Blizzard unjustly removing my post (And unjust ban appeal)

Hey, I’ve made a post on the US forums a few hours ago, and it was first hidden, then removed by Blizzard for “Trolling”. Apparently, Blizzard is trying to silence me, censoring my attempts to simply just talk about, and share my experience regarding Blizzard Support refusing to investigate my ban appeal. I’ve copied the text because I was half-expecting the moderators to remove my post on a fabricated reason, so I’ll paste it here again:

Hey, I wanted to share my experience with Blizzard Support regarding my ban appeal.

Last week, my Battle.Net account was banned, and an e-mail confirmed that the reason for my ban was Hacking. I was really confused because I have never cheated once in any video game, let alone Overwatch. But I figured that it was probably a misunderstanding and that the ban would be lifted when I contacted Blizzard Support.

I was thinking about what could’ve possibly caused this, and after a while, I realized that I downloaded a software the previous day, that could’ve maybe caused a false positive. There is more info about the software in the screenshots, so in short:

I downloaded a software called UltFone Android System Repair to my PC because I needed to manually restart my phone. After this realization, I wrote another ticket to them as a response, detailing the situation, as well as offering my full cooperation, so I could prove my innocence.

After a bit, I got a very generic AI response, which said that this action has been taken in accordance with our Terms of Use and our In-game Policies, and linked me to their In-Game conduct page ([Preformatted text](https://eu.battle.net/support/en/article/42673)), which in short, only mentions that “You will get banned if you cheat”. And with that, my ticket was marked answered.

As the response did not help, nor even acknowledge what I was talking about, I decided to mark my ticket as opened, and I decided to write down the same things that I did the first time and ask directly to talk to an employee, instead of an AI.

After waiting 3 days, I finally got a response. In the response, the Blizzard employee quoted the AI almost word for word and decided that they refuse to look into my appeal, upholding the ban, without any type of investigation or cooperation.

After submitting another ticket with the same issue, it was merged with the previous one, where they said again that they are refusing to look into the appeal.

So after almost a week, Blizzard offered no help or cooperation in the matter whatsoever, and now are openly saying that they refuse to look into the matter or respond to it in a helpful or cooperative manner. I think the whole way Blizzard conducted this appeal was laughable and insulting as a customer, considering that I’ve been talking to them in a polite way, always saying that I’m fully willing to cooperate to prove that my ban was unjustified, possibly caused by a false positive.

I made this post in order to shed some light on how Blizzard Support treats ban appeals, as well as ask for your experiences. Has anyone ever dealt with something similar to this? Or maybe is there anyone who got banned, and got their ban lifted after contacting support?

Screenshots of the tickets can be found here: [Preformatted text](https://imgur.com/a/yxiArkb).

I’m hoping this forum post will gain some attraction, and perhaps other people who were unjustly banned, and then denied by Blizzard Support can share their stories. Thank you for reading my post!

As expected, I wasn’t given a reason on where my post can be considered “trolling”, it was just flagged, then deleted.

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You aren’t allowed to post about, or talk about bans (technically) so that will be why. Probably didn’t even get flagged.

There is also this, just to warn you…

Don’t post about locked or deleted threads.

There’s always a reason behind our moderators’ decisions. It’s up to you to read the forum Code of Conduct and these guidelines to determine what you did wrong, learn from your mistake, and attempt to post again without breaking any rules.

Regardless of whether it is justified or not, I was simply just talking about my experience with Blizzard Support. As expected, just like in Support, I didn’t get any help whatsoever from the moderators, nor any reason for why my post was deleted, I only got a message that is was removed for “Trolling”.

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Yep. After a certain someone spamming false reports. After contacting Blizzard support, they realised the actions they did were wrong. Very lazy automated system.

Hope you manage to get it all sorted.

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They will take down anything like that that mentions bans, suspensions, or direct contact with Blizzard.

I think it is silly, but it is in the forum rules sadly.

Thanks for your comment! I thought about submitting one over and over again until it stuck, but I was afraid that they would probably block or ban my account for daring to submit my appeal again, and I wanted to write a forum post about it to maybe raise some awareness (which was quickly censored by Blizzard).

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Maybe start with these as references, and go from there with a new post about it…

Hope it gets sorted.

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Thank you. I read the Code of Conduct before making my post, and read the “Spamming or Trolling” section, and I’m confident in saying that my post was none of the things listed below. That’s why I decided to come back to Forums, I pretty much have nothing to lose, and I think that more people should hear and know about what seems like a violation of rules from their side. If it happens to me, it could happen to literally anyone.

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I’d imagine, based on what you’ve said, that the post was taken down by mods for simply talking about being banned.

As your the “hacking” ban. The anti-cheat seems pretty ruthless, and any “third party” interference seems to trigger it. Hopefully they review it, but I wouldn’t expect much. Just keep sending tickets every few days and see what happens. What’s the worst they can do now…

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Very well said. Thank you for letting us know. It’s good to raise awareness for this kind of issue.

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Yeah, it likely detected a third-party software and detected it as a possible cheat software, and I got banned, unfortunate but it happens. I made the post because of how revolting the “help” was I got from Blizzard Support. It got deleted was pretty much the icing on the cake, as they provided no real reason for the removal of my post, other than a very vague buzzword “trolling”, which in my opinion has no justification.

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Blizzard Support is notorious for just stonewalling people. There defence will be a note in the Terms of Service that says they can remove access for any or no reason and don’t have to justify it.

That being said, there are a tiny tiny number of cases where they overturn things. So you can hope. In the mean time, time to start again (if you care enough to keep playing).

They won’t. Trolling is the buzz one some people use to flag as its the popular insult when someone disagrees with you. There are also groups that will flag things out of spite and pettiness. But I can’t imagine that would of happened to yours, I would imagine you got unlucky that a mod saw it.

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Well, I guess I’ll just wait if the mod(s) will provide a proper explanation for the removal of my post. In the meantime, hopefully more people will see the post. As for the Support, I’ll submit it over and over again until someone actually decides to help me. Thanks for the answers!

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You are not the first to have unjustifiebly been banned. I too got banned the same way a few months ago. Blizzard is a joke. They think that what they are doing is the right thing… but they simply dont care about you, they dont value you as a customer.

One could only hope that one day they change and unban the wrongfully and false positively banned but… until then i am not touching their stuff. (Except the forums :p)

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Sorry to hear this happened to you I hope you manage to get it resolved…

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Interesting side note, as someone claimed they were banned in game from mass false reporting.

It mentions in this article that this isn’t possible. If you’re reported once, or 9 times, it doesn’t matter, it’ll only count the first report. So any behaviour punishments in game come from a long run of poor or disruptive behaviour in multiple games. Confirming that you cannot be banned from false reports.

(Obviously not overly important to the op, but interesting none the less. OP, any up date on your yet??)

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Yeah, it seems pretty clear that they only care about you until you make them money.

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Just a heads up. I am on my eight appeal ticket right now. They turned every one of them down without even engaging with me or the message I sent them.
The support is either run by bots or employees that do not care about the customer. Pick your poison

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The support team is likely mostly compiled of out of office agent teams that have been instructed to reply to the tickets in a certain way.

It will likely take time before an actual in-house agent or a team supervisor has a look. And sadly that is your only hope. To send tickets until someone realizes that you keep coming back and decides to actually have a look.

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I’d say it’s mostly run by bots.

Regards,

Wolfebear

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