(edited to add this note)
I started this thread for people who have had their game accounts banned for alleged activities they knew nothing about, and who have been treated unfairly and unkindly when they appealed the ban. The purpose is for us to share our experiences with each other, not to try to convince anyone who doesn't believe us. It doesn't matter to me if anyone else believes us or not.
(end edit)
After I was banned from an online game for a reason which I knew was false, I was searching for some information to help me find out what to do, and it looks to me like what happened to me has happened to a lot of other people. In my case, the behavior of the customer support service, and of the managers I corresponded with, looked more and more bizarre and inexplicable as time went by.
Please don't point to any specific game or company, but has anyone else encountered this kind of behavior? Please don't point to any specific game or company, even indirectly.
- Over a period of more than three weeks, the customer support service, the director of customer services, and another manager that I corresponded with, persistently ignored my concerns that the account might have been compromised.
- I had two other game accounts with the company, and when I asked for those to be locked also, to prevent them from being used for malicious activities, the director of customer services refused.
- It's a common security practice for online services to send an email notification when a password is changed. When I changed the password on those other two accounts, I did not receive any email notification.
- The customer support service, and the director of customer services, repeatedly gave me details about the incriminating behavior they allegedly saw on the account, which I did not ask for, and which they should not have done if they actually thought I had been abusing the game economy.
- When I submitted a suggestion to avoid hurting innocent people in the future, and to avoid giving out information that might help violators avoid detection, the director of customer services, and the other manager, persistently evaded those issues.
- Even though they were accusing me of abusing the game economy, they encouraged me to continue playing, on a new account.
- More generally, their behavior, from beginning to end, looked dishonest and irresponsible to me, and not at all designed to prevent people from abusing the game economy.
- It looks to me like numerous other customers might have seen their accounts banned for alleged activities they knew nothing about, and seen the same behavior in response to their ban appeals.
- All of my emails to other executives at the company, about those issues, have gone unanswered.
Please don't point to any specific game or company. I'm just trying to find out how frequent this kind of behavior might be.
(edited 10/16/2014 to add the following)
Considering some of the comments to this thread, I've decided to try to clarify my purposes here a little more.
I was trying out a game as a possible alternative to the game I was playing. I only played the new game a few times, for a few hours, with weeks and sometimes months between the times I played. Then after a few months away from it, when I tried to log in, a message came up saying my account was suspended. I started a support ticket to find out why. The response said that my account was banned for selling in-game money for real money. I never did any such thing. I never thought of doing any such thing. I filled out the ban appeal form that came with the support response, denying the allegation.
For the next four weeks or more, the *only* responses I got from support, and from the company managers, to my denial and to my concerns, repeatedly expressed, that someone might have broken into my account, were more and more details about the incriminating activities that they allegedly saw on the account, as if they thought I would know what they were talking about.
The way I was treated by the support service and by the management caused me a lot of grief, and it helped me a lot when I saw that I was not alone in that. I started this thread hoping that it might help some other people the same way.
At the same time, I was hoping to get some clues about how much it is happening, to help me decide if I want to try to do something about it or not.
(end edit)
Edited, Oct 16th 2014 5:53am by jimhabegger