False Banned for 40 Days -- EAC should NOT be allowed to publicly ban people on steam.

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happy happy sunshine jerry 18 Jun @ 12:14am

False Banned for 40 Days -- EAC should NOT be allowed to publicly ban people on steam.

In summary:
I was dealt a false ban by EAC. This ban was proven false, and removed this morning after a very long and troubling process.

My experience in appealing this ban (Which placed an extremely visible and defaming mark on the front of my profile) is a serious red flag about the integrity of the EAC system. I hope you can read my story and raise this flag internally. To any valve employee reading this, The previous ticket is a good place to start (HT-F3FD-H8HP-QPPP)

I was banned for over 30 days. I submitted three separate appeals through the official Epic/EAC channels, each denied. The appeals button had completely vanished. I had run out of appeals completely. There was no hope my ban being removed. By all accounts my ban was "permanent" but I knew that I had done nothing wrong -- and I am stubborn.

I spent weeks emailing EAC support. Developer Support. Steam Support. Dead end.

I spent 30 days posting my story constantly in every social channel I could find -- every time getting verbally berated by the "vocal" gaming community. I have some pretty thick skin, but I would be lying if I said that people calling me a cheater (and much worse) every day and laughing in my face while I tried to bring attention to injustice wasn't at least a little degrading as far as product support goes.

What’s most concerning is that my situation was only resolved because of a low level community moderator that happened to notice me commenting daily, non stop, everywhere... and elevated it my case manually. Without that, I would still be banned. That should not be how the system works.

I fully understand and support the need for strong anticheat enforcement, but the EAC appeals process is not real. Its completely fabricated. My appeals were all denied. I was innocent -- yet I had products removed from my account and a mark placed on my profile. If I was less lucky, I would have been forgotten. In my opinion, this is unacceptable considering the severity of the consequences. A public ban flag on your profile can get you removed from play in unrelated games simply for being marked as a "cheater". EAC Should not be trusted with this power.

This isn’t about my case anymore. This is about how broken the EAC review and appeal process is for the rare, legitimate false positives. I’ve now spoken with a few other players who describe similar timelines. Again I can’t verify their claims, but it suggests that I’m not a complete anomaly.

I think Steam needs to reconsider what sorts of public marks are allowed to be imposed by EAC -- because its quite obvious to me that its a broken program with very little in the way of support for people in my situation.

I’m grateful my case had a good resolution but as developer who cares about the steam ecosystem and the experiences of all players I can't let my story go unheard. I figured I would send this in hopes it could maybe bring light to the issue and get a conversation going.

Happy to provide any other info or answer any questions about my situation.

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Showing 1-15 of 67 comments

fluxtorrent 18 Jun @ 12:17am

no system is designed for edge cases

Mad Scientist 18 Jun @ 12:21am

False positives - or bad ban waves - tend to be removed in weeks automatically regardless of how vocal a person gets. Typically that can be caused by specific types of software or macro-capable devices typically associated with cheating paired with suspicious activity.

Vac is public facing, game bans are public facing. They're allowed to do what they're designed to do.

Last edited by Mad Scientist; 18 Jun @ 12:21am

datCookie 18 Jun @ 12:21am

It's unfortunate that you were banned, apparently falsely so and had a lot of struggles in getting it overturned. But also glad you got there in the end.

Having said that, there's really not a lot Valve can do about this, least of all in regards to game bans showing on profiles. I don't believe it would be right for them to make exceptions to one system above others, regardless of your experience(s) with it.

For anything to be done, an issue like yours would have to be widespread, affecting thousands and thousands of users, which it historically isn't and isn't really going to in the future.

I would also count yourself lucky you didn't net a forum ban for posting about this issue everywhere you could, as most would usually consider that to be spam, regardless of if what you're saying is true or not.

Fierman 18 Jun @ 1:03am

Log off boomer

Mountain Months 18 Jun @ 1:23am

falsely unbanned more like

MancSoulja 18 Jun @ 1:29am

Crazy how the people who spend the majority of their free time screaming about "Muh rights" still side with EAC on this,

it's almost as if they're completely ignorant to the cause they're representing and they're just doing it as a desperate cry for attention.

Well done for sticking to your guns, don't stop now you have exposed the fact that EACs appeal system is a complete fabrication, As part of our purchases we are paying for a robust support system that EAC isn't offering, so they need to offer it or give us our money back.

Last edited by MancSoulja; 18 Jun @ 1:29am

Elucidator 18 Jun @ 1:45am

Don't play games that employ Easy Anti-Cheat or a similar dehumanizing system.

People who are 'punished' have the most reason to retaliate against a system; if anything, dehumanization can make things worse. More obviously, EAC are under the assumption people will cheat again (like robots), and don't change. This in itself is dehumanizing.

Your case was probably taken due to possible reputational damage. As you said, someone shouldn't be needing to go public about an incident every day just to appeal to some power hungry automated system users that would otherwise treat you less than an average customer; it's wrong. The best way to solve it is by not giving companies with an abusive system money.

People don't like denuvo DRM either, the easiest way to deal with it is by not buying denuvo games. Similarly, you can choose to not buy EAC games.

EAC applies a gameban; Epic decides on what games you can play with such status on your profile, not Steam. Valve doesn't care. Also, no community member really cares about a cheat status; they only care about whether thay actually cheat in game or not; more specifically, if they do so with an online game they themselves are involved with. Don't worry about 'reputation'.

Last edited by Elucidator; 18 Jun @ 1:46am

я 18 Jun @ 1:51am

multiplayer games have anti-cheat software, get over it or go play singleplayer games.

happy happy sunshine jerry 18 Jun @ 1:53am

Originally posted by datCookie:
It's unfortunate that you were banned, apparently falsely so and had a lot of struggles in getting it overturned. But also glad you got there in the end.

Having said that, there's really not a lot Valve can do about this, least of all in regards to game bans showing on profiles. I don't believe it would be right for them to make exceptions to one system above others, regardless of your experience(s) with it.

For anything to be done, an issue like yours would have to be widespread, affecting thousands and thousands of users, which it historically isn't and isn't really going to in the future.

I would also count yourself lucky you didn't net a forum ban for posting about this issue everywhere you could, as most would usually consider that to be spam, regardless of if what you're saying is true or not.

What do you mean there isn't a lot valve can do about this?

Im not suggesting valve not allow EAC to function. The issue here isn't getting banned in a game.

The issue is the Steam Platform allowing a SEVERE ACCOUNT ACTION (Cheater banner on the top of a public profile -- this can impact other unrelated games etc) to be taken by a 3rd party that has an obviously broken appeals system. I literally would have been publicly marked as a CHEATER forever if I didn't get lucky.
Valve owns steam. Valve has the power to review VACs and put that flag on a profile. EAC doesnt review ♥♥♥♥. Its broken. They shouldnt have that same power. The EAC ban shouldn't have that weight over your account.

happy happy sunshine jerry 18 Jun @ 1:54am

Originally posted by я:
multiplayer games have anti-cheat software, get over it or go play singleplayer games.

For somebody who wastes their time reading steam discussion threads, you're not very good at reading comprehension. Im not against anticheat.

#10

happy happy sunshine jerry 18 Jun @ 1:55am

Originally posted by Elucidator:
Don't play games that employ Easy Anti-Cheat or a similar dehumanizing system.

People who are 'punished' have the most reason to retaliate against a system; if anything, dehumanization can make things worse. More obviously, EAC are under the assumption people will cheat again (like robots), and don't change. This in itself is dehumanizing.

Your case was probably taken due to possible reputational damage. As you said, someone shouldn't be needing to go public about an incident every day just to appeal to some power hungry automated system users that would otherwise treat you less than an average customer; it's wrong. The best way to solve it is by not giving companies with an abusive system money.

People don't like denuvo DRM either, the easiest way to deal with it is by not buying denuvo games. Similarly, you can choose to not buy EAC games.

EAC applies a gameban; Epic decides on what games you can play with such status on your profile, not Steam. Valve doesn't care. Also, no community member really cares about a cheat status; they only care about whether thay actually cheat in game or not; more specifically, if they do so with an online game they themselves are involved with. Don't worry about 'reputation'.

This is the answer, and in the future I will never purchase a game that uses EAC.

#11

Mad Scientist 18 Jun @ 1:57am

Originally posted by Positive+Helpful Jerry:
Originally posted by datCookie:
It's unfortunate that you were banned, apparently falsely so and had a lot of struggles in getting it overturned. But also glad you got there in the end.

Having said that, there's really not a lot Valve can do about this, least of all in regards to game bans showing on profiles. I don't believe it would be right for them to make exceptions to one system above others, regardless of your experience(s) with it.

For anything to be done, an issue like yours would have to be widespread, affecting thousands and thousands of users, which it historically isn't and isn't really going to in the future.

I would also count yourself lucky you didn't net a forum ban for posting about this issue everywhere you could, as most would usually consider that to be spam, regardless of if what you're saying is true or not.

What do you mean there isn't a lot valve can do about this?

Im not suggesting valve not allow EAC to function. The issue here isn't getting banned in a game.

The issue is the Steam Platform allowing a SEVERE ACCOUNT ACTION (Cheater banner on the top of a public profile -- this can impact other unrelated games etc) to be taken by a 3rd party that has an obviously broken appeals system. I literally would have been publicly marked as a CHEATER forever if I didn't get lucky.
Valve owns steam. Valve has the power to review VACs and put that flag on a profile. EAC doesnt review ♥♥♥♥. Its broken. They shouldnt have that same power. The EAC ban shouldn't have that weight over your account.

If EAC didn't have reviews, false ban waves /false positives wouldn't be removed. They are rare but it sometimes happens.

Its not "severe", a 1 was set back to a 0. Problem solved.

#12

happy happy sunshine jerry 18 Jun @ 1:58am

Originally posted by fluxtorrent:
no system is designed for edge cases

Genius

#13

pckirk 18 Jun @ 5:37am

There are no valve / steam employees or staff, server techs, steam support, or moderators in the 2 steam related sub-forums. No one in this USER only sub-forum can help you.

#14

Ben Lubar 18 Jun @ 6:08am

What caused the false positive? Out of curiosity.

Since I didn't hear any news story about EAC banning millions of people, there must have been something unique to your computer that caused this, right?

#15

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Date Posted: 18 Jun @ 12:14am

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