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A 2-year legal battle with Activision to overturn a false permanent ban. Activision showed up with zero evidence of cheating and lost: https://antiblizzard.win/

A 2-year legal battle with Activision to overturn a false permanent ban. Activision showed up with zero evidence of cheating and lost: https://antiblizzard.win/2025/01/18/my-two-year-fight-against-activisions-false-cod-ban-unbanned/ https://antiblizzard.win/2025/01/18/my-two-year-fight-agains...

b3lvedere 2y ago
Holy ….. what a fight you had to do. So glad i hardly play any mulitiplayer shooter games. I’d hate to have my insane Steam library stripped away from me.
- minihat 2y ago
  His steam library was not restricted, just the game in which he was accused/banned.
  - cwillu 2y ago
    And his account was publicly flagged as being a known cheater, which affected other games: https://antiblizzard.win/2025/01/18/my-two-year-fight-against-activisions-false-cod-ban-unbanned/#:~:text=to%20an%20end.-,Why%20bother%3F,-To%20me%20this https://antiblizzard.win/2025/01/18/my-two-year-fight-agains...
  - b3lvedere 2y ago
    Apologies. I stand corrected. Thank you for this insight.
buzer 2y ago
> This ban also ruined other games for me. If I ever did well in a game, someone would look at my profile to see how many hours I have and instantly see the red marker that shows “I am a cheater”. I wonder if that label can be considered to be libel. Probably harder in the US, but from what I understand in UK (or just England?) the defendant must prove that it's true.
- ArnoVW 2y ago
  On the UK though, computer data is proof. If the computer says you cheated, it’s proven. This is about to change though, since the national postal services got a whole bunch of people convicted of fraud based on a system they knew buggy.
  - shit_game 2y ago
    For context, (I assume) this is referencing the Horizon IT Scandal in which faulty accounting software used by post offices in the UK indicated there were financial discrepencies suggesting embezzlement, and over 900 innocent people were convicted of crimes that never happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
darksaints 2y ago
I got a false permanent ban as well. Despite the fact that cheating is damn near impossible on consoles, and the fact that I worked way too long to get to an absolutely mediocre rank (gold 1) on ranked play, and the fact that I had never even had a warning or complaint for any behavior whatsoever, they permanently banned me with no explanation. Unlike the blogpost, I just decided I would just never spend any money on an Activision product ever again. It's what everybody should do.
- gambiting 2y ago
  >>Despite the fact that cheating is damn near impossible on consoles Unfortunately, aim assist devices for consoles are very widespread now and a big problem for competitive gaming. . >>I had never even had a warning or complaint for any behavior whatsoever That's the gold standard in the industry though, you don't warn(suspected) cheaters to not give them opportunity to adjust their tactics. Sorry you got caught by this unfairly.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > That's the gold standard in the industry though, you don't warn(suspected) cheaters to not give them opportunity to adjust their tactics. Is this supposed to do any good? The actual cheater is still getting a signal that they've been detected, because they get banned. Then they figure out how, make a new account and go back to cheating. Meanwhile the normal user is both confused and significantly more inconvenienced, because their rank etc. on the account you falsely banned was earned legitimately through hard work instead of low-effort cheating.
    - gambiting 2y ago
      >>The actual cheater is still getting a signal that they've been detected, because they get banned. So....yes. But there are mitigating tactics around this, I really recommend looking into it because it's a fascinating topic. As the simplest thing - you don't ban cheaters the moment they are detected to not give off how you detected them. That's why Activision bans people in waves and all at once, even though they know some people are cheating and still active. Unfortunately a lot of people are paying for cheats nowadays, and the cheat makers usually have some kind of refund policy where if you get detected you get your money back - games companies want to inconvenience those buyers as much as possible, so you can't claim your refund straight away because hey, the game worked for a good while even while you were cheating, must have been something else :P >>Meanwhile the normal user is both confused and significantly more inconvenienced Yes, which is why the aim is to have 0 legitimate players getting caught by this, obviously.
amatecha 2y ago
The exact same thing happened to me with League of Legends. I was inexplicably banned for cheating, despite never having done any such thing (and despite regularly playing on three accounts (this is fully permitted), the other two of which were not banned!) Their support people repeatedly said "we reviewed your case and the ban is correct", etc. all the while giving zero information about what I did so I could correct it. I have a couple of the rarest skins in the game, and have played thousands of hours since 2009. I only play ARAM, so the suggestion I was risking my account of great sentimental value by cheating at the most casual mode in the game is beyond ridiculous. Anyway, nothing in gaming has ever stressed me out more. I got unbanned solely because of a contact in the industry who had it looked into, and the ban was inexplicably lifted. I still play, but I think about the false ban almost every time, and League will probably be the last competitive multiplayer game I ever put any time towards. Part of me doesn't want to play it anymore because I dread that happening again. :(
- jajko 2y ago
  Maybe take it as a signal from universe that intense gaming is waste of life and a net loss for you? I know its harsh and double that in gaming thread, but I don't see any other way. We don't talk 3-5h a week, and it seems neither are you. You will almost certainly badly regret when on that proverbial death bed and most probably well before that, life goes darn fast and the feeling of losing out in the most important aspect of our existence - how well we live our lives is soul crushing. Its not that gaming hard is bad per se (apart from addictions and abysmal effect on health), but you are losing on much better aspects of life which are just out there for the grab. Or don't take my word, just check what old people regret in their lives. Sure gaming is not there yet, but it will find its place firmly among too much work and not spending enough time on family and relationships, which are consistently on top.
  - stronglikedan 2y ago
    > gaming is waste of life and a net loss for you? Is it? Can you share peer reviewed sources? In my experience, it's been quite the opposite.
  - 2y ago
xnorswap 2y ago
This is worthy of it's own submission, a very interesting post.
alkonaut 2y ago
Honestly I'd prefer it if games could permaban based on just heuristics and the EULA simply stated "tough luck, buy the game again". I'd happily pay for that, knowing my money is at least not going to some 2 year legal fight. I get that I might be the one accused of cheating next time. But if that risk is tiny and the cost when it happens is $50 or $100 it sounds a lot more attractive than the alternative. Also (obviously) I don't care about the account itself. I wouldn't play a game where I aggregate long term stats/items/status/whatever. In a perfect world you just have private servers where you can have 90% effective anticheat and have humans sort out the rest.
- bob1029 2y ago
  I think stat based bans are the ultimate solution for all the client side bullshit. If you use statistics, you will sometimes get it wrong, but in the other cases the cheaters are completely out of luck. You could offer the source code to your game willingly and it wouldn't help them very much. If the cost of a false positive is $50 for the gamer and the chance of it happening is rare, I think many would quickly understand the value proposition from a game experience perspective. Assuming your false negative rate is low (I.e., you have high classification margins), you can make it extremely undesirable for players to engage in unfair play. Even soft cheating like aiding teammates with streaming and discord side channels could get picked up by these techniques.
  - raxxor 2y ago
    Nah, that won't do it. Even if you had a rare false positive rate, it would be significantly higher for players with a profile similar to ones that trigger bans. It would be even worse than the bans some developers hand out now because their inherit randomness would be essentially just that. Not acceptable for any form of service.
  - michaelt 2y ago
    > I think stat based bans are the ultimate solution for all the client side bullshit. When I play basketball I keep getting stuck playing against 7'6" guys with an 83% free throw percentage which is statistically very unlikely. Alas my arguments they should be banned on statistical grounds have fallen on deaf ears :)
fuzzy2 2y ago
Interesting stuff! Though I don’t get why b00lin would have to prove that they weren’t cheating. This is not a criminal case, but still. Activision was denying access to a service that was paid for.
- ArnoVW 2y ago
  Cheating was not allowed according to the terms and conditions.
jokoon 2y ago
Interesting article Maybe he was banned because as a developer, he had development tools installed on his machine, which increased the odds of him being labeled as a potential cheater. Sometimes I even wonder if other hackers could not hack the machine or other players, to install a software that triggers anti-cheat system: it becomes then difficult to lift the ban.
- HideousKojima 2y ago
  >Sometimes I even wonder if other hackers could not hack the machine or other players, to install a software that triggers anti-cheat system: it becomes then difficult to lift the ban. This appears to be the case in Apex Legends: https://old.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveApex/comments/1bhicc6/clearing_up_misconceptions_about_the_algs_hack/?share_id=ZXvO_qUMsgAmM1RYP7FhH https://old.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveApex/comments/1bhicc6/cl... Also I wish more "good" hackers were in games, like the guy in GTA Online I ran into once who was shooting me with a money machine gun because Rockstar are greedy assholes.
  - bunnybender 2y ago
    > Also I wish more "good" hackers were in games, like the guy in GTA Online I ran into once who was shooting me with a money machine gun because Rockstar are greedy assholes. Eh? Rockstar doesn't force you to buy Shark Cards, and everyone has gotten 11 years worth of DLCs for free. Making in-game money IS an essential part of the game. You also don't have to purchase every single vehicle or other item the game offers. During my years of playing, I've met only a few cheaters who weren't complete douchebags (though some of them did act that way towards other players). I consider the "good" cheater to be a myth.
    - PinkSheep 2y ago
      The "eh?" should be directed back at your comment, how you casually omit that microtransactions and the incentives to purchase them have become a central part of modern game design. In the end, how much of an issue you rank this to be entirely depends on your weekly play hours. Maybe you just play so much as to have no issues to unlock best in class content from DLCs (most notably cars in GTAV). Unfortunately, a quick search didn't yield anybody doing math like for the Star Wars: Battlefront (new) debacle.[1][2] PS: The non-microtransactional design goal in multiplayer games will optimize for more play time.[3] How convenient to offer purchasable shortcuts. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7c6bjm/it_takes_40_hours_to_unlock_a_hero_spreadsheet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7c6bjm... [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7dmvdv/comment/dpywlup/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7dmvdv... [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/gtaonline/comments/1i2qtay/comment/m7gvj40/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gtaonline/comments/1i2qtay/comment/...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
MisterTea 2y ago
I wonder how these anti-cheat tools are impacted by flatpak and its partial sandboxing. Otherwise they sound quite invasive.

b3lvedere 2y ago

Holy ….. what a fight you had to do. So glad i hardly play any mulitiplayer shooter games. I’d hate to have my insane Steam library stripped away from me.

minihat 2y ago
His steam library was not restricted, just the game in which he was accused/banned.
- cwillu 2y ago
  And his account was publicly flagged as being a known cheater, which affected other games: https://antiblizzard.win/2025/01/18/my-two-year-fight-against-activisions-false-cod-ban-unbanned/#:~:text=to%20an%20end.-,Why%20bother%3F,-To%20me%20this https://antiblizzard.win/2025/01/18/my-two-year-fight-agains...
- b3lvedere 2y ago
  Apologies. I stand corrected. Thank you for this insight.

buzer 2y ago

> This ban also ruined other games for me. If I ever did well in a game, someone would look at my profile to see how many hours I have and instantly see the red marker that shows “I am a cheater”. I wonder if that label can be considered to be libel. Probably harder in the US, but from what I understand in UK (or just England?) the defendant must prove that it's true.

ArnoVW 2y ago
On the UK though, computer data is proof. If the computer says you cheated, it’s proven. This is about to change though, since the national postal services got a whole bunch of people convicted of fraud based on a system they knew buggy.
- shit_game 2y ago
  For context, (I assume) this is referencing the Horizon IT Scandal in which faulty accounting software used by post offices in the UK indicated there were financial discrepencies suggesting embezzlement, and over 900 innocent people were convicted of crimes that never happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

darksaints 2y ago

I got a false permanent ban as well. Despite the fact that cheating is damn near impossible on consoles, and the fact that I worked way too long to get to an absolutely mediocre rank (gold 1) on ranked play, and the fact that I had never even had a warning or complaint for any behavior whatsoever, they permanently banned me with no explanation. Unlike the blogpost, I just decided I would just never spend any money on an Activision product ever again. It's what everybody should do.

gambiting 2y ago
>>Despite the fact that cheating is damn near impossible on consoles Unfortunately, aim assist devices for consoles are very widespread now and a big problem for competitive gaming. . >>I had never even had a warning or complaint for any behavior whatsoever That's the gold standard in the industry though, you don't warn(suspected) cheaters to not give them opportunity to adjust their tactics. Sorry you got caught by this unfairly.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > That's the gold standard in the industry though, you don't warn(suspected) cheaters to not give them opportunity to adjust their tactics. Is this supposed to do any good? The actual cheater is still getting a signal that they've been detected, because they get banned. Then they figure out how, make a new account and go back to cheating. Meanwhile the normal user is both confused and significantly more inconvenienced, because their rank etc. on the account you falsely banned was earned legitimately through hard work instead of low-effort cheating.
  - gambiting 2y ago
    >>The actual cheater is still getting a signal that they've been detected, because they get banned. So....yes. But there are mitigating tactics around this, I really recommend looking into it because it's a fascinating topic. As the simplest thing - you don't ban cheaters the moment they are detected to not give off how you detected them. That's why Activision bans people in waves and all at once, even though they know some people are cheating and still active. Unfortunately a lot of people are paying for cheats nowadays, and the cheat makers usually have some kind of refund policy where if you get detected you get your money back - games companies want to inconvenience those buyers as much as possible, so you can't claim your refund straight away because hey, the game worked for a good while even while you were cheating, must have been something else :P >>Meanwhile the normal user is both confused and significantly more inconvenienced Yes, which is why the aim is to have 0 legitimate players getting caught by this, obviously.

amatecha 2y ago

The exact same thing happened to me with League of Legends. I was inexplicably banned for cheating, despite never having done any such thing (and despite regularly playing on three accounts (this is fully permitted), the other two of which were not banned!) Their support people repeatedly said "we reviewed your case and the ban is correct", etc. all the while giving zero information about what I did so I could correct it. I have a couple of the rarest skins in the game, and have played thousands of hours since 2009. I only play ARAM, so the suggestion I was risking my account of great sentimental value by cheating at the most casual mode in the game is beyond ridiculous. Anyway, nothing in gaming has ever stressed me out more. I got unbanned solely because of a contact in the industry who had it looked into, and the ban was inexplicably lifted. I still play, but I think about the false ban almost every time, and League will probably be the last competitive multiplayer game I ever put any time towards. Part of me doesn't want to play it anymore because I dread that happening again. :(

jajko 2y ago
Maybe take it as a signal from universe that intense gaming is waste of life and a net loss for you? I know its harsh and double that in gaming thread, but I don't see any other way. We don't talk 3-5h a week, and it seems neither are you. You will almost certainly badly regret when on that proverbial death bed and most probably well before that, life goes darn fast and the feeling of losing out in the most important aspect of our existence - how well we live our lives is soul crushing. Its not that gaming hard is bad per se (apart from addictions and abysmal effect on health), but you are losing on much better aspects of life which are just out there for the grab. Or don't take my word, just check what old people regret in their lives. Sure gaming is not there yet, but it will find its place firmly among too much work and not spending enough time on family and relationships, which are consistently on top.
- stronglikedan 2y ago
  > gaming is waste of life and a net loss for you? Is it? Can you share peer reviewed sources? In my experience, it's been quite the opposite.
- 2y ago

xnorswap 2y ago

This is worthy of it's own submission, a very interesting post.

alkonaut 2y ago

Honestly I'd prefer it if games could permaban based on just heuristics and the EULA simply stated "tough luck, buy the game again". I'd happily pay for that, knowing my money is at least not going to some 2 year legal fight. I get that I might be the one accused of cheating next time. But if that risk is tiny and the cost when it happens is $50 or $100 it sounds a lot more attractive than the alternative. Also (obviously) I don't care about the account itself. I wouldn't play a game where I aggregate long term stats/items/status/whatever. In a perfect world you just have private servers where you can have 90% effective anticheat and have humans sort out the rest.

bob1029 2y ago
I think stat based bans are the ultimate solution for all the client side bullshit. If you use statistics, you will sometimes get it wrong, but in the other cases the cheaters are completely out of luck. You could offer the source code to your game willingly and it wouldn't help them very much. If the cost of a false positive is $50 for the gamer and the chance of it happening is rare, I think many would quickly understand the value proposition from a game experience perspective. Assuming your false negative rate is low (I.e., you have high classification margins), you can make it extremely undesirable for players to engage in unfair play. Even soft cheating like aiding teammates with streaming and discord side channels could get picked up by these techniques.
- raxxor 2y ago
  Nah, that won't do it. Even if you had a rare false positive rate, it would be significantly higher for players with a profile similar to ones that trigger bans. It would be even worse than the bans some developers hand out now because their inherit randomness would be essentially just that. Not acceptable for any form of service.
- michaelt 2y ago
  > I think stat based bans are the ultimate solution for all the client side bullshit. When I play basketball I keep getting stuck playing against 7'6" guys with an 83% free throw percentage which is statistically very unlikely. Alas my arguments they should be banned on statistical grounds have fallen on deaf ears :)

fuzzy2 2y ago

Interesting stuff! Though I don’t get why b00lin would have to prove that they weren’t cheating. This is not a criminal case, but still. Activision was denying access to a service that was paid for.

ArnoVW 2y ago
Cheating was not allowed according to the terms and conditions.

jokoon 2y ago

Interesting article Maybe he was banned because as a developer, he had development tools installed on his machine, which increased the odds of him being labeled as a potential cheater. Sometimes I even wonder if other hackers could not hack the machine or other players, to install a software that triggers anti-cheat system: it becomes then difficult to lift the ban.

HideousKojima 2y ago
>Sometimes I even wonder if other hackers could not hack the machine or other players, to install a software that triggers anti-cheat system: it becomes then difficult to lift the ban. This appears to be the case in Apex Legends: https://old.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveApex/comments/1bhicc6/clearing_up_misconceptions_about_the_algs_hack/?share_id=ZXvO_qUMsgAmM1RYP7FhH https://old.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveApex/comments/1bhicc6/cl... Also I wish more "good" hackers were in games, like the guy in GTA Online I ran into once who was shooting me with a money machine gun because Rockstar are greedy assholes.
- bunnybender 2y ago
  > Also I wish more "good" hackers were in games, like the guy in GTA Online I ran into once who was shooting me with a money machine gun because Rockstar are greedy assholes. Eh? Rockstar doesn't force you to buy Shark Cards, and everyone has gotten 11 years worth of DLCs for free. Making in-game money IS an essential part of the game. You also don't have to purchase every single vehicle or other item the game offers. During my years of playing, I've met only a few cheaters who weren't complete douchebags (though some of them did act that way towards other players). I consider the "good" cheater to be a myth.
  - PinkSheep 2y ago
    The "eh?" should be directed back at your comment, how you casually omit that microtransactions and the incentives to purchase them have become a central part of modern game design. In the end, how much of an issue you rank this to be entirely depends on your weekly play hours. Maybe you just play so much as to have no issues to unlock best in class content from DLCs (most notably cars in GTAV). Unfortunately, a quick search didn't yield anybody doing math like for the Star Wars: Battlefront (new) debacle.[1][2] PS: The non-microtransactional design goal in multiplayer games will optimize for more play time.[3] How convenient to offer purchasable shortcuts. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7c6bjm/it_takes_40_hours_to_unlock_a_hero_spreadsheet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7c6bjm... [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7dmvdv/comment/dpywlup/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7dmvdv... [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/gtaonline/comments/1i2qtay/comment/m7gvj40/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gtaonline/comments/1i2qtay/comment/...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

MisterTea 2y ago

I wonder how these anti-cheat tools are impacted by flatpak and its partial sandboxing. Otherwise they sound quite invasive.