Possible Ban For No Reason??

[n0se]

UPDATE: I am in communication game support staff over on their discord and I will post updates below as I learn more.

I was playing this game off of a shared family library list and everything was working just fine.
Suddenly one morning I went to play the game and I got a message I couldn't participate in leaderboards but could still play the game. I also had issues with friends joining me when I was hosting the session, but I can join on them without any issue.

After doing some research and reading a lot of forums I ran into a recurring theme....I was shadow banned for no reason.

I noticed that when I went from playing online to playing singleplayer when my friends were offline most of my money would disappear and my vehicle I was last using would be completely damaged and I would be out of fuel. Waiting and then joining back on them when they came back online did not fix anything. A few days after this started is when that message popped up and my friends couldn't join me if I tried to host.

If this was actually a shadow ban, then that isn't good. I have 1 game installed that has mods in it (Fast Food Simulator) and those mods should not have ANYTHING to do with this game. Why was I banned for absolutely no reason?

If this was a shadow ban and they refuse to fix it, then that means they would be involved in deceptive practices such as the thought that I was shadow banned for not buying my own copy. I was going to buy a copy the day I got banned, but this now puts major trust issues into my head and I cannot leave a review about this on Steam unless I buy a copy of the game.

Players beware....bans are random and without reason.

[Pheex]

The leaderboards not connecting is normal. It happens to everyone.

And you should post something like this with the owner's account so people can verify your claim. Posting something like this without the actual game tied to the poster's account just makes you look like a troll.

[Freyar]

This sounds like a connectivity issue, not a ban to me.

Quite a conclusive leap there.

[Umbreawesome]

I can confirm this is an issue with connection. Have this every now and again and it just means I'm flying solo for a few minutes until the game retries and connects to the server again. Usually only takes a couple of minutes to fix itself.

[A-Space-Turkey]

Buy the game and listen to feedback. Problem solved.

[n0se]

Well there is nothing official talking about this. It's just on forums and reddit with other players, so the only information I have to go on is based off what was mentioned in those locations and the common thought was a ban.

UPDATE: I am in communication with game support on their discord server and this is what they said,
"There is no such shadow banning system. The only system that exists is a cheat detection system for players who give themselves money or use other external clients to cheat. I am not aware of this system telling the user when they are banned. I believe the message you are seeing has to do with internet not being connected. If you launch the game with no internet, it will tell you that leaderboards are not available (because they're a remote server), which would also mean you cannot play online. Do you have or could you get a screenshot of the message? I could confirm this is the case."

I will not name drop the support staff I am talking to for their privacy, but if they give me permission to include their name in this topic I will add it as well. Just trying to respect their privacy since it is their discord username.

As for the posting under the game owners account....that is not possible at this time. They live on the west coast and I live in rural Illinois, so that's not exactly an easy thing to do. It is more hassle than is fair to ask of them.

[TheSkera]

Youll have to write here with the account that owns the game i think.

[n0se]

Originally posted by TheSkera:

Youll have to write here with the account that owns the game i think.

You clearly didn't read my last post where I mentioned the account that owns the game lives on the west coast and I live in Illinois. I cannot hijack their account away from them until this is resolved. That means they cannot play any games because I would be in their steam account. I also cannot do the tests that support requests if I am not logged into the account that has the issue.

Also, this is not a SUPPORT forum, this is general discussion. The point behind this topic is to collect information and hopefully see if somebody else has this problem so I can present more information to the game support team to help them figure out what is going on, especially if I found an isolated bug.

[MrAxebane]

yeah, every so often I get that message "you cannot participate in leaderboards etc." and I think it just means that the game couldn't contact the authentication server. Just play anyway if you aren't on the leaderboards anyway, or wait a few minutes and try again.

It's likely happening because a bunch of new players are finding the game recently, so the authentication server is probably just overloaded from time to time. You can still play, you just aren't competing on the leaderboard global times and stuff in the meantime.

[dctoe_US]

Originally posted by n0se:

Also, this is not a SUPPORT forum, this is general discussion. The point behind this topic is to collect information and hopefully see if somebody else has this problem so I can present more information to the game support team to help them figure out what is going on, especially if I found an isolated bug.

It is not a support forum, but YOU CHOSE to post here. And then what? Riff on other people who include their thoughts? Although your original [wrong] ACCUSATION... was of some sort of "ban." Complete with the "beware" part. Would I be going out on a limb to suggest that you have had this problem elsewhere? And if so... why do you think?

[SpreadsheetSaysNya]

Sometimes the leaderboard server goes down too.