Mass Bans on Friday and the Return of Keygate

We hope you guys weren’t hoping for a quiet weekend in the Neverwinterverse, because it seems to be quite the opposite! Yesterday Community Manager Julia announced massive account bans on the official forum after several threads from players asked for a clarification of what they felt were unjustified actions. Those threads have been removed, but as always discussion continues on our message board. Quite a few players came in stating that they had done nothing wrong, yet were hit with botting accusations. In one case even a player that allegedly hadn’t logged in for about two months was banned.

False positives again?

It’s only natural that offenders try to downplay their actions after being banned, and most bans are probably correct, but unfortunately Cryptic has a track record of hitting innocents. The amount of reports could indicate we might be dealing with some false positives in this mess again. It’s especially annoying since the devs purposefully carry out bans on Fridays to avoid the backlash during the week and let things cool off over the weekend. For legit players that got accidentally hit it’s a major pain because support isn’t working on Saturdays and Sundays. This means they can probably expect an answer not before Monday. At this point we are still crawling through reports and can’t really tell to which extent faulty bans have been handed out.

How to contact support

All you can do however is bring the matter to support with a calm manner, even if the action is indeed outrageous. Go to this page and submit your request. Since you can no longer login, support will ask for extra credentials to make sure you’re the account holder. We have prepared a template below that you can use by filling in the necessary info. You might not be able to answer all questions, but be as thorough as possible. This should speed up the process. It’s also very important to insist that they forward the request and manually look into the account. Support itself does not verify anything and will just report back the ban and reason that’s in the system.

[su_box title=”Example Support Request” radius=”0″]Account/Forum Name:
Full Name (First, Last):
Billing Address, including zip or postal code:
Last 4 digits of CC numbers:
Account’s Registered Email Address:
Date of Birth:
Date the Account was created:
City the Account was created:
The name of the ISP at the time the Account was created:
Country:
Any product key associated with the account:
Any game time card key associated with the account:
Any credit card transaction ID:
Any PayPal transaction ID:
Current IP address: (if you don’t know this, just send what https://api.ipify.org/ shows you)

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

I’ve been hit with a ban/suspension yesterday, but am among those that wrongly got hit because of a misinterpretation of the underlying data. Please instantly launch a manual account investigation and get back to me as soon as possible. Do not reply with a standard response that states the ban duration and reason, just forward my request to someone who can properly deal with it.

Thanks in advance![/su_box]

In many cases you are probably still getting a standard response though. In that case just say that you appreciate the response, but that they’ve answered none of your questions and calmly repeat your request. It might also help to ask for the actions that they classified as botting. If you can give them alternative, non-botting related, explanations for the stuff, you should get the account back. Unfortunately the burden of proof is completely on the user, which is pretty totalitarian.

Make your voice heard

Again: The official customer support is the only one that can deal with the issue. But you can voice your displeasure and concerns by privately messaging the members of the community team. Even if you got banned on Arcgames, you might still be logged into the forum and can message people there.

[su_table]

Twitter Arcgames Reddit
StrumSlinger (CM)  StrumSlinger  strumslinger
nitocris83 (CM)  Julia  nitocris83
akaamandakane (CM)  akaamandakane
Teddy (Mod)  HLG_Teddy HLGTeddy
ambi (Mod)  ambisinisterr
kreatyve (Mod)  kreatyve  ManicGypsy
tripsofthrymr (Mod)  tripsofthrymr
zebular (Mod)  zebular

[/su_table]

The return of Keygate

Some players speculated whether this ban wave could have something to do with Keygate. Since a patch or two the “decline” option of dungeon chests is back in some cases, and keys are indeed not getting consumed again. We tracked the earliest reports of this back to May 5th. Although declining chests can technically be classified as exploiting, we don’t think think this ban wave is about this issue. Even though players currently get the best of both worlds (more and better drops, decline option), we consider the possibility of sanctions to be pretty low. Also the reasoning sent out to players is “botting”, although the devs sometimes simply use that as generic statement.


Have you been hit by the ban wave or heard from others? Share your experiences and knowledge in the comments below or visit the corresponding thread on our message board.

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12 thoughts on “Mass Bans on Friday and the Return of Keygate

  • May 13, 2017 at 9:41 am
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    You forgot to include the address of the better business bureau (bbb) in the event CS blows you off or does not respond. Bbb.org. Take the time and file a complaint to be heard folks!! Don’t tolerate poor business practice!! The more that speak up the better

  • May 13, 2017 at 8:40 pm
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    I’m sure that developers never give ban for nothing. Many players were using bots or were buying AD from different sites (i know this as player). And ofcause all of them are crying now that they did nothing but it isn’t.

    I agree that some players may get ban really for nothing but it is particular cases. These players should write to support not on forums. Only support will really help them.

    • May 14, 2017 at 1:52 am
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      I can’t understand. If the developers -never- give ban for nothing why are you saying that some players get ban for nothing? They give ban for nothing or not?
      Anyway… If lots of people are always correct and simply play their game and suddenly they find their account banned with an accusation but with no explanation… Well, this is an incorrect behavior. If they, in the first place, wrote on their forums that maybe there can be some mistakes in their bans and they are sorry for it and they will provide as soon as possible (and not “We ban on Friday so people don’t bother us for two days, who cares about “innocents”) it will be a better way. Hitting an innocent it’s one of the worst conduct, in my opinion, so they can not think that people are not very bothered

  • May 13, 2017 at 10:20 pm
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    I personally encountered with the option to decline the chest at POM, also I realized if u run 2 skirmishes (in my case I always run master of the hunt) you aren’t getting the ad bonus chest just give 350 like the run was the 3rd one, I haven’t run different skirmishes yet, but Sunday gonna check I will let you know

  • May 13, 2017 at 10:23 pm
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    This particular case they sent out emails about permanent bans (supposedly they are not) for active botting (supposedly there are actually 3-4 different things, only one of which is active botting). Horrible CS as usual. At least one of the supposed infractions is definitely non IMHO banworthy- it’s something they should fix or at least tell people not to do… It’s so frustrating when they do this stuff and then delete everything and try to hide it 🙁

  • May 14, 2017 at 12:13 am
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    you would sound a lot more believable if your guild didnt have botscript on its forum 😉

    • May 14, 2017 at 7:03 pm
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      “Your guild posted botscript on its forum, therefore PWE can do no wrong”

      Oooookay…

    • May 15, 2017 at 1:27 am
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      Owned!

  • May 14, 2017 at 8:44 am
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    To say support or devs do not make mistakes is simply mornic. I have seen a few games fall to the wayside over improper bans made by false positives due to a script designed to detect bots which caught only legit players. I had to sue a large gaming company over a false positive and actually won 10 thousand dollars , plus all court cost and fees. Whenever they make a bot detect script they fail miserably and have to continuously revise it over and over until it finally works , expect more of these false positives.

  • May 15, 2017 at 2:14 am
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    One of my guildies got hit by it too, my guild has no botscript on it’s page.
    The guy is a longtime member, he is against botting in general – so if I’m wrong and he did use bots I’m gonna eat my [Blood Lord’s Visage]
    My initial suspicion was that when they accidentally changed the proffession vendor to not to sell batches – so you had to buy resources one by one, and repeated trading with the vendor might made the bot detection scripts excited.

  • May 16, 2017 at 7:08 pm
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    You repeatedly abuse the report spam system to have players silenced for 24 hours. Then you get banned. What did you think? You were invisible? Did you think they don’t log that?

  • May 21, 2017 at 3:41 am
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    On May 12th, from here I got a blockade to my account I play this game 4 years in the guild I am COME IN PEACE for 2 years ARC responses are template and the same for botting will not unlock my account from what ever the bot does I used to play honestly in this game, following the rules of the game imposed by ARC I wrote many times over 20 emails I sent to the ARC and asking politely to unlock my account constantly write off denying we are sorry but we will not unlock your account because the analysis showed that you use the bot, To reply to explain what they claim to use the bot nothing reply and only the ready-made replies are sent, that I can spend 24 hours a day even more denying myself to have a heppy figure and thus blocking my account as well as other players Free sincerely nothing what to do and where to turn for help only langobalt gave me the link here i was already enough to buy Erupted to let go

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