For the record, I've been playing Apex since the end of Season 3 and have a few thousand hours on Origin/EA Play.

EA has absolutely ruined this game and they deserve the negative reputation they have earned themselves. My account was banned twice (both instances falsely) and I had to fight for my account back both times. It left a sour taste in my mouth and I'm done spending money on EA products. What a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke.


Hello,

We want to notify you that we have found your EA Account to be in violation of our Rules of Conduct.

While reviewing your account, we identified the following violation:

Apex Legends - Hateful Conduct: "did you wanna go catalyst?"

Since this is a serious violation, we are suspending your account for 168 hours (one week), effective immediately.

At this point, your risk of an account ban is high, so we would ask you to reconsider your behavior if you want to continue playing on your account.

If you think we sent this to you by mistake, let us know: https://help.ea.com/en/help/account/information-about-banned-or-suspended-accounts/

Thank you,
EA Terms of Service
Case Number : 127312275

I reached out to EA support for help with this as I thought their word filter must have been confused and that it was an honest mistake but I received this email shortly after reaching out:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us regarding the action that was taken on your account.

The action pertains to the following violation:
Hateful Conduct
did you wanna go catalyst?

After thoroughly investigating your account and concern, we found that your account was actioned correctly and will not remove this sanction from your account.

Thank you,
EA Terms of Service

At this point I was livid. I reached out a few more times and finally got a hold of someone who could help and I was unbanned after not being able to play for 3 days. They didn't compensate me or even apologise for the ban except that it would not happen again. *fore-shadowing*

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us regarding the action that was taken on your account.

Your concern led to a full investigation of your account. After reviewing your case, we found your concerns valid and justified. We will make sure to prevent this in the future.

We appreciate your help and understanding in this matter.

Thank you,
EA Terms of Service

Hello,

We noticed that your EA account broke EA’s gameplay rules.

Because your account was cheating, we’ve permanently blocked your access to Apex Legends’ online features.

When we talk about cheating,
We mean things like using external tools, performing in-game exploits, or abusing glitches or bugs. • use software that interferes with or disrupts an EA Service or another user’s account. • use undocumented features, exploits or cheats in-game that disrupts an EA Service or another user’s account. • use software or cheats that disconnects other users from the EA servers.
Your account will no longer be able to access Apex Legends.

Thank you,
EA Terms of Service

What? Why was I getting this email? I hadn't even played the game lately so why was I now permanently banned from Apex? I'm sure your first guess is my account was hacked into. I suspected the same thing too and reached out to EA to confirm the recent logins to my account but the agent I spoke with confirmed that there were no login attempts outside of my regular location. So what now? I reached out to EA to explain that it was a false positive and that I had not cheated in their game.

Hello,

Thanks for contacting us about your account action.

We got your note and did a full investigation of your account. After reviewing your case, we determined that we took the correct action in accordance with EA policies and procedures.

What this means

We have confirmed that your account was involved in cheating. Because of this, we will not remove the sanction on your account.

Thank you,
EA Terms of Service

Ok..they did a full investigation last time too and were wrong then. I reached out once more unsure what to do or where to go from here:

Hello,

We have received your most recent correspondence expressing concerns about the action that was taken on your account.

After thoroughly investigating your account and concern, we again found that we actioned your account correctly after it was found to have violated our User Agreement. We will also be unable to provide any details regarding our internal procedures.

Due to this violation, we will not remove the sanction that was applied to your account.

After completing two full investigations into your complaint, we consider this matter closed.

Thank you,
EA Terms of Service

Uhh, "After completing two full investigations into your complaint, we consider this matter closed."? Lol, excuse me? I was fed up at this point and reached out a few more times but always received this email:

Hello,

We received your latest message regarding the action taken on your account. We have performed all investigations possible on this issue and will not reverse the decision.

Please do not expect further responses on this matter.

Thank you,
EA Terms of Service

At this point I was in tears. I was now banned from the game I had once loved to play with no proof that I had cheated other than them telling me there was proof. I didn't know what to do. I had reached out to a few industry contacts I have from making games myself but no one had contacts at EA or Respawn. I felt defeated and didn't know what to do but I eventually found out one of the security devs had a discord and I figured what would I lose at this point? I joined his discord and pleaded in one of their chats with a moderator and we started talking in DMs. This mod, whos name I will not disclose, said they would reach out to someone on the dev team and see if they could personally look into it and long behold it was a false positive this entire time. My apex ban was lifted within 15 minutes of reaching out to this person who didn't even work at EA or Respawn. I'm very thankful this person helped get my account looked at and if you're reading this thank you again.

Unfortunately, this entire experience left such a sour taste in my mouth I was done. I haven't really touched the game since my perma-ban was lifted and I ended up scrapping a bunch of apex cosplay projects I was working on. I was going through a lot of trauma around the same time IRL and this stacked on top was too much and I can't play this game anymore out of the fear of being banned for no reason and not being able to get help.

Please feel free to ask any questions in the comments on this review. I'll happily answer any questions you may have from this. Please do not spend money on EA products or this excuse of a game.
~Mavis (Valkyrie)