With all due respect, I’m paying a game subscription, which entitles me to proper servicing, I would like a bit more than a copy/paste response.
I have appealed these decisions in the past, guess what did it led to? a copy/paste response, just as seen before.
We’re all paying pretty decent amount of money to be playing this game, monthly, I think we are eligible to a set of rules and service, not necessarily for the paid sum, but cause we’re all human.
I would like to see a system which is verified, not just mass-reported and an action is instantly taken against it. And please don’t say that it is, cause it is so obviously not. You have muted a person who has never even once been salty in this game, and checking the chat logs would make that obvious. Appealing such bans or decisions will lead to nothing, I think you and I both know that.
And sorry, but closing that and probably this topic without resolving it is just disrespectful, especially for a customer who’s been with you for over a decade.
I can completele relate to this for people weaponize the system all the time for minor raise in tone for example and minor breaches in language can lead to harsher penalties and even perma ban, something which should never happen in a paid game for the lightest of offenses as a reasoning.
Reopening locked threads is against the forum rules.
The given answer is not a standard template so insulting them with a copy/pasted reply is just… Sigh.
A templated* response to maintain an uniform explanation across many similar inquiries on the same topic. These are generally:
Action upheld
Action overturned
Escalated for review (you can’t request this)
Action upheld, but reduced (e.g., account closure reduced to a 6 month suspension)
That you dislike the outcome does not make it a copy/paste as an investigation was done by a human and found you in violation of the rules.
If the action isn’t verified, no action will be taken. You won’t even notice it.
If this is true, there would be vigilante groups by now to counter report the so called “mafia” or botters or cheaters… So far there’s insufficient proof that this holds any merit. Why would it only work 1 way?
Finally they will not discuss your friends penalties with a 3rd party. If they think the penalty is in error they can appeal by themselves.
I’ll keep this thread open for a short time, if you want to reply to the following points. Please keep in mind that we’re not here to discuss what may or may not have happened to people that you know, or to review any suspension that you may have received in the past.
I’m not seeing any appeal on your account. You can find your ticket history here, if needed.
All players pay a subscription to access the games, and must follow the Code of Conduct. All players are also entitled to enjoy the game without the toxic behavior (or harassment) that some players may unfortunately display at times.
This person can appeal their suspension, if they believe that it was a mistake. Mistakes can happen, that’s why the appeal system is in place.
I would also ask that you refrain from using inappropriate analogies.
It was probably on my other account, not sure which account is this that I’m posting from right now, I have 3 in total. It’s not about that incident, I’m way past that, it’s more about in cleansing the system so that it cannot be abused in such ways.
I fully agree with this, but I also agree that if I don’t break the ToS or Code of Conduct, then neither I or anyone else should be punished, don’t you agree? Sadly the cases I described were all as such.
He has it pending for 1 or 2 days, sadly I think the message which he will receive will match what I have received months ago when I appealed my mute.
What I’m asking for is for these cases are reviewed profoundly, and a ban is not just emitted cause an N number of reports have been submitted against a player. I’m asking for a fair treatment, issuing perhaps a warning, not instant, automated action against certain reports, whether they’re mutes or bans.
Mistakes of course can happen, that’s why throughout reviews are required, as in development, as in reviewing reports of any kind.
If you’re going to open a thread, and then reopen a new one after the first has been locked, to argue that there is a systematic abuse of the reporting system, and that appeals don’t work, you should be able to provide details about your claims.
I’ve yet to see a single case proving that, from this exchange.
They are reviewed, when you make an appeal.
PS: Some actions (on the forums) were taken by mistake. These have been reverted. Apologies for the confusion.
I either must be extremely unlucky to know so many cases, or you must be correct.
I feel like I have already described two cases extremely vividly, but I can of course give you more details about either of them, or even other ones, just please tell me what it is that you’re interested in. Should I provide concrete ticket IDs for these appeals?
Also, would like to point it out that you admitted that these decisions are automized, so unless us players create an appeal against them, the ban or restriction will persist.
What is the guarantee that the appeals are not automized as such?
Shouldn’t the ones reporting someone have proof of them actually breaking the rules, rather than automatically banning someone and then they have to prove in an impossible manner that they haven’t broke any rules?
e.g. how can i prove that I haven’t cheated if I get banned for it? I do not have a snapshot of the running software at the time of the ban, and even if I would have, it wouldn’t really prove anything.
Mass reporting abuse and automated punishments are still a major issue, and it’s incredibly frustrating to see Blizzard keep brushing it under the rug.
We’ve been dealing with the exact same problem in the 20–29 PvP twinking bracket, where legitimate players are getting silenced or actioned just because a group of “free to play” - players decides to mass report lvl 29s (that are actually paying for the game), just to get them out of the bgs.
It’s completely broken, and what’s worse is that we’ve submitted hundreds of tickets and many forum posts about it and yet here we still are with nothing changed. No transparency, no fixes, just the same robotic responses you’ve described.
Not to mention the worse of the worst, almost as soon as we made posts about it, it was immediately was taken down again without any warnings given to the “free to play” players or even feedback to us, as victims.
It’s pretty disheartening, especially when some of us have been loyal players for over a decade and are paying monthly / yearly for a service that feels more automated than human. Blizzard needs to acknowledge that the reporting system is being abused and actually take real action, not just copy/paste damage control.
You’re definitely not alone in this, and more players need to speak up, because clearly, tickets alone aren’t enough anymore.
Biggest respect from me and the others’ in the 29s community.
A recent case-cusation of “mass report abuse” was disproved here again though. It even took them 4 bans to reach the current permanent ban for such a player.
With the accused player claiming that he got targeted due being discriminated being on a specific realm. None of it was true.
It’s pretty much addressed daily on the US CS forums. On the EU side generally Blizzard does not discuss bans, there’s some minor leeway for archiving purposes on the US side.
Forgot to mention, that we have also collected hundreds on screenshots + videos. All sent into tickets. Yet no useful response or action made. Still pretty scary…
We need more game admins and devs looking into EU situations, not only US / CS
Sorry for missing to reply to your posts.
Reason for me reopening this was cause I didn’t feel it solved at all in short.
I’m glad it’s not so spread that you haven’t noticed it yet, but sadly I’ve seen multiple reddit threads about this, and I know several current guild members whom have been banned in such a manner (I posted about this in our discord and 2 members shared their story, but just this year I must’ve heard above 10 already, which is kind of scary).
One of them also shared all the logs with me, tens of tickets replied to with template messages as you previously mentioned, took him over 40 tickets and he managed to get his perma ban down to a 6 months ban (out of this 40, haven’t counted, but would say that around half were ignored, not even replied to). Now, imagine yourself in his shoes: being permabanned for upsetting someone. This guy is a 99.9 parser guy, a really good player, if he says he’s not botting or cheating, I do believe him - but, a handful of people decided to mass-report him, and he got permabanned. Now, how can he prove that he wasn’t cheating? And that my friend is my point here.
Unsure whether you play on US or EU, I play on EU, and the boosting mafia here is a real thing to deal with, they will literally harass you and threaten you.
I don’t know where I’ve admitted that, because that would be incorrect. What I’ve said is that unless you appeal, a suspension wouldn’t be overturned (unless the person applying it sees their mistake, and cancels the suspension themselves, which can and has happened in the past).
They already do. When you report someone, be it on the forums, or in-game, moderators and game masters can literally see what you’ve said. We keep logs of what you say in-game.
You indeed can’t prove a negative, nor do we expect you to.
If you appeal a suspension, we’ll check if the proofs that we have is valid for a suspension, or if a mistake was made, in which case the suspension can either be shortened, or overturned completely.
I’m not seeing a single ticket on your account about having received a penalty for this issue, nor do I see a single appeal.
If you’d like to report what you believe to be an organized group of players, trying to kick legitimate players from Battlegrounds, you can send an email to hacks@blizzard.com with the details that you have. Opening a ticket about this is not the way to go I’m afraid, and game masters won’t be able to accept these reports.
You’ve never had a post taken down on these forums.
In-game screenshots or videos could be useful to find something (which we could then confirm on our side) but we generally don’t accept them as proof of anything. As Brainmanager mention, it is way too easy to manipulate these, and we don’t accept them.
As for things that happen outside of our games, we wouldn’t intervene on them to begin with, screenshot or not. If you’re being harassed or reported on Discord (or any other platform), you would need to contact Discord’s support, and not ours (even if that Discord server is about one of our games).
