 6 years with this account, 23 gold weapons, all these skins I was quite proud of. I just don’t understand. But if going public has any chance to alert the devs or someone in the team, then here I am trying, willing to expose myself to the hateful comments. I’m just an 39yo dad, trying to enjoy the game I’ve enjoyed for 6 years now. Two accounts banned the same day, among which my cherished main account, and I have no clue what triggered it. Please, help me understand.

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Hmm, I do wonder what’s going on.

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Blizzard is probably banning all the cheaters in waves and now they all got caught. They had a history of doing that.

Sorry I don’t believe you and i’m happy that Blizzard is taking action against cheaters and banning all their account. You probably got caught cheating and your IP and HWID got flagged. It’s strange that whenever some one got caught they write a huge wall of text explaining why they are innocent with a sad story, which makes it even more obvious you were guilty.
Learn your lesson and don’t cheat next time, buy a new PC to have a different HWID, ask your ISP to change your IP.

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I highly doubt they unban you. Probably you have to sue them.

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Ban wave. It’s happened many times before.

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Well, I understand your reaction. But in good faith, I’ve never cheated. I wouldn’t even know how to do it right now. The “wall of text” is pretty much all I have to try to defend myself.
It’s pretty tough to be in the position where you have to defend yourself of some “crime” you have not committed, I must say.

But anyway, I just want to try to get what happened. From what you’re telling, you think my first ban got my IP and HWID in some blacklist, and that could have been what provoked the second ban?

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I’m seeing a lot of these posts. I’m not just seeing them here, but on Reddit and Twitter too. At first I wanted to call BS, but as I see more of this I wonder if something is causing false positives.

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I see so many of these threads today. Probably a ban wave or something.

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I’ve actually been seeing them for days now. Previous ban waves didn’t result in this many claims of innocence. Sure there were some, but so many makes me wonder if something innocent was flaged as a cheat program that isn’t.

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i mean, think about it. No one likes the devs, no one likes blizzard
So when someone comes in saying they are innocent and falsly banned and they give a crafted reason for it
who are you gonna believe first?

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Obviously. I’m talking about what’s causing it if some of them are innocent.

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could be curiousity downloads, like they downloaded a cheat once went into the practice range, was like “ah, so thats how it is” then uninstalled the cheat. They probably still get flagged because the practice range is still on blizzard servers, not local pcs
But then we are asking if these deserve bans, I mean they did download cheats, but effected no one, but it would never be that easy
Another reason could be manually reported cheaters. Since Overwatch doesnt have a kernal anti cheat, anything running down there would have to be reported manually, and thus its just player words against each other. No one is going to publicly admit they are cheating, why would they.

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it’s good to have the record of you saying there’s something wrong here. But your only actionable recourse is to appeal to customer service. They are the ONLY ones who can do anything. So I highly suggest you do so, because the only way they’re going to do ANYTHING about this is if they get flooded with appeals, IF people are getting falsely banned.

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I’m yet to see a cheater admit they’ve been caught.

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Same here, been playing since launch (OW1) casual gold/plat player. Never used any cheats or hacks, this morning I managed to get in 2 games of competitive. Then all of the sudden can’t log in. A few minutes later I get a mail with the following:

“Recent activity on this account shows the use of an unauthorized cheat program, also known as a “hack”, which harms the intended player experience.”

“We don’t take this decision lightly. Our team issued this closure after a careful review of relevant evidence. Our support staff will not overturn these closures and may not respond to appeals.”

I’m absolutely behind the war on hackers but when innocents are caught in the crosshairs with seemingly no way to even appeal or know why, it might have gone too far.

Oh well that’s my two cents, sent an appeal but have little to no hope of even getting an answer. Time to get a new hobby :smiley:

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I got falsely banned last night while playing Quickplay. I never cheated and never want too. I lost my overwatch 1 account with all my skin. Just because I got falsely flagged. I’m just a casual player. I have no gold guns . I play strictly quick play . I’m not sure what I can do

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Same happened to me on multiple accounts. Falsely banned

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If you are concerned about your account, I would NOT take it to the forums.

Go write a ticket or appeal or whatever and cross your fingers that they do something about it.

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Maybe they’re finally cracking down on alting scum. (Or maybe not)

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Somehow the issue has to become visible to be acknowledged, so I did make an appeal, but I want to take it to the public too.

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