Issues with Rare Support Team

I've been working in customer support for a major gaming company (fps title) for 7y.

In customer support language "Friend logged into my account", "Dog jumped on my keyboard while I wasn't looking", "I was hacked" are all the same thing.

Your account, your PC, your IP address, MAC address = your responsibility.

And regarding the new "licence" - you're getting banned again for ban evasion, as your device (not just your account) is banned. You're welcome.

And regarding ideas to share - if you didn't actually get banned for your actions and now sympathy (and workaround) farming on the forum, well... time to learn choosing your friends more wisely.

Also, nobody in sane mind would share ban evasion techniques on the forum with you. It's against forum rules.

Have fun until mods lock the topic.

@r3vanns I understand what you're trying to say about the possibility of the Rare support team thinking it's some 'excuse', but I can assure you that it is not. First of all, I already explained in my original thread that I have never cheated or exploited in Sea of Thieves in the 5k+ hours I have accumulated over these past few years, and I'm pretty sure they could look into my account to see that for themselves, proving that I am not just using anything as an excuse, but rather trying to explain that I made the mistake of letting my friend login onto their account, on my computer all those years ago. Years ago, mind you. I purchased a new license and have been fine for all this time. The problem is that they aren't even trying to help in any case.

And if you think that I am trying to ask for 'ban evasion techniques' then you clearly did not read my message clearly. I am asking how to go on about the Rare support team helping me to understand the issue at hand, that I made the mistake of allowing that old friend all those years ago to login on my computer, but I personally did not do anything to violate the code of conduct for the game. I have been a true competitive player for years, pouring my time and effort into this game I fell in love with. But the support team isn't letting me.

@sloop-woman said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

@r3vanns I understand what you're trying to say about the possibility of the Rare support team thinking it's some 'excuse', but I can assure you that it is not. First of all, I already explained in my original thread that I have never cheated or exploited in Sea of Thieves in the 5k+ hours I have accumulated over these past few years, and I'm pretty sure they could look into my account to see that for themselves, proving that I am not just using anything as an excuse, but rather trying to explain that I made the mistake of letting my friend login onto their account, on my computer all those years ago. Years ago, mind you. I purchased a new license and have been fine for all this time. The problem is that they aren't even trying to help in any case.

Whether you've explained once or 50 times to them, the fact doesn't change - your PC, your responsibility.

I'm actually telling you how it is. If you were compromised (hacked) that would've been another story. Because IP address logged is someone else's (compromiser's), and that can be used, among successfully verifying other account information as well, as a proof that it wasn't your fault.

The fact that YOUR IP address on YOUR PC was used for a banned account to be logged in with, is the reason why support simply won't consider lifting the ban. There is no way to prove your innocence in such cases.

And that's why literally every single company advises their users (and employees) never to leave their PCs in a vulnerable state.

Sorry, but you'll have to learn this the hard way.

Outside of support, the only other thing that remains is legal action, but good luck with that as well. You still need proof it wasn't you who logged on your device with a banned account.

You are on the wrong forum for this. There isn't anything that should be done because it is just your word against the fact you let someone on your device who cheated on this game. So I wouldn't be surprised if you are perm banned on that device.

@dank-jimb0 said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

You are on the wrong forum for this. There isn't anything that should be done because it is just your word against the fact you let someone on your device who cheated on this game. So I wouldn't be surprised if you are perm banned on that device.

100% mac banned and also VAC banned on Steam (if SoT purchased on Steam)

@r3vanns said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

Whether you've explained once or 50 times to them, the fact doesn't change - your PC, your responsibility.

but its not, or should not be like this. the only reason that people are getting banned for things like this is because you do not know if its the same person or not logging in on that account, so you just ban every account on that MAC/IP like a infectious disease spreading to everyone.

now a simple mistake made years ago that was seemingly solved comes back to haunt her account for no apparent reason, and support does not explain anything on why or how it got banned, and even SUGGESTS to buy the game again. do you really think that is acceptable? truly?

also, keep in mind that we'll soon have banned people getting second chances through appeal or something (new update). don't you think thats weird? that there is something wrong in the decision making on banning people?

@dank-jimb0 said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

You are on the wrong forum for this. There isn't anything that should be done because it is just your word against the fact you let someone on your device who cheated on this game. So I wouldn't be surprised if you are perm banned on that device.

what other forum to give feedback about rare support than the feedback and suggestions?

I’m a close friend of the person that posted this. I understand what all of you are saying about how there’s no proof and such, it’s her word against theirs. I get that. I’m simply wondering if there’s anything that can be done about this? Will the support team seriously just not do anything? I can vouch for her she never has cheated on this game before it was a simple mistake of allowing someone else to sign in. What can be done to unban her account? She has tons of hours sinked into the game and she loves it, is she seriously just never going to be able to play it again because of a mistake? I for one think that’s very unfair.

@d3adst1ck said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

@apos-bell said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

@r3vanns said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

Whether you've explained once or 50 times to them, the fact doesn't change - your PC, your responsibility.

but its not, or should not be like this. the only reason that people are getting banned for things like this is because you do not know if its the same person or not logging in on that account, so you just ban every account on that MAC/IP like a infectious disease spreading to everyone.

Not doing this is just creating carte blanche for cheaters to just use new accounts and continue cheating. There is no way to prove that it was a different person or the same person logging into the different accounts, but there is proof that a single computer logged into different accounts and at least one of them was cheating.

don't they already do this quite a lot anyway? I could point out how to but I guess I'd be breaking some rules. I'm not saying to NOT do it since it may prevent quite a large amount of cheaters from the game, but as result of this we may be banning innocent people that have not cheated at all and are clueless as to why.

It's possible that OPs story is 100% true, but there is no way to prove that.

you said before theres no proof, and indeed there is no definitive proof, but there is a large amount of circumstantial evidence that can indicate that she wasn't the one cheating like the amount of time played (implying main vs alt accounts), the amount of reports made (how clean the account is), the history of ip addresses of the account that was banned, how many hours the other account had, names, timezones, etc. Even if they were playing at the same time can help here.

The banned people getting second chances are for small infractions that lead to a permanent ban. If the ban was for cheating, there is no second chance and I suspect that any accounts flagged as being associated with the cheat account are also not going to be coming back.

that is true, I was just pointing out a lack of judgement/decision making of theirs (indicating they were wrong) if they decide to go back on suspensions.

@d3adst1ck said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

@apos-bell said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

you said before theres no proof, and indeed there is no definitive proof, but there is a large amount of circumstantial evidence that can indicate that she wasn't the one cheating like the amount of time played (implying main vs alt accounts), the amount of reports made (how clean the account is), the history of ip addresses of the account that was banned, how many hours the other account had, names, timezones, etc. Even if they were playing at the same time can help here.

Amount of time played and report frequency/count doesn't really help at all, especially if the "main" account is used for regular play and a secondary account used to cheat. The main account will be clean (close to zero reports) and have more played time than the cheat account. Anyone who was actually cheating are likely doing this already with multiple accounts if their primary is not already banned.

what if the cheat account has also a lot of time played and has mostly played on a different ip address (only once logged in a different one - hers)? thats what I'm implying here with time played and timezones

@d3adst1ck said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

@apos-bell said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

what if the cheat account has also a lot of time played and has mostly played on a different ip address (only once logged in a different one - hers)? thats what I'm implying here with time played and timezones

They slipped up once and forgot to connect their VPN first.

😂😂😂

@d3adst1ck

In the end I still cannot agree with this type of uncontrolled suspension. Just thinking here a bit but it would be much better to flag accounts possible related accounts than just receive the same punishment, i.e. account B is banned, you have account A, but you have logged as B at some point, account A gets flagged as potentially cheater instead of auto banning. Then, through an arbitrary number of flags it would lead to a ban.

@d3adst1ck

I'm not proposing in detail a solution.

Think of players and people they associate with as a graph. The player having value 1, and all players around/connected having values from 0 to 0.999. My "vague" solution is to flag people around/conncted to them potentially for suspension when said person with value 1 is banned, as the value gets added to those edges they would also be banned.

What would trigger a flag that account A and account B are definitely not the same person

It doesn't because its impossible. Unless each account can be tied to a unique type of access account (like government ID) it is truly impossible to know who is the owner of said account.

My suggestion was just merely to help in this situation, which I find unfair.

@apos-bell said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

@d3adst1ck

I'm not proposing in detail a solution.

Think of players and people they associate with as a graph. The player having value 1, and all players around/connected having values from 0 to 0.999. My "vague" solution is to flag people around/conncted to them potentially for suspension when said person with value 1 is banned, as the value gets added to those edges they would also be banned.

What would trigger a flag that account A and account B are definitely not the same person

It doesn't because its impossible. Unless each account can be tied to a unique type of access account (like government ID) it is truly impossible to know who is the owner of said account.

My suggestion was just merely to help in this situation, which I find unfair.

This is most likely not even related to IP address. Do you know what MAC ban is? It's a hardware ban - literally banning your very specific (unique ID) PC components.

The moment an account who got logged from another device, while being MAC banned, that very same moment the same ban was applied to the OPs PC (hardware).

You can't know who owns that other PC. Is it OP, or their "friend".

I mean, theoretically you could, but verifying ownership of that and providing proof is too big of a hustle and time sink, instead of people actually not allowing other people near their own PCs.

Again, if OP wants, they can always go with a legal threat to have their case escalated to higher tiers of support, and insist on further investigation, but I don't wont to encourage this simply because it's 99,99% of failure in specific cases like this.

Just learn the lesson (even though a hard one), and don't make the same mistake again. I'm sorry they had to learn this way, but thinking they'll accomplish anything with even a legal threat - is borderline impossible.

And it's definitely not something that should be discussed in a forum post. I don't understand why mods still didn't lock this post.

@r3vanns said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

@apos-bell said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

@d3adst1ck

I'm not proposing in detail a solution.

Think of players and people they associate with as a graph. The player having value 1, and all players around/connected having values from 0 to 0.999. My "vague" solution is to flag people around/conncted to them potentially for suspension when said person with value 1 is banned, as the value gets added to those edges they would also be banned.

What would trigger a flag that account A and account B are definitely not the same person

It doesn't because its impossible. Unless each account can be tied to a unique type of access account (like government ID) it is truly impossible to know who is the owner of said account.

My suggestion was just merely to help in this situation, which I find unfair.

This is most likely not even related to IP address. Do you know what MAC ban is? It's a hardware ban - literally banning your very specific (unique ID) PC components.

The moment an account who got logged from another device, while being MAC banned, that very same moment the same ban was applied to the OPs PC (hardware).

You can't know who owns that other PC. Is it OP, or their "friend".

I mean, theoretically you could, but verifying ownership of that and providing proof is too big of a hustle and time sink, instead of people actually not allowing other people near their own PCs.

Again, if OP wants, they can always go with a legal threat to have their case escalated to higher tiers of support, and insist on further investigation, but I don't wont to encourage this simply because it's 99,99% of failure in specific cases like this.

Just learn the lesson, and don't make the same mistake again.

I mean, yea I bet the same mistake will never happen. Because she won't play anymore. We have been playing for 4 years, what motivation do you have to go back like this? 5k+ hours

@apos-bell

I mean, yea I bet the same mistake will never happen. Because she won't play anymore. We have been playing for 4 years, what motivation do you have to go back like this? 5k+ hours

Max I can say, and only if we assume OP is not guilty - is buy a new PC, and only after that create a new account, and start all over.

Rest I won't discuss, because everything else falls under ban evasion and 3rd party software, which is bannable, and I DO NOT condone it.

But OP, and everyone else that were in this same situation, can pretty much kiss their accounts goodbye. It's how it is, and it's been like this for years.

@cptn9te said in Issues with Rare Support Team:

I’m a close friend of the person that posted this. I understand what all of you are saying about how there’s no proof and such, it’s her word against theirs. I get that. I’m simply wondering if there’s anything that can be done about this? Will the support team seriously just not do anything? I can vouch for her she never has cheated on this game before it was a simple mistake of allowing someone else to sign in. What can be done to unban her account? She has tons of hours sinked into the game and she loves it, is she seriously just never going to be able to play it again because of a mistake? I for one think that’s very unfair.

Sadly, on the customer support side of things - nothing can be done. And I'm actually speaking this from experience, as I've had plenty of tools at my disposal to verify if a user that contacted me is guilty or not, if they were compromised or not, etc.

The set of tools that CS have at their disposal can do nothing in specific cases like this.

The only way would be legal, and I seriously doubt that your friend is enough financially stable to go this way. Even then, it would be extremely hard to prove their innocence.

This is not about Rare, this is an industry standard when it's about account security, and what can and can't be done. I'm not shilling for Rare here, I couldn't care less.

I'm simply stating the facts, and how it's been for years - I'm sorry about your friend, but support simply can't handle this.

I could even handle cases where an account has changed few hands (contested accounts/account selling), and could verify the original account owner, if they provided the most accurate verification info (creation date, receipts, IPs, original username, etc). Simply because even in such cases, we had all the important data at our disposal, and everything was traceable.

You've got nothing to trace here. Just an already banned account logging in on a different PC device, which has now inherited the same ban for security reasons, which again led to OP's account inheriting the same ban when logging on that same now-freshly-banned PC device.

You can basically define this situation as a quarantine for terminally diseased. And there's no bias and risk chance there. Everything even remotely affected is getting locked up for good. Sadly enough, there's no cure in this situation.

@r3vanns

You can basically define this situation as a quarantine for terminally affected. And there's no bias and risk chance there. Everything even remotely affected is getting locked up for good.

if you think thats fine and ok I don't think theres anything else to discuss here. you're been extremely soulless and genuinely don't seem to consider the possibility of the system's being at fault. :/