Hello everyone,
Now before I start with what exactly happened and what the story is, I want to say by all means this is not a rant post or anything. I know ranting is not going to get me anywhere and will not change anything. It is merely a post to warn everyone of this particular incident, and maybe somehow getting the GU team see that this needs to be resolved because in my opinion it is even worst than the de-ranking before.
Now to begin with the story, so yesterday I received an email from the Gu support team stating that my account was flagged and for reason they still did not mention, this happened once with me before and all I had to was fill up some basic information so they can check it out and solve the issue, which I did again. However, this time I received another email later on saying that my account was banned and also without mentioning the reasons.
After sending them a couple of emails asking why I was banned, finally they answered my question with a clear yet illogical answer which was:
Reason of the ban
So the reason of the ban was win trading, which never since I started the game I ever done it. I sometimes de-rank myself for several reasons, either when it was worth de-ranking before, or if my MMR was too high and I was facing much better opponents in mythic.
Now let us say that the system detected something unusual that led it to the conclusion that I was win trading, which is clearly something that should be fixed and improved in the system, but the worst about this is that they also said that my account was "manually checked" by someone and he also concluded that I was win trading.
Now I do not know if I mistaken, but I know that win trading is when you give wins to someone for whatever reason, and I know that win traders have plenty of free wins in their profiles. Now I had no idea how this person from the manual support came to this conclusion but I had to do more investigation about it, and here is what I came to:
The real reason behind the ban, Human and System Mistake
Now after checking my match history, I had to keep going 6 days back until the moment I was de-ranking a little bit in mythic because my MMR was too high and was making me lose a bunch. So here were the matches that caused the system to detect me as suspicious:
Now as you all can see, I happened to be matched with 3 different opponents for 2 times in a row when I was de-ranking. Those were all the matches that I could find that were somehow suspicious. Now as far as I know, win trader usually keep win trading in most of their matches and for the same opponent, not for 3 different people who they happened to be matched with 2 times in a row. Now let's also say these people were win traders, their match history should be full with free wins. SO I went on and checked each one of them:
Now we can all notice that all these 3 players history matches are totally clean and shows no sign of win trading which makes absolutely no sense that I was giving them free wins on purpose. It just happened that I was matched up with 3 different people 3 times in a row while I was de-ranking.
Now I would understand if the system detected it as win trade, because the system can not figure out who are these people and check their match history and all, but how come this "manual team member" that checked the account come up to this conclusion? How much did he actually check? and Is banning people this easy for them not to double check?
Solutions I tried
Before I was able to find out what the problem might be, and after knowing it was win trading but not knowing why, naturally the first thing to do was to contact the support, whos reply was the following:
Now if the support can not help me with that, and it was an internal team decisions, how am I suppose to deal with it? I asked to contact one of the teams yet they keep answering the same things over and over which makes absolutely no sense to me!
As another solution, I tried checking Discord where I also found out that many other players are suffering from the same problem, which shows that there is something clearly wrong with the system or the team, to see if I can get any help from there, but all the moderators there can do is of course tell me to contact support which by its turn was useless up until this point and no one was able to help with this.
As a final shot, I sent all the screenshots again in another ticket to the support with the explanation which they are yet to answer to.
What did it cost?
Up until now, all the support was able to tell me is to create a new account which will still hold all the NFTs on my wallet, so basically all the DO cards and only the core one that I forged before will remaining. So I have to start from level 0, with welcome set and barely no core cards, and only DO cards from rank 0.
Which I would have absolutely understood if I really made a mistake there, but this does not make any sense to me and annoying me a lot not because I just have to start again, but it is because of something that is not my fault, but the system's and the team.
Final thoughts and lesson to learn
As a final thing I will say that I do understand system errors, and I do understand sometimes even human error, but banning any account should not be something that is so easily done without double checking, even also without any warning for the players. Also the fact that there were many other players having the same problem clearly shows that the system needs to improve from this side to stop illogical bans just because the matchmaking happened to be illogical at this exact time.
To add to that any one from the internal team that does manual checking, he have to be more experienced and double check before making any decision that might make the team and the system looks bad, which was the case with me. And this the only possible way to fix this comes from the internal team, there should be a way to reach them since the support can not do anything in this case as they stated before.
Now as a lesson for everyone, be careful if you are de-ranking at any point from matching up with the same opponent twice in a row, try not to leave the game from turn 1 against the same guy twice. Just play a couple of turn in the second game, or try to win it if you want.
And as for GU developers and team, the game is improving well and the changes that are being applied really made me love the game and the work being done for the in-game stuff can be clearly seen. However, such errors and system should be improved because banning people should not be a regular thing to do! Because it almost feels like an insult especially for people who did not do anything wrong. Which I do not think I did.
Let me know in the comments if I was mistaken with anything and what do you think about the whole situation? This post was just to warn other about such mistakes and hopefully get the message to the GU team. Mad Love, Peace out <3
Terrible.
I was banned on Airbnb once. I tried to recover my account (with bonuses worth 3 weeks at a hostel) for ages. I didn't succeed. Since that time, I feel pessimistic about talks to the support.
At least, you have your DO cards. But you will need a long time to recover CS collection. :( Depressing.
From time to time, I concede early for different reasons on weekdays. I thought this is my right to choose how to play and when to concede. I will be more careful after your story.
Is banning people this easy for them not to double check?
Probably, they ban hundreds or even thousands accounts every month, maybe they are overwhelmed by malicious activity and trying to solve this problem with the help of algorithms and programs with minimal human intervention.
And just an idea - maybe wrong or maybe correct... When you talk to GU support, don't forget to mention that you blog about your GU experience, mention the link to your blog on Hive. Not for boasting but as an indirect evidence of your trustworthiness and loyalty. In the world of bots and anonymous faceless users, it may give a good impression. A good impression can make the support spend a little bit more time on you and be less categorical.
To be honest I got frustrated talking to the support because they keep answering with "there is nothing we can this is a decision from the internal team" and then close the ticket before I get the chance to answer. Like I got to the point where there is no one I can show or send the proofs to that I never win trade.
Its not only the system who banned me, the system gave me +10 forget what is it called score than shows how suspicious you are, and then after it a human checked and gave +90 now I do not know how the hell he came to this conclusion but they did not let anyone for me to go to :)
I see it. Nobody to talk. This is a part of the modern support system. :(
I hope you are coping with the depression. At least, I would be very depressed if I was banned in GU.
Write some good posts and raise some HIVE - and you will be able to buy all key CS cards and even more. 🙂
By the way, don't forget to claim LARYNX token in March (monthly, based on your Hive Power). This is not about GU but there are big expectations about this coin among some Hivers. Who knows, maybe it will cost something significant in a year or so (or it will cost nothing, let's see).
https://spk.dlux.io/ https://peakd.com/hive-112019/@spknetwork/how-to-claim-larynx-step-by-step-tutorial
Well am doing kinda fine I guess. And thank you for the heads up about the Larynx. Can you explain to me briefly about it though because the post did not talk about it
It is about a video hosting on the Hive blockchain that works on the same principles as Hive blogs. As I understand. As I know, guys from 3Speak lead this project.
You can learn more here: https://spk.network/
All of the images in this article are broken. Please fix, I really wanna see them!
Edit: Seems like lots of posts are having server image issues right now :(
Should be fixed now. Sorry for the delayed reply haven't been active on hive those couple of days since I was frustrated because of the game and what happened! And here is the account if you re curious about match history https://gudecks.com/meta/player-stats?userId=1608918
So they don't plan on un-banning you? Are you going to create a new account and play there?
Doesn't seem like they are planning. Last interaction between us was me sending the SS for the support and them closing the ticket again. And yes I created a new account and started playing again sadly. I got to keep my minted cards and gods though but still from rank 0, level 0 and CS cards no flux nor stars also
Hey, your main account should be unbanned now, I talked to someone.
Omg thank you so much man! <3 Just hope this does not happen to anyone else because someone manually checked my account back then and concluded that I was win trading they should be careful of such mistakes. Anyway thank you so much again appreciate it <3
This is a shame, and I hope it ends up working out somehow in the end. Sorry you are dealing with this. Thanks for the heads up!
Well even after sending the screenshots to the supports no results. Had to start a new account although I was able to keep my meteorite minted cards and my gods. All levels and CS cards are gone though and rank from 0 again. Hope it does not happen to anyone
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