Battleye Ban Procedure

[Sakebee 2270]

Hello everyone,

 

This is an announcement to let you know that we are streamlining our Battleye banning procedure. When we first transitioned over to Battleye, we locked the system so that it could give at most a temporary ban. This allowed our team to review each case manually as we were putting the system through its paces and grant permanent bans in the follow up investigation as warranted. We have been monitoring the situation, and we are now happy to transition to direct permanent bans through Battleye. Tuning our anti-cheat to the needs of APB will always be an ongoing process, but this change should help provide clarity for players as well as freeing our support staff to help with more of our community's issues. Our current ticket response times are not where we want them to be at the moment, and this change will also free more staff to deal with our existing support tickets more effectively.

 

If you would like to contest a ban, please contact support. For player privacy and security, we cannot address account issues via the forums or through Discord.

 

Thanks,

Sakebee

[Darkzero3802 606]

Sake im sorry but the current anti-cheat is not where we want it. There are way too many cheaters out there both blatent and closet that easily get past battleye and the system needs to do better to detect these cheats and remove the players so they dont ruin the game any further.

[Mitne 724]

Serious question to you Sakebee.

Did false bans happened under Battleye while testing?

I kinda don't have confidence in who is banned ever since it happened to me (with FairFight but still).

Edited July 7, 2020 by Mitne

[xHenryman90x 129]

21 minutes ago, Mitne said:

Serious question to you Sakebee.

Did false bans happened under Battleye while testing?

I kinda don't have confidence in who is banned ever since it happened to me (with FairFight but still).

At least it's easier to determine false bans, i'm still sceptical regarding server sided  AC solutions, you can eventually make mistake while tweaking rulesets, as it happened with FF.

[Hexerin 1140]

Automated permabans... who in their right mind actually believes this is a good idea?

[StevenDeckard 280]

Not sure if that has been addressed elsewhere already, but I do wonder: 

 

Will Battleeye be a problem for those of us, who have old computers and thus have to rely on the use of the "APB advanced launcher" to get the game working on their "potatoes"?

 

Edited July 7, 2020 by StevenDeckard

[Mitne 724]

16 minutes ago, StevenDeckard said:

Not sure if that has been addressed elsewhere already, but I do wonder: 

 

Will Battleeye be a problem for those of us, who have old computers and thus have to rely on the use of the "APB advanced launcher" to get the game working on their "potatoes"?

 

Uber unlikely. If BE would really ban for changes in config (which is only thing advanced launcher do) then it wouldn't be suited for APB at all.

[StevenDeckard 280]

Thanks for the insight mate, much appreciated!

[vsb 6170]

1 hour ago, StevenDeckard said:

Not sure if that has been addressed elsewhere already, but I do wonder: 

 

Will Battleeye be a problem for those of us, who have old computers and thus have to rely on the use of the "APB advanced launcher" to get the game working on their "potatoes"?

 

the advanced launcher has been officially allowed until the full engine upgrade release at the very least, it’s safe to use

[badass1234 17]

Are you people kidding me?

BattleEye prevents legitimate players from playing the game and now you added the ability to permaban people automatically?...

This is just getting ridiculous now, issues section should be the first places for devs to go to, yet it's completely disregarded...

[Kommaranda 44]

Hahaha may the flamewars begin

I am preped for autobans since i was born.

Roccat mouse software deactivated, no overlays, no macros, cheats or any other software known or unknown to be banable.

COME ON BRING IT!!!

[iMiss 49]

2 hours ago, badass1234 said:

Are you people kidding me?

~snip~

getting repeatedly kicked for a false positive =/= people getting automatically banned for cheating. They had it set up to issue a 3 day Temporary ban while the team reviewed what it caught, and then manually perma-banned them upon affirmation. All this means is that they're satisfied with what they're seeing in the temp bans, and that they don't appear to have a major issue with falsely temp-banned players. AFAIK, the players who get banned after this update, can still dispute it via Customer Support as always. 

As far as your complaints in that thread about not getting a ticket response in 4, or even 8 days, you can check their weekly updated status on the support ticket backlog at https://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/810-tracking-customer-support/page/4/

 

It's not malicious intentions by anyone at LO or BE that you're getting kicked for a false positive, thinking that is conjecture at best. Even if this game has the same anticheat as other games by name it has a much, much different implementation, and as such, unique issues do arise.

[tucsonfeuer 11]

4 hours ago, badass1234 said:

Are you people kidding me?

BattleEye prevents legitimate players from playing the game and now you added the ability to permaban people automatically?...

This is just getting ridiculous now, issues section should be the first places for devs to go to, yet it's completely disregarded...

I keep getting kicked, I'm not banned. Did you get banned?

[Golderlight123 23]

On 7/7/2020 at 9:08 AM, Hexerin said:

Automated permabans... who in their right mind actually believes this is a good idea?

Me - it stops the cheaters playing for a while - while legit's have a good time for a little while before they decide if it was deserved ban  

[Sayori 311]

Your ticket response time is not just where you don't want it to be at the moment. it hasn't been for 2 years. The current response time of 3.5 weeks is simply unacceptable. I was sort of keen on that, until I read a report from  2015 which states LO has almost 100 employees and 50 million USD annual revenue. So this is clearly not "LO is small company and doesn't have the resources"

Anyway, glad you give perma bans...if you detect any decent cheat that is. My expectations happened - influx of cheaters, old names and "new" names, same people going 20+:1 in FCs.

I still see that guy whom I reported a while ago and got response you will investigate? Guess not going to happen since he's SPCT , right?

[Genobee 143]

On 7/7/2020 at 2:18 AM, xHenryman90x said:

At least it's easier to determine false bans, i'm still sceptical regarding server sided  AC solutions, you can eventually make mistake while tweaking rulesets, as it happened with FF.

That said I still preferred Fairfight. At least it was fairly solid at catching cheaters while also being non-existent in terms of problems on the users end. Save for the people being in control of it screwing up.. but I'd blame Tiggs n' crew for that. They allegedly banned people they didn't like under the guise of Fairfight. Meanwhile the people supposed to be tweaking it didn't seem to really be doing that. So. Yeah.

 

I don't know. Just my opinion on it. Wasn't the best option by far, but it got a bad rap because of people in charge using it as a cover for bull**** bans for the majority of it being around. That and yeah it sucks royally if setup poorly, but at least we could play the game without being kicked for every other program on our PC's.

Edited July 9, 2020 by Genobee

[Zolerox 564]

Lucky for me I never play well enough to trip an anti cheat Wanna know my secret?

2 words

Social district.

 

at least fair fight didn't stop me from tweaking apb from the task manager.

[vsb 6170]

19 minutes ago, Genobee said:

That said I still preferred Fairfight. At least it was fairly solid at catching cheaters while also being non-existent in terms of problems on the users end. Save for the people being in control of it screwing up.. but I'd blame Tiggs n' crew for that. They allegedly banned people they didn't like under the guise of Fairfight. Meanwhile the people supposed to be tweaking it didn't seem to really be doing that. So. Yeah.

 

I don't know. Just my opinion on it.

fairfight also did nothing to block cheats, which is why i think it will never work on its own

[xHenryman90x 129]

1 hour ago, Genobee said:

Meanwhile the people supposed to be tweaking it didn't seem to really be doing that. So. Yeah.

Whoever was doing the tweaks messed up, G1/RP even admitted multiple times times that they were having false bans due to new ruleset tweaks.

[Noob_Guardian 417]

5 hours ago, xHenryman90x said:

Whoever was doing the tweaks messed up, G1/RP even admitted multiple times times that they were having false bans due to new ruleset tweaks.

that was once to my knowledge, and they unbanned the like 300 people like the next day over it lol. Most of G1/RP's bans were manual and intentionally done. They would flag someone, then ban em manually. Automatic bans were near non existent.

Edited July 9, 2020 by Noob_Guardian

[Mitne 724]

12 hours ago, Genobee said:

That said I still preferred Fairfight. At least it was fairly solid at catching cheaters while also being non-existent in terms of problems on the users end. Save for the people being in control of it screwing up.. but I'd blame Tiggs n' crew for that. They allegedly banned people they didn't like under the guise of Fairfight. Meanwhile the people supposed to be tweaking it didn't seem to really be doing that. So. Yeah.

 

I don't know. Just my opinion on it.

Well I think I explained my FF ban and it background pretty good. There are also cases of people who were blatantly cheating and were unbanned "cause russians hacked their accounts". For me explanations didn't even worked. I was cheater, they didn't even found it suspicious that I suddenly got red flag raised after playing this game spotless for 7 years at the time. But my history of being ultra critical and sceptic at the time at G1 actions was known.

 

FairFight was effectively turned into background tool for bans. Nobody would question FF ban. It was for cheats. Therefore you cheated and got banned for it. Your explanations won't work because you might lie in that case either.

12 hours ago, Zolerox said:

Lucky for me I never play well enough to trip an anti cheat Wanna know my secret?

2 words

Social district.

 

at least fair fight didn't stop me from tweaking apb from the task manager.

You can still tweak it by making changes in registry. There is guide somewhere.

12 hours ago, 404 said:

fairfight also did nothing to block cheats, which is why i think it will never work on its own

Yeah. At moment of my own ban, blatants were going crazy - some weren't banned through ENTIRE FF lifetime.

11 hours ago, xHenryman90x said:

Whoever was doing the tweaks messed up, G1/RP even admitted multiple times times that they were having false bans due to new ruleset tweaks.

Remember when LO took over and Matt tested FF? He got false banned himself during testing. I fear numbers of false bans was gigantic in retrospection (no proof of cheating other than some red flag raised in anti-cheat) and additional note: FF was set on manual mode for it's last 2 years, just giving away flags about suspicious activity.

I fear whoever was deciding bans just banned whatever was flagged and unbanned whoever they saw fit. Disgusting.

 

Edited July 9, 2020 by Mitne

[Spy 152]

BattleEye is working so well that it leaves blatant cheats on stream be, doing absolutely nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'obs[DOT]exe in memory so must be legit'.....

 

 

Edited July 9, 2020 by Spy

[xHenryman90x 129]

8 hours ago, Mitne said:

Remember when LO took over and Matt tested FF?

I only remember him saying that after investigating the bans, he came to the conclusion that lot of them were questionably placed.

[badass1234 17]

On 7/8/2020 at 1:19 AM, tucsonfeuer said:

I keep getting kicked, I'm not banned. Did you get banned?

No ban, just constantly getting kicked, so it's impossible to play anyway.

On 7/7/2020 at 11:05 PM, iMiss said:

getting repeatedly kicked for a false positive =/= people getting automatically banned for cheating. They had it set up to issue a 3 day Temporary ban while the team reviewed what it caught, and then manually perma-banned them upon affirmation. All this means is that they're satisfied with what they're seeing in the temp bans, and that they don't appear to have a major issue with falsely temp-banned players. AFAIK, the players who get banned after this update, can still dispute it via Customer Support as always. 

As far as your complaints in that thread about not getting a ticket response in 4, or even 8 days, you can check their weekly updated status on the support ticket backlog at https://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/810-tracking-customer-support/page/4/

 

It's not malicious intentions by anyone at LO or BE that you're getting kicked for a false positive, thinking that is conjecture at best. Even if this game has the same anticheat as other games by name it has a much, much different implementation, and as such, unique issues do arise.

Read the post by Sayori below. When another company takes over a project which is on the verge of dying - people expect them to take actions. I literally tried to contact LO in every single way possible, ticket, forum, steam, but guess what? NOTHING AT ALL - no reply, apart from others having the same problem 

Is this showing the community that the game is about to be reborn?
To me this looks like just another company that wants to make money with as low effort as possible.

 

On 7/8/2020 at 5:09 PM, Sayori said:

Your ticket response time is not just where you don't want it to be at the moment. it hasn't been for 2 years. The current response time of 3.5 weeks is simply unacceptable. I was sort of keen on that, until I read a report from  2015 which states LO has almost 100 employees and 50 million USD annual revenue. So this is clearly not "LO is small company and doesn't have the resources"

Anyway, glad you give perma bans...if you detect any decent cheat that is. My expectations happened - influx of cheaters, old names and "new" names, same people going 20+:1 in FCs.

I still see that guy whom I reported a while ago and got response you will investigate? Guess not going to happen since he's SPCT , right?

Sayori spitting faxx right there

22 hours ago, Zolerox said:

Lucky for me I never play well enough to trip an anti cheat Wanna know my secret?

2 words

Social district.

 

at least fair fight didn't stop me from tweaking apb from the task manager.

If you were to be affected by this bug, then it doesn't matter if you go to social disctrict, missions or financial, you get booted off the server. 

"I'm not affected by this bug" is not a "secret"

 

[Kevkof 806]

9 minutes ago, badass1234 said:

No ban, just constantly getting kicked, so it's impossible to play anyway.

Look into what software you have running, it might be something like a resolution changer, audio mixer, whatever that just uses those same calls as AutoIT would.

Drivers are another good thing to look at  as non-signed drivers will most likely be blocked as well.

RIP driver testers.