UPDATEThey just responded to his ticket. Now they’ve changed their reason for the ban a THIRD TIME. Now they say it is because ‘Commerce Lock’ dealing with exploits/unfair play. The previous ‘Code of Conduct’ was for toxic behavior. This is just getting ridiculous.
For the devs:
US West Mari - Evoeazzy
Please note I am posting on behalf of my friend who cannot post because of his in game ban.
So yesterday my friend got a notification from Steam that his account was banned. He has been playing since release and purchased founder’s packs. He also purchased royal crystals in follow up transactions.
When he contacted live support, they asked how many founder’s packs he purchased and whether he had refunded my purchases. He told them that he hadn’t and the representative confirmed. He then appealed the case and the admins reviewed it.
Today, he woke up and the ban all of a sudden updated and now says ‘Code of Conduct’ ban. The appeal reviewers sent a response about how he broke code of conduct and sent the same copy+paste response that many other forum users and redditors seem to have gotten. It is a bit fishy to me because all of a sudden his case has gone from a ban regarding founder’s pack refunds (which isn’t the case) to a ‘Code of Conduct’ ban. I know that it is hard to put forth all the facts around the matter but he can say with a level certainty that it is not the case. He even requested info on any offenses from the appealers to see if they can show proof.
The reason why I am adding to the many forum posts about being banned is because of the sudden reversal of the reason for the ban. I am hoping that this is a mistake and they lift the ban on my friend. Mainly I just wanted to give people visibility to a situation that might be similar to theirs and to hopefully get the moderators eyes on my situation.
TLDR; Friend got banned for Founder’s pack refund (which he never refunded) and it all of a sudden changed the next day to ‘Code of Conduct’
A similar issue has also happened to one of my guild mates.
What I am most concerned about is that people are being flagged for something resulting in a ban.
Many have been posting evidence to support their claim of being mistakenly banned, however, support seems to respond with a blanket statement and not reversing course.
My long term concern is after investing time and money into the game, how will the lack of customer support in resolving these issues have on the player base?
I like the game, but my willingness to progress and spend further is reduced, simply from observing these issues that are arising from players and the lack of support from customer service in trying to resolve this.
If an individual shows that they did not refund any packs and the response from Amazon is that it is with merit, what additional steps can be taken?
I feel for my guild mate and the others that have posted on here.
I mean that is pretty fucked up to just change the reason like that. At the very least post some examples. I pray that the ban is not permanent, as there is really nothing I can think of that would warrant a permanent ban for a first offense. I agree that proof should definitely be sent to the person in question so he can see what he did (if he did anything) and not repeat that behavior in the future.
I say this for any cases similar to this in the future. Please resolve it ASAP, as missing days of materials is awful.
A friend of mine also ran into the same issue and supports refused to be specific about their reason nor provide any proof for banning his account. We’re a group of good friends that have been playing games for many years together and this made us very upset and disappointed at how Amazon Game Studio handling issues like this.
Amazon, if you’re going to ban an account permanently, please be specific and give them proof of what they did wrong. If someone can report anyone for bad behavior without any proof, imagine how many accounts you’re going to wrongfully ban. I meant when an issue is being escalated for reviews, supports should be able to provide all proofs of wrongfully things they did instead of a general copy/paste responses then close the case.
Thanks guys for chiming in. Just updated my original post and provided an update. They changed their reason for a third time now. They say it is because ‘Code of Conduct’ dealing with exploits/unfair play. The previous ‘Code of Conduct’ was for toxic behavior.
We need real people working and looking into cases/issues like this. All the responses seems like they came from Alexa! I hope Amazon understand that by wrongfully banned an account after they have invested so much time, efforts and money into it just flat out wrong.
If I have a lawyer friend, this could be a good case! The pain and suffering and mentally stress for being unable to play because I was wrongfully accused and banned.
Amazon, get your shit straight. There are many issues at the moment that is not player’s fault. If this continues and no assistance is provided, I’m pretty sure that will discourage many from spending further in this game. Given how much your friend spent in such a short amount of time, it would be foolish for customer support (if any) to not have this immediately escalated and resolved.
While I support people who were banned for getting a refund PRIOR to the game’s release, the code of conduct is very tricky. You should really look over the code of conduct carefully and realize if you watch area chat for about five minutes, you’ll see a violation.
Trollling? Violation. Telling someone they are a jerk? Violation. Trying to get around the bad word filter with clever mispellings? Violation. Talking about anything outside the game (war, politics, religion, virus, etc.)? Violation.
Now, you might think it’s adults talking to each other, it’s supposed to be a mature game, etc. Doesn’t matter according to the code of conduct. Reporting is also easy. You click the name, report, abuse language, and quote what they said. Done. You’d be amazed at how many people can be reported daily for Code of Conduct violations, and I suspect the people talking in area chat have no idea they’ve violated the Code of Conduct because they’ve talked like that in global or area chat in other games for decades without issue.
Mer personally, I loved to troll with the “WoW was the first MMO” kind of stuff. Can’t do it here. Yet I see every five minutes or so people telling others to suck a part of their body, or commenting on someone’s mother, or whatever. They think it’s funny chat. It’s a ban is what it is. Then they get a code of conduct ban and are dumbfounded as to what it could have been because what they are accustomed to doing in chat isn’t allowed here.
I do agree. But it doesn’t make sense to me to specify the founders pack as the reason, then CoC, then cheating. To me personally that is just poor customer service.
If he did all 3, include all 3 as the reason. Not one at a time. It’s as if they are beating around the bush for no reason.
Since I’m familiar with AGS from another game, I would chalk it up to incompetence or completely overwhelmed, or some combination of the two. I had problems with an item in the other AGS game, and tried to contact customer service about it and found out just how out of touch and useless it can be. I eventually gave up and moved on from the issue. I can only imagine trying to get a ban resolved.
I think it’s absolutely absurd that when banning a player the game can’t even keep up their reasoning and maintain it. First it’s because this person refunded a founder pack, then they change the reason to not following the code of conduct. Within a month you can see this person spent actual money and there’s no refund shown on the transactions so how could it be because they refunded their founders pack. If this person also didn’t follow the code of conduct why was there no warning and no actual player specific reasoning? It’s completely unfair to ban someone with no actual reasoning behind the ban especially with no warning. Devs need to get it together and realize they’re banning the wrong people and not the people who are actually deserving of a ban.
Remember the duplicate founder packs at launch, and how smilegate was looking into punishing those players or removing their contents? Could this series of bans be related?
There was never mention of any punishment just that they would revoke the items. I don’t know if they actually did as we never got any further updates.
I used to work tech support/customer service in the email division. There ARE canned responses to common problems. I mean why write the same thing twice? The problem is you are suppose to personalize those, and fill in the blanks with relevant details. TBH does this game even have the infrastructure up and running to properly deal with these complaints? No idea. The people doing these emails most likely don’t have access to the things you are asking for. It is sad to see this ban on someone in a group of friends playing, really ruins the experience for all of you. I hope they make it right, whatever that ends up being.
Their ban appeal/ customer service is pointless. They basically just copy and paste responds and don’t even have the power to get you unban. They dont read your claim, when you ask for an explanation you get an email saying the last agent has already given too much information. Best to stay out of in game chat, have a PG-13 name and hopefully no one reports you so their auto ban system doesn’t get triggered. Speaking from personal experience
How can you guys go and random ban people like this when you can’t handle the problem of the spam and the bots? It is getting really scary to keep investing time and money on this game when is handled this poorly.
I really wish we had some update that they are handling this case and other cases like it. Commerce Lock Ban - Permanent I posted on here and so have 400+ people who are experiencing the same issue.
They locked that thread, seems a bit premature as those people aren’t appealing legitimate bans but what appears to be bad coding and/or decision making.
They are being banned for canceling preorders and then buying different packs or the same one. Its even worse for the people just buying founders items from the marketplace and being banned for it.
600+ people so far - sounds like class action lawsuit time. This happened to my friend who probably dropped $500 on the game since release. They claim he charged back on his CC, but he can easily prove that he didn’t. They don’t seem to care.
He did however buy the packs, cancel them when he thought he wasn’t going to play then bought them all again. (before game even launched).
