(edited to add this note)
I started this thread for people who have had their game accounts banned for alleged activities they knew nothing about, and who have been treated unfairly and unkindly when they appealed the ban. The purpose is for us to share our experiences with each other, not to try to convince anyone who doesn't believe us. It doesn't matter to me if anyone else believes us or not.
(end edit)
After I was banned from an online game for a reason which I knew was false, I was searching for some information to help me find out what to do, and it looks to me like what happened to me has happened to a lot of other people. In my case, the behavior of the customer support service, and of the managers I corresponded with, looked more and more bizarre and inexplicable as time went by.
Please don't point to any specific game or company, but has anyone else encountered this kind of behavior? Please don't point to any specific game or company, even indirectly.
- Over a period of more than three weeks, the customer support service, the director of customer services, and another manager that I corresponded with, persistently ignored my concerns that the account might have been compromised.
- I had two other game accounts with the company, and when I asked for those to be locked also, to prevent them from being used for malicious activities, the director of customer services refused.
- It's a common security practice for online services to send an email notification when a password is changed. When I changed the password on those other two accounts, I did not receive any email notification.
- The customer support service, and the director of customer services, repeatedly gave me details about the incriminating behavior they allegedly saw on the account, which I did not ask for, and which they should not have done if they actually thought I had been abusing the game economy.
- When I submitted a suggestion to avoid hurting innocent people in the future, and to avoid giving out information that might help violators avoid detection, the director of customer services, and the other manager, persistently evaded those issues.
- Even though they were accusing me of abusing the game economy, they encouraged me to continue playing, on a new account.
- More generally, their behavior, from beginning to end, looked dishonest and irresponsible to me, and not at all designed to prevent people from abusing the game economy.
- It looks to me like numerous other customers might have seen their accounts banned for alleged activities they knew nothing about, and seen the same behavior in response to their ban appeals.
- All of my emails to other executives at the company, about those issues, have gone unanswered.
Please don't point to any specific game or company. I'm just trying to find out how frequent this kind of behavior might be.
(edited 10/16/2014 to add the following)
Considering some of the comments to this thread, I've decided to try to clarify my purposes here a little more.
I was trying out a game as a possible alternative to the game I was playing. I only played the new game a few times, for a few hours, with weeks and sometimes months between the times I played. Then after a few months away from it, when I tried to log in, a message came up saying my account was suspended. I started a support ticket to find out why. The response said that my account was banned for selling in-game money for real money. I never did any such thing. I never thought of doing any such thing. I filled out the ban appeal form that came with the support response, denying the allegation.
For the next four weeks or more, the *only* responses I got from support, and from the company managers, to my denial and to my concerns, repeatedly expressed, that someone might have broken into my account, were more and more details about the incriminating activities that they allegedly saw on the account, as if they thought I would know what they were talking about.
The way I was treated by the support service and by the management caused me a lot of grief, and it helped me a lot when I saw that I was not alone in that. I started this thread hoping that it might help some other people the same way.
At the same time, I was hoping to get some clues about how much it is happening, to help me decide if I want to try to do something about it or not.
(end edit)
Edited, Oct 16th 2014 5:53am by jimhabegger
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It's not unheard of. I think "customer service" at a lot of game companies is an afterthought, rather than something built into the game from the ground up.
The best protection you can have is a security token or some other form of third party authentication, if the game allows it. I've found that customer service is much nicer if you've taken advantage of any kind of account precautions they've offered.
The best protection you can have is a security token or some other form of third party authentication, if the game allows it. I've found that customer service is much nicer if you've taken advantage of any kind of account precautions they've offered.
6 posts
(edited to add:)
Catwho, thank you for that tip!
(end edit)
The reason I'm posting about this is because it helped me when I saw that I was not alone in being falsely accused, and in the way I was treated by the customer support service and the managers when I appealed the ban, but most of the discussions I saw about that revolved around one specific game or another. It looks to me like it's happening with more than one game, and even with more than one company, so I wanted to have a place for people to help each other by sharing their experiences, without pointing to any particular game or company.
Losing access to my account, was not the worst part for me. I understand that it might not be possible to stop people from abusing game economies, without some innocent people having their accounts banned. The worst part was that the support service and the managers persistently treated me like a liar, and refused to help me find out if someone had broken into my account. Again and again I said that if the account had really been used they way they said it was, I knew nothing about it, and did nothing to facilitate it. Again and again, I expressed concerns that someone might have broken into my account. Again and again I asked them to please tell me frankly if the guilt or innocence of the account owner was irrelevant, so we could stop wasting my time and theirs.
They persistently ignored all of that, and all they did was to tell me, repeatedly, more and more details of the incriminating activities they allegedly saw on the account, as if they thought that would mean something to me. On top of all that, when I asked for my other accounts to be locked, to prevent the same thing happening to those accounts, they refused! A lot of what they said looked dishonest and irresponsible to me. In his last email to me, one of the managers admitted that it doesn't matter to him if innocent people are being hurt.
That went on for four weeks or more, until I finally decided to drop it.
Edited, Oct 5th 2014 6:01am by jimhabegger
Catwho, thank you for that tip!
(end edit)
The reason I'm posting about this is because it helped me when I saw that I was not alone in being falsely accused, and in the way I was treated by the customer support service and the managers when I appealed the ban, but most of the discussions I saw about that revolved around one specific game or another. It looks to me like it's happening with more than one game, and even with more than one company, so I wanted to have a place for people to help each other by sharing their experiences, without pointing to any particular game or company.
Losing access to my account, was not the worst part for me. I understand that it might not be possible to stop people from abusing game economies, without some innocent people having their accounts banned. The worst part was that the support service and the managers persistently treated me like a liar, and refused to help me find out if someone had broken into my account. Again and again I said that if the account had really been used they way they said it was, I knew nothing about it, and did nothing to facilitate it. Again and again, I expressed concerns that someone might have broken into my account. Again and again I asked them to please tell me frankly if the guilt or innocence of the account owner was irrelevant, so we could stop wasting my time and theirs.
They persistently ignored all of that, and all they did was to tell me, repeatedly, more and more details of the incriminating activities they allegedly saw on the account, as if they thought that would mean something to me. On top of all that, when I asked for my other accounts to be locked, to prevent the same thing happening to those accounts, they refused! A lot of what they said looked dishonest and irresponsible to me. In his last email to me, one of the managers admitted that it doesn't matter to him if innocent people are being hurt.
That went on for four weeks or more, until I finally decided to drop it.
Edited, Oct 5th 2014 6:01am by jimhabegger
6 posts
From some discussions I've seen in some game forums, it *looks* to me like what happened to me might be happening to some other people. That is:
- The owner of the account knew nothing about the alleged violations and did nothing to facilitate them. Either someone else broke into the account, or the allegations are simply false.
- Instead of helping the owner of the account find out if someone broke into it, customer support treated him like a liar, and refused to address his concerns at all.
- He was unable to get any help from anyone else at the company.
The discussions I saw, where people were discussing experiences that might have been like that, were from some months ago. I have't seen any discussions like that dated in the last few months, so maybe it doesn't happen all the time. Maybe just during waves of banning. Also I don't know if it was tens or hundreds or thousands of innocent people who were being treated that way, or just a few.
- The owner of the account knew nothing about the alleged violations and did nothing to facilitate them. Either someone else broke into the account, or the allegations are simply false.
- Instead of helping the owner of the account find out if someone broke into it, customer support treated him like a liar, and refused to address his concerns at all.
- He was unable to get any help from anyone else at the company.
The discussions I saw, where people were discussing experiences that might have been like that, were from some months ago. I have't seen any discussions like that dated in the last few months, so maybe it doesn't happen all the time. Maybe just during waves of banning. Also I don't know if it was tens or hundreds or thousands of innocent people who were being treated that way, or just a few.
jimhabegger wrote:
Also I don't know if it was tens or hundreds or thousands of innocent people who were being treated that way, or just a few.
Obviously it was millions of "innocents" being banned all the time. Sarcasm, in case you were wondering.
Reading posts on various forums is not a good measure of how many "innocent" people being banned from any particular service. Everyone who is banned proclaims innocence and denounces the game/service they were banned from in some way or another. You have to take posts complaining about bans with a bucket of salt.
Edited, Oct 8th 2014 7:55pm by TirithRR
Can't sleep, clown will eat me.
6 posts
Tirith, I imagine that most of the people complaining in game forums about being falsely banned, actually did whatever they were accused of doing, but I know from personal experience that some of the people whose accounts have been banned knew nothing about the alleged activities, and did nothing to facilitate them. Here are the reasons I think it could have happened to hundreds or even thousands of people:
- Periodically, there is news of tens of thousands, sometimes even millions, of accounts hacked from one online service or another.
- Periodically, game companies go on banning sprees, and they have no way of knowing how many of the banned accounts were hacked before they were banned. I can't find the article now, but I thought I had read that in one case, thousands of accounts were banned. That's where my question is: How many of the banned accounts in those banning sprees were hacked before they were banned? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Just two or three, do you think, or maybe only mine alone, out of all those thousands?
- In my case, one of the managers admitted that he had no way of knowing if the owner of a banned account was actually guilty or not. He also admitted that it didn't matter to him. That's another question: Is that just an isolated case, or is that a common attitude among game managers?
I'm hoping that owners of banned accounts who have actually done what they were accused of doing, won't find their way here, and if some do, that they won't have any interest in posting here. If they do, I'll just have to live with the distractions.
- Periodically, there is news of tens of thousands, sometimes even millions, of accounts hacked from one online service or another.
- Periodically, game companies go on banning sprees, and they have no way of knowing how many of the banned accounts were hacked before they were banned. I can't find the article now, but I thought I had read that in one case, thousands of accounts were banned. That's where my question is: How many of the banned accounts in those banning sprees were hacked before they were banned? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Just two or three, do you think, or maybe only mine alone, out of all those thousands?
- In my case, one of the managers admitted that he had no way of knowing if the owner of a banned account was actually guilty or not. He also admitted that it didn't matter to him. That's another question: Is that just an isolated case, or is that a common attitude among game managers?
I'm hoping that owners of banned accounts who have actually done what they were accused of doing, won't find their way here, and if some do, that they won't have any interest in posting here. If they do, I'll just have to live with the distractions.
The unfortunate truth is most games can ban you for whatever reason they feel like thanks to their ToS. Ideally, the good ones should be both more responsible with their punishments and remedying situations where account compromises or mix-ups take place.
Personally, I am not a fan of games that allow an individual to run multiple accounts. While this realistically may be difficult to track if someone wanted to skirt around it, it's hard to argue against the fact that there is often a tangible benefit to the activity, especially if third party tools are involved for the sake of automation. Generally speaking, those who wind up having more time to dump into a game get an advantage, nevermind multiplying that per account.
So, while I'm also someone who would take claims of being banned unfairly with a healthy dose of skepticism, I do find it curious you're being pretty hush about where all this supposedly took place.
Personally, I am not a fan of games that allow an individual to run multiple accounts. While this realistically may be difficult to track if someone wanted to skirt around it, it's hard to argue against the fact that there is often a tangible benefit to the activity, especially if third party tools are involved for the sake of automation. Generally speaking, those who wind up having more time to dump into a game get an advantage, nevermind multiplying that per account.
So, while I'm also someone who would take claims of being banned unfairly with a healthy dose of skepticism, I do find it curious you're being pretty hush about where all this supposedly took place.
Violence good. Sexy bad. Yay America.
6 posts
Seriha, thank you.
It doesn't matter to me if anyone believes me or not. I started this thread for the benefit of anyone else who might have been treated the way I was treated, to know that they're not alone. After I started it, I was also hoping to get some clues about how many innocent people are being treated that way.
As for being hush, not only am I being hush about where this happened, I'm requesting anyone else who posts to not point to any particular game or company, even indirectly.
It doesn't matter to me if anyone believes me or not. I started this thread for the benefit of anyone else who might have been treated the way I was treated, to know that they're not alone. After I started it, I was also hoping to get some clues about how many innocent people are being treated that way.
As for being hush, not only am I being hush about where this happened, I'm requesting anyone else who posts to not point to any particular game or company, even indirectly.
Quote:
Traumatized.
IDrownFish wrote:
Anyways, you all are horrible, @#%^ed up people
lolgaxe wrote:
Never underestimate the healing power of a massive dong.
There's not really a point in trying to harvest war stories about being oppressed by some game's GMs. Evidence to the contrary is likely to be non-existent.
On the other end, if this is supposed to be some widespread thing happening to lots of people everywhere, I would think it more prudent to identify the games and the situations in question, especially if money had changed hands. Holding our entertainment providers to a certain standard of fairness and reliability isn't a bad thing, but one can't say that's achieved if bad incidents just get swept under the rug. If anything, I'm more apt to say gaming communities are too lax on enforcing things in their ToS when it comes to things like harassment or third-party tool use, which probably fuels the whole, "But I did nothing wrong!" rhetoric when the noose eventually is tightened.
On the other end, if this is supposed to be some widespread thing happening to lots of people everywhere, I would think it more prudent to identify the games and the situations in question, especially if money had changed hands. Holding our entertainment providers to a certain standard of fairness and reliability isn't a bad thing, but one can't say that's achieved if bad incidents just get swept under the rug. If anything, I'm more apt to say gaming communities are too lax on enforcing things in their ToS when it comes to things like harassment or third-party tool use, which probably fuels the whole, "But I did nothing wrong!" rhetoric when the noose eventually is tightened.
Violence good. Sexy bad. Yay America.
6 posts
Seriha, you've brought up some issues that I might like to discuss with you, if you would like to:
1. What, if anything, can any of us do to hold our entertainment providers to a certain standard of fairness and reliability?
2. What, if anything, can any of us do about lax enforcement of rules against harassment and third-party tool use?
3. Disingenuous or plain dishonest "I did nothing wrong" rhetoric.
If you do want to discuss any of that, can we do it in some other thread where it will be on topic?
(edited to add some more thoughts)
Seriha, just now I saw that I might have missed your point about identifying specific games or situations. I might want to do that somewhere, some time, but not in this thread. Possibly not in this forum, depending on what the forum policies are.
The only specifics I know are about what happened to me. I didn't retain any specifics from the other incidents I read about in other forums. If you would like to discuss what I did in my case, and what else I could have done or could still do, that would be on topic for my purposes, still without identifying the game or the company.
Here's what I did:
- I found all the email addresses I could find of company managers, and wrote to them about it.
- I posted in one of the game forums, without saying specifically what happened, just saying that I had a community issue I wanted to discuss with one of the company managers, and asking if anyone could help me with that.
- When it seemed clear to me that someone had broken into my account, I asked for my other two accounts to be deleted or locked, to keep the same thing from happening to them.
- When I started suspecting that there might be some kind of fraudulent activity behind the bizarre company behavior I was seeing, I reported my suspicions at the following Web sites: FTC Complaint Assistant, Internet Crime Complaint Center, and National Fraud Information Center.
(end edit)
----
I've added a note to the original post, to try to clarify my purposes here a little more.
It seems clear to me that I'm not the only person who has had his account banned for alleged activities he knew nothing about, and who was treated unfairly and unkindly when he appealed the ban. I'm not sure it's widespread, but I'm not sure it isn't. If it is widespread, then maybe some of the people grieved by it will eventually discover this thread and post about it here. I don't know what else to do to find out. I don't want to discuss this in any forum associated with a particular game or company.
Edited, Oct 16th 2014 9:59pm by jimhabegger
1. What, if anything, can any of us do to hold our entertainment providers to a certain standard of fairness and reliability?
2. What, if anything, can any of us do about lax enforcement of rules against harassment and third-party tool use?
3. Disingenuous or plain dishonest "I did nothing wrong" rhetoric.
If you do want to discuss any of that, can we do it in some other thread where it will be on topic?
(edited to add some more thoughts)
Seriha, just now I saw that I might have missed your point about identifying specific games or situations. I might want to do that somewhere, some time, but not in this thread. Possibly not in this forum, depending on what the forum policies are.
The only specifics I know are about what happened to me. I didn't retain any specifics from the other incidents I read about in other forums. If you would like to discuss what I did in my case, and what else I could have done or could still do, that would be on topic for my purposes, still without identifying the game or the company.
Here's what I did:
- I found all the email addresses I could find of company managers, and wrote to them about it.
- I posted in one of the game forums, without saying specifically what happened, just saying that I had a community issue I wanted to discuss with one of the company managers, and asking if anyone could help me with that.
- When it seemed clear to me that someone had broken into my account, I asked for my other two accounts to be deleted or locked, to keep the same thing from happening to them.
- When I started suspecting that there might be some kind of fraudulent activity behind the bizarre company behavior I was seeing, I reported my suspicions at the following Web sites: FTC Complaint Assistant, Internet Crime Complaint Center, and National Fraud Information Center.
(end edit)
----
I've added a note to the original post, to try to clarify my purposes here a little more.
It seems clear to me that I'm not the only person who has had his account banned for alleged activities he knew nothing about, and who was treated unfairly and unkindly when he appealed the ban. I'm not sure it's widespread, but I'm not sure it isn't. If it is widespread, then maybe some of the people grieved by it will eventually discover this thread and post about it here. I don't know what else to do to find out. I don't want to discuss this in any forum associated with a particular game or company.
Edited, Oct 16th 2014 9:59pm by jimhabegger
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