Wrongly banned for "Hacking/Botting, using unauthorized cheat programs"

Also please breathe Mcbee. I know it is really really stressful and upsetting. The only thing you can do right now is appeal and hope that there was an error made.

A bit of background about Suspensions and Bans in general:

They (the Hacks team) do investigate cheating software, botting software, automation techniques and scripts thoroughly. That is why it takes weeks, or months, before they do a “ban wave”. As they gather data they put together detection methods and criteria that they can run. That detects accounts that meet the criteria for that specific cheat they are looking for. Then they double check to make sure they really are accurately detecting the cheat they are after, and not something else. If it passes that check they may wield the ban hammer on all detected and flagged as using it.

Sounds great, but there have been times that the detection criteria has a mistake in it. That it picks up something else and mistakes it for the cheat. Just like a false positive with antivirus software. That usually gets figured out after 24-48 hours after a ban wave. IF that happens they usually do a mass - unban for those who had the false positive, but retain the ban on those who were accurately detected.

If that is all the Hacks team, what do GMs do? They take appeals as they get filed, review the account to see that it is flagged with a positive detection mark, and uphold it if that is the case. They can’t see what the Hacks team is up to, and early on in a ban wave they won’t know there is an error. The GMs can only go off what the flags on the account are. First appeal is almost always denied using a templated email approved by the powers above. Further appeals may also be denied if GMs are not told otherwise. In SOME cases they can escalate an appeal for a Specialist to review and see if there is something odd going on. That results in closed tickets and a long wait for an answer from the Specialist team.

You can appeal until they tell you that any more appeals will be considered GM harassment. Be polite, and don’t open more than one ticket at once.

Fingers crossed it works out in your favor.

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