My brother has been playing since WoTLK. His account has been in good standing this whole time and abruptly is banned for cheating/hacking about a month ago. He’s tried multiple tickets only to be given template responses or dismissive ones.
He doesn’t cheat, bot, or anything like that. His only addons are Details and DBM.
He does play the game on Linux through Proton. We thought the official stance on this was that it is unsupported but not against TOS.
I find it strange that this went straight to permanent ban, not a warning or suspension. The support he’s received has been dismissive and extremely unhelpful. Simply linking the terms of service without specifying what the event actually was feels no different than not receiving support at all. If a ban appeal is met with a template response and you move on, then how will false positives ever be resolved?
It seems there’s no way at all for him to have a conversation with rep. He has not been offered any sort of live chat or callback options, he can’t call a hotline, he’s basically at the mercy of luck.
He and I understand false positives happen, but the complete inability to get anything done about it is the real frustrating part. He’s basically given up, he said even if he gets his account back, at this point he can never trust this company again. He can’t play with his guild anymore and now I’m angry for him.
An appeal isn’t a place to debate for debate on whatever happen, or talk one ways out of it. All an appeal does is ask them to review their logs. If they upheld the action to the point of giving a final answer, then they have something on your brother that was clear on their end.
They’re not going to tell your brother what triggered it, when or how often. That’d be info folks who want to bypass their system would like.
I’m sorry to hear that man, sadly there is really nothing that can be done over the forums. The appeals ticket is the only way to handle this. To be sure though, is your computer clean of any software that could be used for automation?
He has no automation software on his computer, not even macro software since manufacturer software for gaming peripherals don’t even run on linux. He has made appeal tickets that get template responses as if they weren’t actually looked at.
A template reply is them keeping all info they send out is the same. It doesn’t mean they didn’t read it, just they the have a form later for an upheld and fix. They’re not be able to hand type vaguely the same info to appeals as it’d take time and money they could be looking at the next appeal.
I sincerely hope that people don’t believe fast terrible support is better than slow but accurate support. There’s a clear “shoot first ask questions never” policy that only ensures a bug in the detection mechanism is never fixed, piling up with other bugs not being fixed, and victimizing legitimate customers.
Neither of which was stated. The appeals team using a template reply doesn’t mean it was done fast. Even if it was hand typed, doesn’t change the fact their end results are the same.
And to be frank, unless you have insider knowledge on how their system works, it doesn’t help matters to make things up to try to stand on. More so when the whole point of the appeals system is to check if there was a mistake in the first place.
Compare them to a lot of other gaming companies they are far better then a lot of the others.
I also play another game and my account some how got banned when i went to login. Well i waited a month and half to hear back. Was told was a mistake sorry and gave me 3 days to make up for it.
Sorry, I ended up replying to both your comments at once a bit haphazardly. I wasn’t trying to make things up. This was in response to your saying there is no place for a debate and all that. You were the one saying they will not discuss the issue and that’s where my shoot first ask questions never comment came from.
No, I’m sorry, Rosshiu, but at no point would he be offered that. The appeal process is to have the original matter reviewed, we do not discuss it, there is no evidence from the outside that is utilized and I’m afraid for security, we cannot provide details as to what we found outside of a general description.
Our Hacks team does review their processes and monitors appeal rates and continues to check the actions that they have applied specifically to look for possible false positives. Thus far, they have not found any. We can only go off of the evidence that we have.
Per your own post, live chat and callback may be offered.
Callback specifies billing and technical support so fair enough, but live chat doesn’t specify anything like that unless this policy has changed. He has not cheated, I just want to see him be able to play with his guild buddies again but at this rate it seems like any faith in this system is completely misplaced.
Not for appeals. As mentioned, appeals are not a trial floor. It’s either “We found evidence of wrongdoing” or “Oops we’re human we made a mistake it’s lifted”.
If you and/or your brother were hoping for grounds to argue his case I’m sorry to say you will never receive one.
All that can be done for your brother is for him to continue to appeal until he’s told that they are looking at no more appeals and to stop sending them.
Yes, may be offered, but when it is, it is for certain categories. It is not for appeals.
I am sorry, I appreciate your faith in your brother, but there isn’t really anything you can do here. The only person we will engage with about the account is your brother and at this point, it looks like this has been reviewed several times and no errors have been found.
That is not an automated system banning people. That is Blizzard having incorrect definitions in the data they are looking for. Where they accidentally picked up more than what they were looking for. Sort of like how antivirus software can come up with a false positive.
That was a very intentional ban wave looking for specific software parameters. Not some random automated thing like you make it sound like.
Yes, they do unban people, apologize, and grant game time though if there is a mistake. Which DOES happen.
Link me to that please? They don’t just have some “new automated detection system”. They specifically program the anti-cheat software to scan for certain things. They have been doing that for 20 years, at least. When they run a scan it is for specific signatures they are looking for.
I have been playing for all 20 years, and here on the CS forum for more than a decade. The false positives are rare, and I would not say they were more common then at all.
Really though, any link to a Blizzard post talking about mistakes with an “automated detection system” would be appreciated. They most certainly admit false positives on some ban waves, but no discussion of an automated detection system that I know of. They just don’t talk about their anti cheat methods in detail.
ever since then I’ve never stepped foot in an arena or rated bg again because I’ve been afraid of them.
This is an email I got from them back in early 2017
As part of our ongoing effort to combat exploitation and abusive behavior, Blizzard recently closed a World of Warcraft license on this Battle.net account.
After performing an additional review of the evidence considered in this action, we’ve determined that this closure was an error. We are reopening this license for play and hope you will accept our sincere apologies for the mistake.
It is our mission to make Battle.net a fun and safe environment for all players, and we are truly sorry that we affected your experience in this fashion. We are always refining our processes and we will learn from this experience as we continue in our ongoing efforts.
We look forward to your safe return to the game, and thank you for your patience and understanding.