When you read this, please keep in mind that this could just as easily have happened to you.
Tuesday afternoon, out of the blue, I get an email from Blizzard saying that my account is banned. No information was provided beyond a vague boilerplate statement about violating the terms of service by use of "unapproved third party software". Not a single word about anything specific to my behavior that caused the ban. I first thought it was a phishing email but no, unfortunately, my account really was banned.
For the record, (1) I have never been contacted before by Blizzard about anything like this, and (2) I have never done anything that I know of that violates the TOS. Certainly I have not used any "hack" programs or anything like that. I do use the d3rawr website to automatically read my public profile for the purpose of calculating effective health and DPS. I would be honestly surprised (and shocked) to learn that that violates the TOS. If it does, Blizzard did not tell me so in the email. You can choose to believe me or not when I say that I have never cheated. But if you were to look at my profile (Gisli-1589), you would see that my gear and levels are nothing out of the ordinary for the number of hours that I have put in. So I obviously have not benefited from the alleged cheating!
I submitted a service ticket to appeal. What I got back was essentially (only slightly paraphrasing) "We reviewed this and will not change the action". The ticket was closed. No explanation given for why my account was banned.
Reading the original form letter notification, the impression I got is that the ban is permanent (they labeled it an "account closure"). However, at the Blizzard forum site I stumbled entirely by accident on a statement at the bottom of the page that said my account is banned with a link to further details. Following the link, I came to a page that said the ban is actually for three days, with a counter on the days and hours left. I don't know if it was always a 3-day ban, or if a permanent ban had been changed to a 3-day ban after the first review. Today the countdown expired... and now my account appears to be permanently banned. (Of course this means that I cannot post this message on the official Diablo forum either.)
Since the original response, I have since submitted two more tickets, explaining that this must be a mistake and asking for information about why my account was banned. The second response was essentially "We have reviewed the account again, we won't change the action, and we won't talk to you anymore." I am paraphrasing for brevity, but this is surprisingly close to what the form letter says. The third response was just "It has been reviewed". Again, I have never been told why my account was banned beyond the vague accusation that I violated the terms of service.
I can only speculate about what caused this. I am guessing that either my account information was accidentally typed by some Blizzard employee in place of an account that they intended to ban, or that their hacking detection algorithm is buggy. I did suggest in my second ticket that their engineers might want to contact me so that I could help them debug the detector. But they showed no interest in that.
Of course, I am disappointed with Blizzard. Aside from the original mistake in banning my account to begin with (I can accept that mistakes happen), the policy of providing no information about why a ban took place is unforgivable, as is the inadequate review process and the poor customer service overall.
Even if the ban had only been temporary, I would not play Diablo 3 again at this point. Besides being offended at Blizzard's policies and the customer service reps' inappropriate behavior, I can never predict if or when when my account will get banned again, since I don't know what to do to avoid the original problem. The game isn't worth the risk of putting up with this again.
It looks to me like Blizzard has taken the business calculation that losing some number of customers due to false positives on the hacking detector followed by poor customer service is cheaper than doing the job properly. After all, they already have my money. Losing me reduces the load on their servers, so that might seem like a nice side benefit for them.
Will doing this sort of thing eventually hurt Blizzard's reputation to the point they choose to reform? Doubtful. People generally don't believe that this could happen to them until they or somebody that they know personally experiences it. I can only assure you that this does happen, and you could be next.
I and my friend had the account banned for the same reason. After searching the internet I found several similar cases account banned on 22 january. already sent 5 tickets and Blizzard always sends the same response, I did nothing wrong.
Yes, three tries here and I have given up. I did try calling a couple of times, but I always got "queue is too full, use email". They won't tell me why the ban, and they don't appear to pay attention to anything that I say on the ticket. At this point I don't see anything further that I could do, even if I wanted to play.
Following up: I have been reading some of the other threads here about others who had this happen to them.
I do have a G15 keyboard. But I have not used it for any Diablo 3 macros at all (or macros for anything else in a number of years). Possibly their detector is flagging anyone with a G15 keyboard, regardless of whether it is being used for macros or not? I have a garden-variety 3-button mouse, so nothing likely there.
Again, unless Blizzard is absolutely certain, they will not ban and account. Therefore the data they got from you gave them enough reason to ban you. Sorry, not giving people credit who obviously made an account on here just to complain about this.
You don't get banned unless you are doing something that can get you banned (third party program is an easy one)
I have a main and a bot. On the same laptop I would play with a bot and when I wasn't botting I would play with the main.
The main account hasn't been banned but the bot did and you want to know why? Because I was botting with a third party program when I had game running.
Hi there forum, check out the thread i posted aswell. I'll relink it here. it's called. Banned in Diablo 3
I was banned on January 22, 2013. and I didn't hack or bot. Read the thread. Let the thread grow, so it goes out on the public, and maybe..just maybe Blizzard can read it.
You don't get banned unless you are doing something that can get you banned (third party program is an easy one)
I have a main and a bot. On the same laptop I would play with a bot and when I wasn't botting I would play with the main.
The main account hasn't been banned but the bot did and you want to know why? Because I was botting with a third party program when I had game running.
Why do people like you ASSUME that all of the players who got banned are Botters and Hackers? Are you sure that Blizzard has their thing right 100% all the time?
Answer is no. Mistakes can happen. Blizzard should read this post and ban you for good since you admit that you bot in the first place.
close minded people.
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Tuesday afternoon, out of the blue, I get an email from Blizzard saying that my account is banned. No information was provided beyond a vague boilerplate statement about violating the terms of service by use of "unapproved third party software". Not a single word about anything specific to my behavior that caused the ban. I first thought it was a phishing email but no, unfortunately, my account really was banned.
For the record, (1) I have never been contacted before by Blizzard about anything like this, and (2) I have never done anything that I know of that violates the TOS. Certainly I have not used any "hack" programs or anything like that. I do use the d3rawr website to automatically read my public profile for the purpose of calculating effective health and DPS. I would be honestly surprised (and shocked) to learn that that violates the TOS. If it does, Blizzard did not tell me so in the email. You can choose to believe me or not when I say that I have never cheated. But if you were to look at my profile (Gisli-1589), you would see that my gear and levels are nothing out of the ordinary for the number of hours that I have put in. So I obviously have not benefited from the alleged cheating!
I submitted a service ticket to appeal. What I got back was essentially (only slightly paraphrasing) "We reviewed this and will not change the action". The ticket was closed. No explanation given for why my account was banned.
Reading the original form letter notification, the impression I got is that the ban is permanent (they labeled it an "account closure"). However, at the Blizzard forum site I stumbled entirely by accident on a statement at the bottom of the page that said my account is banned with a link to further details. Following the link, I came to a page that said the ban is actually for three days, with a counter on the days and hours left. I don't know if it was always a 3-day ban, or if a permanent ban had been changed to a 3-day ban after the first review. Today the countdown expired... and now my account appears to be permanently banned. (Of course this means that I cannot post this message on the official Diablo forum either.)
Since the original response, I have since submitted two more tickets, explaining that this must be a mistake and asking for information about why my account was banned. The second response was essentially "We have reviewed the account again, we won't change the action, and we won't talk to you anymore." I am paraphrasing for brevity, but this is surprisingly close to what the form letter says. The third response was just "It has been reviewed". Again, I have never been told why my account was banned beyond the vague accusation that I violated the terms of service.
I can only speculate about what caused this. I am guessing that either my account information was accidentally typed by some Blizzard employee in place of an account that they intended to ban, or that their hacking detection algorithm is buggy. I did suggest in my second ticket that their engineers might want to contact me so that I could help them debug the detector. But they showed no interest in that.
Of course, I am disappointed with Blizzard. Aside from the original mistake in banning my account to begin with (I can accept that mistakes happen), the policy of providing no information about why a ban took place is unforgivable, as is the inadequate review process and the poor customer service overall.
Even if the ban had only been temporary, I would not play Diablo 3 again at this point. Besides being offended at Blizzard's policies and the customer service reps' inappropriate behavior, I can never predict if or when when my account will get banned again, since I don't know what to do to avoid the original problem. The game isn't worth the risk of putting up with this again.
It looks to me like Blizzard has taken the business calculation that losing some number of customers due to false positives on the hacking detector followed by poor customer service is cheaper than doing the job properly. After all, they already have my money. Losing me reduces the load on their servers, so that might seem like a nice side benefit for them.
Will doing this sort of thing eventually hurt Blizzard's reputation to the point they choose to reform? Doubtful. People generally don't believe that this could happen to them until they or somebody that they know personally experiences it. I can only assure you that this does happen, and you could be next.
There was a case of a kid that got banned cause he typed, "Gold site for WoW" in his google search bar and three days later he was banned.
Though this could be total horse shit but its worth looking into.
Seems a bunch of people are getting banned for apparently no reason these days.
Well good luck trying to reason with blizzard, they can be a major pain in the ass.
You're a wizard Harry.....
I do have a G15 keyboard. But I have not used it for any Diablo 3 macros at all (or macros for anything else in a number of years). Possibly their detector is flagging anyone with a G15 keyboard, regardless of whether it is being used for macros or not? I have a garden-variety 3-button mouse, so nothing likely there.
You don't get banned unless you are doing something that can get you banned (third party program is an easy one)
I have a main and a bot. On the same laptop I would play with a bot and when I wasn't botting I would play with the main.
The main account hasn't been banned but the bot did and you want to know why? Because I was botting with a third party program when I had game running.
I was banned on January 22, 2013. and I didn't hack or bot. Read the thread. Let the thread grow, so it goes out on the public, and maybe..just maybe Blizzard can read it.
Why do people like you ASSUME that all of the players who got banned are Botters and Hackers? Are you sure that Blizzard has their thing right 100% all the time?
Answer is no. Mistakes can happen. Blizzard should read this post and ban you for good since you admit that you bot in the first place.
close minded people.