DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME (G1 SUPPORT IS ♥♥♥♥)

[Vegas]

APB might be a fun game, but if you are unlucky, you might get banned at one point - AND IF YOU EVER GET BANNED, THERE IS NO WAY BACK. The GamersFirst customer support is NON-EXISTANT.

Here's my story:

So I've gotten banned about 2 years ago on my account worth about 200-300 USD.

Never cheated, hacked or used any other third-party program.

I was not given proof of it (since there was none, because I never cheated) and I was not allowed to defend myself.

It was obviously a false-positive detection done by Punkbuster.

About 7000 G1-credits were removed of my account with the ban + the 20000 g1-credits I spent.

Rank was R168, Gold, been playing this game since the beta (even during the RTW times, if anyone remembers - that was reaaaaally long ago).

Most of the credits were spent about 1-2 weeks before the ban took place.

Why would someone spend this amount of money on a FREE-TO-PLAY-GAME if he is cheating? Right. Makes no sense. If you want to cheat, you probably do it on a new free account, not on a highly-ranked gold account (which I've been using since the BETA of APB) with credits and items worth 300 USD.

Since I knew I was legit, not cheating, not hacking, nothing of that sort, I went through my list of running programs and found the reason for Punkbuster detecting a false-positive: The overlay of TeamSpeak 3 (used to communicate with friends while playing) - the overlay shows you who is in your TS-room and who is currently speaking (useful if you have a lot of new people in your room).

Who would have thought that Punkbuster would detect this as a hack? I didn't. But it does, probably due to it being an overlay.

Okay. So this was in late 2012. My account is still banned, all my tickets and messages to the G1-support and the G1-admins were ignored and closed. (About 10+ messages over a period of 2-3 months)

I tried to contact G1 again after 1 year - same automatic reply - blablabla, third party tools, perma ban, blabla. No matter what you say, no matter if it's Punkbuster's fault, not yours, if you get auto-banned, there's no going back. I tried to contact the support again and again, every 3-6 months, nothing has changed.

This anti-hack ♥♥♥♥ still is a known issue, as Punkbuster was/is used in other games (DayZ, Battlefield-Series, etc.) many users have gotten automatically banned or blocked because of the teamspeak 3 overlay. If you search on google for teamspeak 3 overlay punkbuster you will find tons of results. So I even told the support about this issue back then, but yeah, nothing has changed.

Full message (they obviously never read the I-AM-INNOCENT-GO-FIX-YOUR-ANTIHACK-part): "Thank you for contacting Gamers First Customer Support. We regret to inform you that your account has been permanently suspended.

Someone with access to this account was observed performing an inappropriate activity which violates our posted Terms of Service policy. This account has been permanently closed due to behavior contrary to the policies of our Terms of Service. This account will not be unblocked and all current/future tickets will be closed with no further action taken.

The GamersFirst support team is committed to preserving the integrity and fairness of the game for all players."


TL;DR; Teamspeak 3 overlay is not a cheat but Punkbuster detects it as one - resulting in an auto-ban (at least in 2012 - don't know about today). G1 support regarding false bans is non-existant - you will never get unbanned even if it is a known issue of false-positive detection. I've been waiting 2 years.The support will not read your tickets when your account is banned. All you get is an automatic response.

So do not waste your time or money on GamersFirst' games or services, you will regret it - it took me hundreds of USD and hundreds of hours of playtime to learn. Gosh. Most of you don't even know what RTW means - the original developers of this game that went bankrupt and sold it to G1, I've been playing this game actively since then. But who cares.

Cheers.

[TheBlackBuddhaOfZen]

*Didn't Read* LOL

[Vegas]

TL;DR: TL;DR: You spent money on this game? Good luck. You didn't yet? Don't do it.

[TheBlackBuddhaOfZen]

Originally posted by Vegas:

TL;DR: TL;DR: You spent money on this game? Good luck. You didn't yet? Don't do it.

I've spent money on this game, and I haven't been banned. I've never had an issue with TS 3's Overlay either.

[Vegas]

Originally posted by Mr.Hentai:

Originally posted by Vegas:

TL;DR: TL;DR: You spent money on this game? Good luck. You didn't yet? Don't do it.

I've spent money on this game, and I haven't been banned. I've never had an issue with TS 3's Overlay either.

Yeah, good luck.
Take 2 seconds to search on google and you'll find thousands of players of different Punkbuster-games who did, just like me. Bad luck that G1-support is non-existant tho, I know other companies that would have taken the time to look into an issue and not just ignoring it and closing all tickets.

[TheBlackBuddhaOfZen]

Originally posted by Vegas:

Originally posted by Mr.Hentai:

I've spent money on this game, and I haven't been banned. I've never had an issue with TS 3's Overlay either.

Yeah, good luck.
Take 2 seconds to search on google and you'll find thousands of players of different Punkbuster-games who did, just like me. Bad luck that G1-support is non-existant tho, I know other companies that would have taken the time to look into an issue and not just ignoring it and closing all tickets.

Have you contacted EveBalance? the creators of PunkBuster? They are the ones who do the Un-banning if you can prove them that the ban was unjust.

[Vegas]

Originally posted by Mr.Hentai:

Originally posted by Vegas:

Yeah, good luck.
Take 2 seconds to search on google and you'll find thousands of players of different Punkbuster-games who did, just like me. Bad luck that G1-support is non-existant tho, I know other companies that would have taken the time to look into an issue and not just ignoring it and closing all tickets.

Have you contacted EveBalance? the creators of PunkBuster? They are the ones who do the Un-banning if you can prove them that the ban was unjust.

I've never been told by G1-staff or support to do that, or even that I could do that, thanks. I contacted them just now.

[PurpleLizard]

With the new anti-cheat this is not a problem. At least with this system I have never heard of an incorrect ban! I played this game while it was just out over a year of 4/5 back and bans where trown like hot buns in a bakery!

[What is your ip]

I would be making some phone calls. Or showing up to someomes office or house. That kinda money into a game i would not sit there and do nothing.

[DemonMithos]

i also had a bad experience with support.. hate em

[Vegas]

Originally posted by What is your ip:

I would be making some phone calls. Or showing up to someomes office or house. That kinda money into a game i would not sit there and do nothing.

Finding actual info about gamersfirst is hard, I couldn't find a phone number to call or address to go. G1 belongs to K2 Networks, which doesn't make things easier either.
Even filed a complaint via BBB (better business bureau) 2 years ago for them to either unban me, or prove that I actually cheated or refund me my money if they can't unban me or prove that I was cheating (because I know they couldn't prove that I'm a cheater, because I NEVER CHEATED - easy as that). It didn't touch them. They didn't care.

Best part is "This account will not be unblocked and all current/future tickets will be closed with no further action taken." - in other words: "♥♥♥♥ you, we're not going to do ♥♥♥♥, you're not getting unbanned - so gtfo."

[Athens]

Originally posted by Vegas:

Someone with access to this account was observed performing an inappropriate activity which violates our posted Terms of Service policy.

As this little snip shows , the reason for the ban is not 3rd party software such as your assumed faulty TS3 overlay.

You are building a strawman on the top of a mistake on your part.

[Vegas]

Originally posted by Athens:

Originally posted by Vegas:

Someone with access to this account was observed performing an inappropriate activity which violates our posted Terms of Service policy.

As this little snip shows , the reason for the ban is not 3rd party software such as your assumed faulty TS3 overlay.

You are building a strawman on the top of a mistake on your part.

Well, as I've said in my previous posts I have contacted them tons of times. I just noticed now that this auto-reply was different from the other "We regret to inform you that this account has been closed, as someone with access to this account was observed using third-party tool which violates our posted Terms of Service policy. This account will not be unblocked and all current/future tickets will be closed and no further action will be taken on this account."

^This was the reply to my first ticket regarding this ban: on Dec 01, 2012 by "Pison".

So the latest reply pretty much proves that they're unsure about why the account was banned, or that they don't read the unban requests at all.

This quote is simply their way to keep themselves out of trouble incase someone who did not cheat (like me) gets banned for cheating or anything else. By saying someone else could have cheated or behaved wrong on my account ("someone with access to this account was observed") and not providing me with any information regarding the ban, as in HWID, IP or IP range (country?), approx. time, anything of that sort (due to obvious reasons of not disclosing any information about their users) - they can just pretend that my account got hacked and someone used it to cheat on this game.
But then again I'm pretty sure I didn't get hacked. And if so, they could have noticed due to different IP, HWID and probably even different country when the third-party-tools were detected and then simply blocked the account, inform me about someone gaining access to it, and forcing me to prove that I am the original owner of the account. But as I said, I doubt I got hacked (never got hacked before, or after) - especially hacked on a game that is free-to-play, on my account worth 300 usd with 7000 gcoins on it, instead of spending the gcoins or transferring the items, simply to cheat on it and get it banned? Hell no. If someone would want to cheat on this game, he would probably just create a free account and cheats on it. And if he gets banned? Create a new free account and cheat on that one. And so on. But why hack an account worth this much to get it banned within like 12 hours? I was playing a couple of hours every day, so I would have noticed if someone gained access to my account. Also the same account was used for steam etc. and no other game or account was effected.

To get back to the point: If you search on google for ts3 overlay punkbuster problems, you will find a couple hundreds/thousands of links, due to this being a known issue among punkbuster users. It seems like you don't get auto-banned on every game (at least not in 2014 on dayZ), but I'm pretty sure I got auto-banned for that in 2012.

[Athens]

Well we could theory craft to our hearts content why you recieved a ban since you are nearly clueless as to why it happened.
The latest reply is a simple automated reply to remind you of their intention to give you automated replys in the future following the reply by Pison in 2012. It's not a discrepency in their reason for why you were removed from the game.

The best you can hope for in this situation is an e-mail giving you another chance and a very simple warning that you should in loose terms "reformat your PC or be prepared to accept the chances of a reban".

2 years after the fact is hardly a timely attempt to correct a mistake or gather clarification and I would tell you to move along given the chance. Your attempt to ♥♥♥♥-talk the game and those associated with it in this post will not help matters if they locate it.

Good Luck and good day.

[Etsukoo ゲームの王]

If you do get banned by ff your screwed if it's just a gm ban you can contact the support. And they will try to help you maybe not on the best way but atleast they try. Maybe u could ask the forums of apb for more details. I have no idea.

[JP11]

Originally posted by Athens:

2 years after the fact is hardly a timely attempt to correct a mistake or gather clarification and I would tell you to move along given the chance. Your attempt to ♥♥♥♥-talk the game and those associated with it in this post will not help matters if they locate it.

It's not that I tried to solve this after 2 years, as stated in the original post:

"So this was in late 2012. My account is still banned, all my tickets and messages to the G1-support and the G1-admins were ignored and closed. (About 10+ messages over a period of 2-3 months)

I tried to contact G1 again after 1 year - same automatic reply - blablabla, third party tools, perma ban, blabla. No matter what you say, no matter if it's Punkbuster's fault, not yours, if you get auto-banned, there's no going back. I tried to contact the support again and again, every 3-6 months, nothing has changed."

Saying "you waited 2 years to solve this" is wrong. Tried to solve this all the time SINCE the ban, as also stated in my other posts (by contacting the admins on the g1 forums, support tickets, BBB, etc.)

When your account is blocked, it also gets blocked on their other services, so if you're creating a new account to access the forums and PM them regarding the false-ban, they simply block/ban that one, too. Without giving 2 ♥♥♥♥♥ about the appeal. And if you contact them via support ticket, they'll block your E-Mail and add it to the ignore-list. They just block you from everything, so you're unable to contact them and get this solved. There's no way a company of this size should be allowed to do this.

It's just that this has never been solved and will probably never be solved. Therefore people who are thinking about playing this game or even investing money in it - don't do it. If your account ever gets falsely blocked for whatever reason (as you won't be told why your account was blocked) and you're in need of g1 support to get it unblocked - you won't get it unblocked. Even if you spend hundreds of USD and thousands of hours on it. They don't care. Noone should support their behaviour by giving them money or playing their games until this is changed. This is an issue that has to be addressed.