My account has been banned and I don't know why?

i believe bnet won't launch when vpn is on

ganseng wrote: 1 week ago

i believe bnet won't launch when vpn is on

That can't be correct.

Chinese players were playing on the Asia servers before the Chinese version of D2R even existed, and non-Chinese BNet servers were and still are blocked in mainland China (without VPN). Only the official Chinese servers (which only exists since about 1 year ago) can be reached from mainland China without VPN, from what I've heard.

Also, not too long ago (1-2 years ago) there were reports of Korean players having their accounts banned for being created using VPN (apparently some Koreans used VPN to create "overseas" accounts, not sure which country they based the accounts in though). FBI (the Korean D2R streamer) even made a dedicated video about it to alert his viewers that "overseas" accounts created using VPN were being banned by Blizzard.

ShadowHeart wrote: 1 week ago

Also, not too long ago (1-2 years ago) there were reports of Korean players having their accounts banned for being created using VPN (apparently some Koreans used VPN to create "overseas" accounts, not sure which country they based the accounts in though). FBI (the Korean D2R streamer) even made a dedicated video about it to alert his viewers that "overseas" accounts created using VPN were being banned by Blizzard.

This sounds like it was about paying less for the game, by accessing another market. So it would be more a ToS/EULA thing than a Code of Conduct thing.

The response from Blizzard that OP cites explicitly mentions the Code of Conduct, which is a fairly short document that is focused on how one's actions affect other players' experience. Although the Blizzard guy's response could have been a standard one where they didn't bother changing details appropriately, so we can't know for sure without more info from Blizzard.

Either way, I'm sorry on OP's behalf. Hopefully we will at least find out what was behind the ban.

vued wrote: 1 week ago

If you really haven't done any of that but Blizzard believes so and doesn't provide any other options, going to court will be the only option left.

There they will have to prove to the judge that you breached the code of conduct. Probably not worth it....

bigbikefan wrote: 1 week ago

With modern AI's at our disposal available for free it shouldn't be too difficult to open a civil case against Blizzard as Par Se, no representing attorneys at law necessary to waste big $$$ for. You'd learn a lot along the way on procedures involved, that maybe useful in the future. @"Big Oddy", before you dig in, however, make sure your account has not been hacked. It may not be possible without Blizzard's logs to tell for sure, so a court claim it is.

I'm skeptical that this will work, there is always a lot of legalese in games' EULAs that basically beams down to "you promise not to sue us". But AI can probably help condensate what the EULA actually says about this. There are also customer protection laws in different countries that limit what an EULA can imply.

Blubbalutsch wrote: 1 week ago

You checked if your credentials got leaked and maybe used during the time of your absence for botting?

This is something that is reasonable to expect Blizzard to help investigate. You can always ask them for logs of your time in game, and match to when you know you were or were not playing. And then it might turn out easier for them to provide some more info about the circumstances of your ban, giving you a better position to argue your case.

This aligns with what I’ve heard from other players that were banned and then unbanned, but also not - some I’ve heard of got it unbanned without needing to do anything, some needed to contact Blizzard to get it unbanned. But you did contact them, got an unhelpful response saying that the ban will be upheld, only for it be overturned later without any contact in between. That’s a new one (to me). And it’s totally unacceptable. The people managing this at Blizzard seem to be extremely incompetent. How is it possible to determine upon first review that the ban was correct and be so sure about it, and then subsequently change their minds with an “Oopsie!”. The level of incompetence at display here is appalling.

Anyway, I’m glad you got your account back!

ShadowHeart wrote: 6 hours ago

The people managing this at Blizzard seem to be extremely incompetent.

or just not the same person. First one didn't bother to have a look. Second unbanned a bunch of players and OP was one of them.

Being in France I can tell you never have the same answer to the same question if you ask twice (being private or public company)
Last in date: on the site it says I have to *CALL* someone because you cant do it on the website yourself, so called them to be told they cant do it either (2 days ago)

welcome back anyway!

Trang Oul wrote: 32 minutes ago

That's a bold assumption that the first one was even a person, in the age of widespread chatbots...

can't tell if you are not one of them

Well, I think it's pretty clear that the initial bans are handled in a completely automated fashion, possibly (likely?) powered by "AI" agents. And the initial response to appeals might also be handled by "AI" (no idea), or at least the person handling it uses "AI" to assist with determining whether to overturn or uphold the ban (very likely?).

Regardless, the whole process and the fact that there has been so many similar stories of wrongful bans since RoTW (these stories were exceedingly rare before RoTW) just reeks of incompetence. Whether the "AI" is incompetent, or the person using the "AI" is, doesn't actually matter. What matters is the outward perception (to the person being wrongfully banned and having to deal with the aftermath), and if one thing is certain, this will just further hurt Blizzard's reputation. It's not a great tactic for a company to wrongfully punish its own customers for no reason other than that an "AI" hallucinated a reason to ban them and then stubbornly stand by the decision.