Guild Wars 2

I’m SMS locked out of my account but I changed my password before it happened.

How about we let the GM check the guys case rather than behaving like smug kittenes eh? The guy made an excellent case which I feel needs a further check from a GM.

Ellieanna.5027:

You missed the very important part of my post, so I’ll say it again.

We don’t know the whole story.

Somone else claimed that they were innocent in a gold scheme. He was friends with a gold seller. Went to that persons house, logged in his account. Even send gold back and forth. And feels he was banned wrong.

We don’t know the whole story.

The guy you are trying to defend could be lying out of his teeth.
Anet could have found accounts with the same name, birthday, IP use. And banned all of those.

We don’t know the whole story.

You missed literally the first part of the first sentence of my post, so I’ll say it again.

Fermi.2409:

Just taking things at face value

Siphaed.9235:

A better example would be if someone purchased season pass to a football team’s games. The then get banned from the home team stadium for drunken rowdiness that also gets them booted mid-game on the season opener. They would NOT get a refund for any of their additional tickets for the season pass, that is for sure (although they could try to scalp them, illegal as that is).

Yeah, but you’ll still have your tickets; you just can’t use them. You can still sell them on (not necessarily illegal, actually)/give them to friends to do/whatever. You just can’t go in the park yourself.

And I’d say it comes down to how you view accounts. I don’t see an account as a service. An account is an independent thing used by someone to (in this case) play a game.

Siphaed.9235:

Now when they say that you -the player- can get permanently banned from the game, they do mean you -the individual user- can get banned. Which is to say that when you’re caught cheating on one of multiple accounts, that reflects that you -the player user- are a cheater who they do not want playing their game with ANY account. Period.

The thing is, banning accounts from the game is completely fair. I just don’t see banning all of someone’s accounts- essentially banning someone from the game- as a fair thing to do unless all of those have themselves broken the rules or been part of a rule breaking action (like the exploiting I mentioned before). If you’re investigating to see if an account should be banned, it should be judged on the merits of that account unless it was involved in some illicit stuff.

Gode Fridus:

So let’s not pretend that it is the account that is doing something that is not allowed and that other accounts of the same person should not be effected: it is the person behind the account that is doing this.

I’m not pretending that the account is doing something disallowed. I’m saying that someone is doing it on a given account and unless those actions are being used to benefit other accounts only the accounts involved in the rulebreaking should be subject to punishment.

At the end of the day, it’s purely a matter of opinion, though. No one is going to change anyone else’s mind here.

Tyu has informed me that they revoked his access to forums just now, so he cannot see nor reply, if he is logged in anymore.

Yikes that’s pretty bad. Receiving an explanation is the least that they could do.

burntcrispy.4527:

How do you determine which accounts belong to the same user?

Any official word on “this is what we use to identify” will be a big red warning sign for potential cheaters on how to get around it so it won’t happen. Just assume there are dozens of sources of information: Windows GUID, MAC, and install ID (both for Windows and stored to your client settings) to name a few.

burntcrispy.4527:

I am also concerned with the whole, this is final attitude, and not giving users a chance to defend themselves, or even telling them what exactly they are accused of. I am sure you could find in 9 out of 10 users is violating the TOS in some way; half aren’t aware of it or are using something to prevent killing there left mouse button, or software that came with there mouse/keyboard etc.

People regularly break the speed limit too. Sometimes you get unlucky, but I like to think the majority of the time it’s for good reason.

pandachan.4325:

Yikes that’s pretty bad. Receiving an explanation is the least that they could do.

Meh. That’s generally not something that belongs on the forums, honestly; that sort of discussion should be between the banned person and support (although that does also seem to be an issue here…). 99% of the time the person knows what they did, though, so it’s really just a useless exercise.

Fermi.2409:

pandachan.4325:

Yikes that’s pretty bad. Receiving an explanation is the least that they could do.

Meh. That’s generally not something that belongs on the forums, honestly; that sort of discussion should be between the banned person and support (although that does also seem to be an issue here…). 99% of the time the person knows what they did, though, so it’s really just a useless exercise.

In a system, where falsepositives are known to happen, this information should still be available to the person

Fermi.2409:

pandachan.4325:

Yikes that’s pretty bad. Receiving an explanation is the least that they could do.

Meh. That’s generally not something that belongs on the forums, honestly; that sort of discussion should be between the banned person and support (although that does also seem to be an issue here…). 99% of the time the person knows what they did, though, so it’s really just a useless exercise.

Understandable if it were not for the fact that support refuses to give the guy information as to why he was banned. If I suddenly ended up being banned and was told “you know what you did!” while I did nothing at all, you’d bet I’d put a thread on every forum or a post on every medium available to me. I didn’t spend €300+ over the years to end up getting banned.

pandachan.4325:

Understandable if it were not for the fact that support refuses to give the guy information as to why he was banned. If I suddenly ended up being banned and was told “you know what you did!” while I did nothing at all, you’d bet I’d put a thread on every forum or a post on every medium available to me. I didn’t spend €300+ over the years to end up getting banned.

Chris Cleary.8017:

Cheating on 2 of your 9 accounts got all 9 of them banned.

Logging in to an account that was used to cheat is a pretty good reason to suspect one of cheating.

Apparently tyu has been told that all of his tickets will be automatically closed if he opens a new one. It seems that they have taken away any way for him to defend himself

deltaconnected.4859:

pandachan.4325:

Understandable if it were not for the fact that support refuses to give the guy information as to why he was banned. If I suddenly ended up being banned and was told “you know what you did!” while I did nothing at all, you’d bet I’d put a thread on every forum or a post on every medium available to me. I didn’t spend €300+ over the years to end up getting banned.

Chris Cleary.8017:

Cheating on 2 of your 9 accounts got all 9 of them banned.

Logging in to an account that was used to cheat is a pretty good reason to suspect one of cheating.

And he replied that he doesn’t even have 9 accounts. Hence my initial post that this needs further research from a GM. Bluntly removing access from your accounts and ignoring any ticket made is not really respectful.

He bought the game for crying out loud, the least he could receive is some thorough support that isn’t copy pasting a “you were caught cheating” message to everyone asking what they were banned for.

pandachan.4325:

And he replied that he doesn’t even have 9 accounts. Hence my initial post that this needs further research from a GM. Bluntly removing access from your accounts and ignoring any ticket made is not really respectful.

He bought the game for crying out loud, the least he could receive is some thorough support that isn’t copy pasting a “you were caught cheating” message to everyone asking what they were banned for.

Read the rest of the thread, or just my posts. Account sharing makes it nigh impossible to identify who’s account is really who’s. He (maybe unfortunately and maybe unknowingly, we’ll never know) logged in to an account that was used for cheating. This means that he’s now flagged as a cheater. When they decided to ban the person behind the cheating, this banned every account in that “circle”. Some his, some friends, some cheaters, some cheater’s friends. This is why you don’t share accounts.

And since it sounds like this would be the second time the account would be getting reviewed after breaking the “no account sharing” clause in the ToS, I don’t consider Anet’s decision to make it final unfair at all.

pandachan.4325:

deltaconnected.4859:

pandachan.4325:

Understandable if it were not for the fact that support refuses to give the guy information as to why he was banned. If I suddenly ended up being banned and was told “you know what you did!” while I did nothing at all, you’d bet I’d put a thread on every forum or a post on every medium available to me. I didn’t spend €300+ over the years to end up getting banned.

Chris Cleary.8017:

Cheating on 2 of your 9 accounts got all 9 of them banned.

Logging in to an account that was used to cheat is a pretty good reason to suspect one of cheating.

And he replied that he doesn’t even have 9 accounts. Hence my initial post that this needs further research from a GM. Bluntly removing access from your accounts and ignoring any ticket made is not really respectful.

He bought the game for crying out loud, the least he could receive is some thorough support that isn’t copy pasting a “you were caught cheating” message to everyone asking what they were banned for.

People lie. He “claims” to not own 9 accounts. Do you know him personally? Can you actually walk to his house right now, and log in on his computer because you are that good of friends?

Otherwise, it’s just claims. And everyone else really should stay out of it.

Look like from what I understand from that reddit post there are many people share account and some may be cheating. Again share account is against ToS and this good reason why. If you share account with other and some other person cheat then ask for big problem. Summary, cheat against rule and share account against rule. Do one or both and account may get banned.

There is no way to know what this person or person they share account with did. Only they and Anet security know. This problem between that person people that share account and Anet. But technically just share account is against ToS and Anet could ban for this if want to.

Chris Cleary.8017:

tyu.9470:

I am sure you’ll agree that false positives happen EVERY time you do ban waves no matter how much you try to check.

Cheating on 2 of your 9 accounts got all 9 of them banned.

How did you determine that he owned all 9 accounts, and that you didn’t just ban a pile of people? I am still concerned about the whole IP address issue.

Loli Ruri.8307:

Chris Cleary.8017:

tyu.9470:

I am sure you’ll agree that false positives happen EVERY time you do ban waves no matter how much you try to check.

Cheating on 2 of your 9 accounts got all 9 of them banned.

How did you determine that he owned all 9 accounts, and that you didn’t just ban a pile of people? I am still concerned about the whole IP address issue.

They won’t divulge all of that to prevent the botters and hackers from developing methods to get around that.

But if he’s telling the truth, his account sharing with friends is what’s got his account flagged. And well, account sharing is against the TOS so I wouldn’t expect leniency.

Seera.5916:

Loli Ruri.8307:

Chris Cleary.8017:

tyu.9470:

I am sure you’ll agree that false positives happen EVERY time you do ban waves no matter how much you try to check.

Cheating on 2 of your 9 accounts got all 9 of them banned.

How did you determine that he owned all 9 accounts, and that you didn’t just ban a pile of people? I am still concerned about the whole IP address issue.

They won’t divulge all of that to prevent the botters and hackers from developing methods to get around that.

But if he’s telling the truth, his account sharing with friends is what’s got his account flagged. And well, account sharing is against the TOS so I wouldn’t expect leniency.

Um, but you do understand that a computer nor an IP address cannot simply be used on their own to determine the identity of just one single person. This is why the whole idea of banning all associated accounts is stupid, because it’s assuming that they all are one person, because a good number of times, it’s not. ArenaNet are not a bunch of soothsayers. I’m afraid that there may be the slight possibility that one day I could end up being banned for somebody elses actions, if the wrong situation were to arise. I certainly don’t want that, and the idea of FUD ruining my gaming experience, I don’t want that either. Being cold shouldered by customer support, and treated like as if CS is a bunch of soothsayers that have a flawless victory going on, is utter stupid. Computers are not infallible, nor are people. Their policy is proving to be a terrible choice. Why? Let’s consider the whole statement given to those who first appeal, and then are told that they are confident in the ban, only to have it later revealed on reddit that the ban was later reversed. So how were they confident in the first place? Nice copy-paste btw. That message although meant to intimidate actual cheaters, actually hurts legitimate customers. Again, computers and people are not infallible. But we still need to ban cheaters. But the whole banning entire account lists on suspect single ownership is very risky business.

Another thing that really gets under my skin, is the trend for publishers to not report the reason for the ban, other than be vague. Try that in a court, and unless the prosecution is saying the inability to reveal evidence is because of national secrets, the case won’t fly in court. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I hate the whole loophole to deny evidence based upon national secrets. You cannot defend yourself without an idea of what you are dealing with. All you can do is, say all that you know, and then cross your fingers and hope that somebody cares to check further, and be polite. Being polite does encourage somebody to wanna look further. Anyways enough rant, us players can only talk about it, not change anything. Happy gaming to those who can play.

Loli Ruri.8307:

Seera.5916:

Loli Ruri.8307:

Chris Cleary.8017:

tyu.9470:

I am sure you’ll agree that false positives happen EVERY time you do ban waves no matter how much you try to check.

Cheating on 2 of your 9 accounts got all 9 of them banned.

How did you determine that he owned all 9 accounts, and that you didn’t just ban a pile of people? I am still concerned about the whole IP address issue.

They won’t divulge all of that to prevent the botters and hackers from developing methods to get around that.

But if he’s telling the truth, his account sharing with friends is what’s got his account flagged. And well, account sharing is against the TOS so I wouldn’t expect leniency.

Um, but you do understand that a computer nor an IP address cannot simply be used on their own to determine the identity of just one single person. This is why the whole idea of banning all associated accounts is stupid, because it’s assuming that they all are one person, because a good number of times, it’s not. ArenaNet are not a bunch of soothsayers. I’m afraid that there may be the slight possibility that one day I could end up being banned for somebody elses actions, if the wrong situation were to arise. I certainly don’t want that, and the idea of FUD ruining my gaming experience, I don’t want that either. Being cold shouldered by customer support, and treated like as if CS is a bunch of soothsayers that have a flawless victory going on, is utter stupid. Computers are not infallible, nor are people. Their policy is proving to be a terrible choice. Why? Let’s consider the whole statement given to those who first appeal, and then are told that they are confident in the ban, only to have it later revealed on reddit that the ban was later reversed. So how were they confident in the first place? Nice copy-paste btw. That message although meant to intimidate actual cheaters, actually hurts legitimate customers. Again, computers and people are not infallible. But we still need to ban cheaters. But the whole banning entire account lists on suspect single ownership is very risky business.

Another thing that really gets under my skin, is the trend for publishers to not report the reason for the ban, other than be vague. Try that in a court, and unless the prosecution is saying the inability to reveal evidence is because of national secrets, the case won’t fly in court. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I hate the whole loophole to deny evidence based upon national secrets. You cannot defend yourself without an idea of what you are dealing with. All you can do is, say all that you know, and then cross your fingers and hope that somebody cares to check further, and be polite. Being polite does encourage somebody to wanna look further. Anyways enough rant, us players can only talk about it, not change anything. Happy gaming to those who can play.

But there’s no system that’s 100% accurate.

If he’s lying, he’s a cheater and broke the rules. If he’s telling the truth, he’s still broken the rules because he shared accounts.

If you break the rules, you must accept the consequences. And that can include trouble when one of your friends whom you’ve shared accounts with decides to grossly break the rules and get all of their associated accounts banned.

Now, whether ANet decides to unban him is up to them. Depends on whether they believe him or not and what the punishment for account sharing is.

Not always is it a matter of sharing accounts, but rather sharing computers or same IP address. So ya know. I have never let somebody else log into my account. But I have had friends over who have played on my computer, and one of them has a guild wars 2 account. So what now? Are we supposed to scan in our driver’s license and birth certificates? Err no.

Well, he did admit several times that he shared accounts, which is against the ToS/EULA. If something untoward happened because he broke one rule, even if he didn’t break another, consequences can happen.

I imagine it’s difficult to bend the rules for some, and not for others. Maybe those rules are in place precisely to avoid such entanglements. /shrug

Well it’s just that I don’t like rules that are subject to Murphy’s Law of unfair BS, I believe that if ya do something bad, you deserved the ban. But come on, give people a fair go and at least make an attempt to make them feel like they actually had it, when ya review their case.

Ok…said player admits they broke the rules that are subject to account termination. CS Team may or may not determine a different rule, as well, has been broken, also subject to termination. What should the CS Team do? Would it make a difference, if the outcome is the same?

Loli Ruri.8307:

How did you determine that he owned all 9 accounts, and that you didn’t just ban a pile of people? I am still concerned about the whole IP address issue.

Because each of these accounts is linked to another one (A log in to B, B logs in to C, C logs in to D), and somewhere in that chain, one of them cheated. How can Anet know if it’s sharing or 1 person who forgot to swap? They can’t. It’s highly unlikely they’re flagged off of IP or geoIP (bc of mobile); there’s lots of ways to uniquely identify, with varying degree, the installation or user or hardware.

Loli Ruri.8307:

Um, but you do understand that a computer nor an IP address cannot simply be used on their own to determine the identity of just one single person.

No, they can’t. Doesn’t make you any less responsible; what if you lend your car to a roommate who totals it? That’s your deductible and your insurance going up. The “it wasn’t me” argument won’t hold up anywhere, no reason to expect it would here. Any implementation of a local install ID or machine ID or even user SID is more than enough to track “ownership” – it’s unlikely to appear anywhere else in the world (and can very easily be cleared – eg. temporary/expiring/guest users on shared PCs).

Loli Ruri.8307:

I’m afraid that there may be the slight possibility that one day I could end up being banned for somebody elses actions, if the wrong situation were to arise.

Won’t be a problem with somebody else’s actions if you never exchanged any account detail with them, no? Or think of this situation: ‘I left my computer logged in with my account on autoplay. My friend used my account and cheated and now I’m banned’. As has been mentioned by almost everyone here – no account sharing, no problem. The difference between legit and non-legit is indistinguishable without physical presence, which is why these are in the ToS.

Loli Ruri.8307:

Computers are not infallible, nor are people.

Computers won’t be wrong. The implementation might. In this case the implementation caught account sharing dead on so it’s working as intended. Nothing can be done when the user does something to adversely affect it.

Loli Ruri.8307:

Try that in a court, and unless the prosecution is saying the inability to reveal evidence is because of national secrets, the case won’t fly in court.

And what would your case be? That Anet refused to provide you the service after discovering the terms of using it were breached?

Defend or argue all you’d like. User agrees to terms, terms get broken, Anet takes appropriate action. If you look at the 2nd post this was the second time this happened, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they simply didn’t want to deal with this giant sharing mess again now and possibly again in the future.

deltaconnected.
They don’t have to log into your account. They just have to be on the same IP address, and at some point log on while on your computer or laptop. Logs should show that they go home and log in a lot more at home, but it’s a matter of CS actually bothering to check details.

There should be no reason why I should be held responsible for somebody elses actions. And no I would not lend my car out to somebody else, that’s the same as account sharing. What I’m talking about is, basically guilt by association, simply put, they were there for a while, so therefore by proximity, you must be guilty as well. You should check up on the anti-bikie laws here in Australia, and how flawed the logic really is when applied.

Again, IP address has nothing to do with identity. Here’s two reg keys I found by googling that you can use that are available with zero effort:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography\MachineGuid
Your computer logs in to one account, then that same computer logs into another. From where is irrelevant. Anet has no physical presence at this computer, so what do they do? Refer to my example about using a friend’s unlocked PC and account why “it was my friend” won’t fly. By your expectations that cheating account would be unbanned on the sole word of “it was my friend”.
Or perhaps you forgot that the P in PC stands for Personal?

But that’s not the case here. And we can only make judgements based on what we know. And from what we’ve been told, regardless of whether or not he lied, he’s broken the TOS and it’s up to ANet what the punishment is.

ANet will not, nor should they, divulge how it determines which accounts get banned in the cases where a player breaks the rules so much to warrant all accounts being banned. That’s telling the rule breakers what they have to mask in order to get away with it.

deltaconnected.4859:

Again, IP address has nothing to do with identity. Here’s two reg keys I found by googling that you can use that are available with zero effort:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography\MachineGuid
Your computer logs in to one account, then that same computer logs into another. From where is irrelevant. Anet has no physical presence at this computer, so what do they do? Refer to my example about using a friend’s unlocked PC and account why “it was my friend” won’t fly. By your expectations that cheating account would be unbanned on the sole word of “it was my friend”.
Or perhaps you forgot that the P in PC stands for Personal?

So basically you’re saying, tough luck. I can’t treat guests like that. It’s not as if I shared an account, but I should not be held responsible for somebody elses actions, especially if ArenaNet looked at logs and saw they go home and play on their own computer. And what about Internet Cafes? Good grief, the idea of banning by association even if very vague, is just stupid.

Are you missing the part where he said he, and others in the chain, logged into other’s accounts? Used another person’s account to play? Not shared IP addresses, but specifically admitted to sharing accounts? That’s against the ToS/EULA, and one reason is likely it causes a mess when one/some of the accounts that are shared are found to break other ToS/EULA rules.

deltaconnected.4859:

Again, IP address has nothing to do with identity. Here’s two reg keys I found by googling that you can use that are available with zero effort:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Cryptography\MachineGuid
Your computer logs in to one account, then that same computer logs into another. From where is irrelevant. Anet has no physical presence at this computer, so what do they do? Refer to my example about using a friend’s unlocked PC and account why “it was my friend” won’t fly. By your expectations that cheating account would be unbanned on the sole word of “it was my friend”.
Or perhaps you forgot that the P in PC stands for Personal?

With the ability to create multiple user accounts on a computer, Microsoft doesn’t demand one user per computer. Just one computer per key. So Computer GUID isn’t a foolproof one either.

Two teenagers may have to share a computer. One cheats, the other doesn’t. But according to ANet their accounts share MachineGUID key. Yet they don’t share accounts. And could quite possibly even use the same credit card if a parent holds the purse strings for all credit card purchases.

^ this is why the idea of a bulletproof policy of banning all associated accounts is stupid, because there is no real way to determine ownership is the same person.

I’m sure Law Murphy is laughing right now.

Loli Ruri.8307:

^ this is why the idea of a bulletproof policy of banning all associated accounts is stupid, because there is no real way to determine ownership is the same person.

But on the other hand, it could be one person claiming their evil younger brother has an account as well.

I’m sure they use more than one piece of information in determining which accounts get banned and it’s why they allow those who do get banned to appeal their ban. So that the false positives have a chance to prove that they are false positives. As no system is fool proof.

In this day and age the number of teenagers who share computers and play the same computer game and have to share credit cards is probably low enough to not be a huge number of false positives. In which case the risk is much lower than the “reward”.

Loli Ruri.8307:

And what about Internet Cafes? Good grief, the idea of banning by association even if very vague, is just stupid.

Hint: Guest account. It has a predictable SID, and predictable name, making it perfect for cafe’s. Or a guest-equivalent with matching numbering. Oh wait…

Seera.5916:

With the ability to create multiple user accounts on a computer, Microsoft doesn’t demand one user per computer. Just one computer per key. So Computer GUID isn’t a foolproof one either.

deltaconnected.4859:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

Seera.5916:

Two teenagers may have to share a computer. One cheats, the other doesn’t. But according to ANet their accounts share MachineGUID key. Yet they don’t share accounts. And could quite possibly even use the same credit card if a parent holds the purse strings for all credit card purchases.

That’s the unfortunate part. If they don’t have their own accounts (and this is assuming SID is tracked), then saying ‘my brother cheated plz unban’ won’t cut it. For all intents and purposes you are the same person – otherwise no one will be banned ever.

You know its the internet “Grain of Salt” and all, and its easier to just assume that anyone claiming in contrast must be guilty. However, in these circumstances assuming guilt is flawed anyway as only Anet and the given User really have the facts.

Now while I cannot/will not assume this persons guilt or innocence reading threads like this does make me (and I’m sure others) kind of concerned with what safeguards Anet actually uses for those of us users who have several computers networked and all of course showing the same IP to the outside world as if they were one single computer.

My household for instance has 3 PC’s and 6 accounts (with four different unique registered users), but at any given time depending on other household needs (such as homework for example) any of these 6 accounts will access any of the 3 PC’s.

We also usually play with other family members outside of our home that on occasion they may log in to their own account at my house (or vice versa if visiting them).

Now account sharing alone is not so easy to prove, and you cannot just assume that that is the case just because multiple accounts reflect the same IP address.

However, as a hypothetical lets say someone visits my parents house a few times a month from out of town and them having no idea what an MMO is other than a video game let the person use their PC to play GW2, and they for whatever reason decide to cheat while playing.

What keeps my children who spend the weekend every so many weeks at my parents (their grandparents) house from getting on one of those PC’s there to play GW2 with me for a short bit from now being looked at as an account that is somehow linked to this other past guest of my parents?

Lets say in this scenario whatever allowed this person to cheat was no longer present and my children’s accounts are still squeaky clean, but now since they show as having accessed their account from a PC that a possible cheater used they are guilty despite having a squeaky clean account.

However, as their accounts have also accessed the game from home the rest of our accounts which are also squeaky clean get drawn into the loop only because their accounts were logged into a PC at my parents house where one of their guests played GW2 using his own account had cheated.

It just cannot be that simple, and imagine what implications that type of policy would have on Anet with so many people in various parts of the world logging on from coffee shops, internet cafes, book stores, campuses, etc, etc, etc.

Michael Fejervary.8576:

You know its the internet “Grain of Salt” and all, and its easier to just assume that anyone claiming in contrast must be guilty. However, in these circumstances assuming guilt is flawed anyway as only Anet and the given User really have the facts.

Now while I cannot/will not assume this persons guilt or innocence reading threads like this does make me (and I’m sure others) kind of concerned with what safeguards Anet actually uses for those of us users who have several computers networked and all of course showing the same IP to the outside world as if they were one single computer.

My household for instance has 3 PC’s and 6 accounts (with four different unique registered users), but at any given time depending on other household needs (such as homework for example) any of these 6 accounts will access any of the 3 PC’s.

We also usually play with other family members outside of our home that on occasion they may log in to their own account at my house (or vice versa if visiting them).

Now account sharing alone is not so easy to prove, and you cannot just assume that that is the case just because multiple accounts reflect the same IP address.

However, as a hypothetical lets say someone visits my parents house a few times a month from out of town and them having no idea what an MMO is other than a video game let the person use their PC to play GW2, and they for whatever reason decide to cheat while playing.

What keeps my children who spend the weekend every so many weeks at my parents (their grandparents) house from getting on one of those PC’s there to play GW2 with me for a short bit from now being looked at as an account that is somehow linked to this other past guest of my parents?

Lets say in this scenario whatever allowed this person to cheat was no longer present and my children’s accounts are still squeaky clean, but now since they show as having accessed their account from a PC that a possible cheater used they are guilty despite having a squeaky clean account.

However, as their accounts have also accessed the game from home the rest of our accounts which are also squeaky clean get drawn into the loop only because their accounts were logged into a PC at my parents house where one of their guests played GW2 using his own account had cheated.

It just cannot be that simple, and imagine what implications that type of policy would have on Anet with so many people in various parts of the world logging on from coffee shops, internet cafes, book stores, campuses, etc, etc, etc.

In the case of tyu he’s saying, I didn’t break Rule A, but I broke Rule B. So regardless of whether he’s telling the truth or not, he’s broke at least one rule and deserves a fitting punishment.

Chris Cleary.8017:

This is correct. However, if you are running multiple accounts and choose to cheat on one of them, we are going to close all of them. This ban wave had nothing to do with multi-boxing, but likely also impacted players that owned multiple accounts.

Well this is good to hear, especially since your GMs have multi-boxers bullied into being terrified to use the game accounts they play (and paid for) in good faith.

I also hope this policy of banning every account a player holds, independent of violations also includes barring that player from purchasing the game again. After all, that would send a very wrong message.

I doubt ArenaNet has the capability or desire to send someone’s credentials to every retail store, and force them to check each prospective customer’s credentials to see if they match up to some ‘blacklist’. Anyone can purchase the game, as long as they meet the retail establishment’s criteria.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I doubt ArenaNet has the capability or desire to send someone’s credentials to every retail store, and force them to check each prospective customer’s credentials to see if they match up to some ‘blacklist’. Anyone can purchase the game, as long as they meet the retail establishment’s criteria.

That’s just a silly interpretation. Permitting a user to buy the game again using the same name/payment information and IP. There’s no need for you to obfuscate the premise.

Permitting? How is ArenaNet to stop someone from purchasing the game outside their site? I’m not sure they could even do it on their site. I’m sure one could access the site from one’s phone, and many people have more than one credit card/use one-time-use credit cards. Should they revoke the ability to purchase from retail establishments for everyone, because of a few bad apples?

Just seems like a difficult-to-implement idea to me. To me. Ymmv.

Chris Cleary.8017:

sirsquishy.8531:

This is their stance on Multiboxing, and has been since Day 1 as far as I’m concerned.

Chances are if you are multiboxing, whatever application you used to launch GW2 multiple times is getting flagged right now. This is something that the GW2 team needs to look into, and give community feedback on.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Policy-3rd-Party-Programs-Multi-Boxing-Macros/first#post1532762

Dual- or Multi-Boxing

You may use more than one account at the same time.
You may use more than one computer at the same time.
You must be actively playing on each account.
And as stated above, you may not program your keyboard to perform functions on more than one account at a time.
a. For example, if you press W on your keyboard to move forward, a single character on a single account should move forward. The keystroke or mouse click should not perform functions on more than one account.

This is correct. However, if you are running multiple accounts and choose to cheat on one of them, we are going to close all of them. This ban wave had nothing to do with multi-boxing, but likely also impacted players that owned multiple accounts.

If anyone is cheating I hope you are closing all of their accounts. It does nothing but ruin the game for the other decent players.

I got soo sick of the WvW bot hacks (Cliff Jumping, Flying, going under ground to keep cap) that I stopped playing WvW months ago.

I think that Anet needs to give 100% absolute feedback to the users they ban with server side logs stating what they did. It wont prevent them from coming on the forums, but it may help those that are hit by ban waves that did nothing wrong (such as running linux, you guys have banned quite a few running Linux lol).

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Permitting? How is ArenaNet to stop someone from purchasing the game outside their site? I’m not sure they could even do it on their site. I’m sure one could access the site from one’s phone, and many people have more than one credit card/use one-time-use credit cards. Should they revoke the ability to purchase from retail establishments for everyone, because of a few bad apples?

Just seems like a difficult-to-implement idea to me. To me. Ymmv.

I’ll attempt to explain this once.

In this example, Chris says that if the user running multiple accounts cheats on just one of them, all are forfeit. I am fine with that. As long as the player is not permitted access again simply for paying. If Anet allows the user to whip out his credit card, buy another copy of the game and start all over, then having the non-cheating accounts banned is hypocritical to allowing them to purchase access again.

You need to let go of your perception of what you think I’m saying. It’s wrong.

I think there might be a small point you’re missing:

Tyu did not share his account. People shared their accounts WITH HIM. This makes a huge difference.

Imagine a friend asks you to just log into the game for his/her dailies for a few days while they are away. You accept and help them out. New thing you know your main account is banned.

This is way too harsh! You catch a cheat? You can the account. You don’t ban all accounts that were recently played from that IP! I’ve worked at a game publisher before and this is a ridiculous policy to have. Imagine this IP was in a internet cafe or a PC bang. You’d be banning random people’s accounts. Or in this case someone who’s infractions are little to none.

I urge you to reconsider your stance here and simply ban the accounts you detected the cheats.

Inangelion.8645:

I think there might be a small point you’re missing:

Tyu did not share his account. People shared their accounts WITH HIM. This makes a huge difference.

Imagine a friend asks you to just log into the game for his/her dailies for a few days while they are away. You accept and help them out. New thing you know your main account is banned.

This is way too harsh! You catch a cheat? You can the account. You don’t ban all accounts that were recently played from that IP! I’ve worked at a game publisher before and this is a ridiculous policy to have. Imagine this IP was in a internet cafe or a PC bang. You’d be banning random people’s accounts. Or in this case someone who’s infractions are little to none.

I urge you to reconsider your stance here and simply ban the accounts you detected the cheats.

I don’t presume to know what’s going on with this specific user. What we do know, is that Anet’s game security lead has publicly declared this user as a cheater and that these 9 accounts belong to him. Gaile has said these bans were due to a specific cheat program.

Not much can be done if this is the case. Innocent or not. My concern with reading this thread was seeing the multi-boxing issue brought up and what (if any) association to multi-boxing there might be. Chris says it’s not a multi-boxing issue, so I’m not personally invested in this beyond the “ban all the accounts owned by the player” stance that I disagree with.

Fermi.2409:

Even if someone is cheating with 2 accounts it seems ridiculous to me to ban everything of theirs.

Imagine if someone had 10 books. 8 were purchased, 2 were stolen. The police go in and take away all 10 books. It just doesn’t seem right imo

If he stole those 2 books from the same bookstore he bought the other 8, you can be sure they won’t be allowing him to shop in there ever again.

Fermi.2409:

Qugi.2653:

If someone cheat on 1 or 2 account might cheat in future on other account.

So now you’re looking to punish people for what they might do? What’s next, punishing thought crime?

Two accounts violated the rules; they should be punished. However, the rest have done nothing wrong by Gaile’s own admission. How is it fair to punish those accounts for something they haven’t even done?

Because it’s not the accounts that are being punished, but their users.

Fermi.2409:

And, while I’m sure this has been considered, they may not even be the dude’s accounts.

Perhaps – but it’s exactly to avoid problems like that that no account sharing rule exists. If you do allow someone else to log into your account, you are running a risk of getting it banned if that other user gets flagged.

Fermi.2409:

The ToS are agreed to on a per account basis; how can they be applied across multiple accounts?

It’s not your account that agrees to ToS. The agreement is between Anet and you.

Fermi.2409:

Not that they’d even be able to get you for account sharing unless you’re a moron and admit to it ingame or the login location of the account bounces around the country at a rate faster then it’s possible to travel and they have some reason to look at it.

Well, he admitted to it on forums, so…
But that’s besides the fact. Since account sharing is illegal, Anet can ban every account the same person logged to without special considerations. After all, these accounts either belong to that user, or are shared which is an offense as well.

Loli Ruri.8307:

Chris Cleary.8017:

tyu.9470:

I am sure you’ll agree that false positives happen EVERY time you do ban waves no matter how much you try to check.

Cheating on 2 of your 9 accounts got all 9 of them banned.

How did you determine that he owned all 9 accounts, and that you didn’t just ban a pile of people? I am still concerned about the whole IP address issue.

From what i understand, they determined that one person (let’s call that person X) used accounts from the A group, and logged to an account from the B group. They also determined, that a person (let’s call that one person Y) used accounts
from the C group, and also logged to an account from the B group. And since account sharing is illegal, that means they can freely assume that X, Y, and Z (the owner of accounts from the B group) are the same person.
Player X was found cheating. By extension, that means players Y and Z are also cheating (since to Anet they are the same person). Or, they are guilty of account sharing, which is also a bannable offense (even if rarely persecuted on its own).

How they determine that specifically? I doubt they will say that, as every method they could use is flawed, and can (and will, if known) be circumvented. On the other hand, i doubt they use only one method, for exactly that reason.

Moral of the story? Don’t let other people to log into your accounts, and don’t log to other people’s accounts. And if you happen to use the same computer (or, even worse, computer and account) as another person, you should be doubly careful, as their behaviour may reflect on you as well.

So, not only don’t cheat or account share, but also don’t let your roommates do that.

Firebaall.5127:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Permitting? How is ArenaNet to stop someone from purchasing the game outside their site? I’m not sure they could even do it on their site. I’m sure one could access the site from one’s phone, and many people have more than one credit card/use one-time-use credit cards. Should they revoke the ability to purchase from retail establishments for everyone, because of a few bad apples?

Just seems like a difficult-to-implement idea to me. To me. Ymmv.

I’ll attempt to explain this once.

In this example, Chris says that if the user running multiple accounts cheats on just one of them, all are forfeit. I am fine with that. As long as the player is not permitted access again simply for paying. If Anet allows the user to whip out his credit card, buy another copy of the game and start all over, then having the non-cheating accounts banned is hypocritical to allowing them to purchase access again.

You need to let go of your perception of what you think I’m saying. It’s wrong.

No problem. ArenaNet doesn’t sell to banned user from site. How does ArenaNet keep said user from purchasing the game from another site? A retail store? From their own site using another name?

I understand what you are saying; I just don’t think it’s viable.

It’s really a moot point, though. They can not and thus, will not, enact such a policy, as they have no way to police anyone outside their own website.

sirsquishy.8531:

I think that Anet needs to give 100% absolute feedback to the users they ban with server side logs stating what they did. It wont prevent them from coming on the forums, but it may help those that are hit by ban waves that did nothing wrong (such as running linux, you guys have banned quite a few running Linux lol).

This is possibly the worst idea I’ve heard (sorry). It would be nice for every user except the most important one – the developer of the cheats. Let’s say as this developer you run 4-5 $10 or F2P accounts to test various file or runtime mods. By doing this you’ve just learned which account was caught and which method tripped the security alarm, and made future cheats undetectable until Anet can figure out how to detect the next method used. Between kernel drivers and dll overrides, there’s no winning this battle.

This is also why every account tied to the “collection” of the perceived owner has to go no matter what; doing anything else is anti-cheat suicide. Will it catch people who legitimately share PCs at home (not internet cafes – look up determining user permissions)? No doubt. But there is no alternative. You only log in to your account from places you trust absolutely. Otherwise you accept the inherent security risk and it’s no different. Would you log into your banking site on someone elses PC? Same applies here.

Inangelion.8645:

I think there might be a small point you’re missing:

Tyu did not share his account. People shared their accounts WITH HIM. This makes a huge difference.

Look at his reddit posts. He logged into her account, she logged in to his.

Inangelion.8645:

This is way too harsh! You catch a cheat? You can the account. You don’t ban all accounts that were recently played from that IP! I’ve worked at a game publisher before and this is a ridiculous policy to have. Imagine this IP was in a internet cafe or a PC bang. You’d be banning random people’s accounts. Or in this case someone who’s infractions are little to none.

Not only does this help the cheat developer immensely, as someone who worked at a publisher I expect you to know that there’s a hundred other ways to uniquely track someone that isn’t with IP. And not just what’s mentioned in this thread. Unless you never worked on the security aspect in which case it has no meaning here.

Before anyone suggests about sending in ID or anything like that; Anet has no reference to trust because you never sent in ID before. Meaning you could play the ‘evil twins’ argument as a single person then borrow your neighbour’s brother’s IDs (for a price I’m sure) to pass off as two people and Anet wouldn’t be able to tell.

Inangelion.8645:

I think there might be a small point you’re missing:

Tyu did not share his account. People shared their accounts WITH HIM. This makes a huge difference.

There was a link to Tyu reddit post that disappear on this forum. But he admit he also share his account on his reddit post. Here is a quote. I will not link it because maybe Anet do not want it here and why it deleted but you can find on Reddit.

I let a friend log my account – and i log on hers for only a few hours in total lifetime.

In the reddit thread Tyu talk about many people log in to each other account and it get confusing but he also said like quote that he let other log in to his. Seem like several people share account and it turn in to mess.

deltaconnected.4859:

Not only does this help the cheat developer immensely, as someone who worked at a publisher I expect you to know that there’s a hundred other ways to uniquely track someone that isn’t with IP. And not just what’s mentioned in this thread. Unless you never worked on the security aspect in which case it has no meaning here.

You are assuming things here. I’m a developer and did work on security aspect a few very public software projects.

In this particular case, no, there aren’t “hundred other ways to uniquely track somone”. You cannot reliably track people, you can track accounts, network endpoints and computers. Who is using the said computer is for the most part unknown to the tracker (unless you get into some crazy stuff like turning on webcams and running face recog software on the captured images ^^).

Inangelion.8645:

You are assuming things here. I’m a developer and did work on security aspect a few very public software projects.

In this particular case, no, there aren’t “hundred other ways to uniquely track somone”. You cannot reliably track people, you can track accounts, network endpoints and computers. Who is using the said computer is for the most part unknown to the tracker (unless you get into some crazy stuff like turning on webcams and running face recog software on the captured images ^^).

Good. That means we both agree that “someone” in this context of account credentials isn’t a real life person, but rather the keyboard that’s used to enter them. Trying to argue otherwise, as was stated, would be arguing “my twin used my PC while I was gone” which won’t work irl or here.

So I have to ask; knowing that telling the cheat developer which account was banned tells him extremely valuable information about the cheat detection deployed, why would you not ban every account associated with this instance of cheating?

Inangelion.8645:

I think there might be a small point you’re missing:

Tyu did not share his account. People shared their accounts WITH HIM. This makes a huge difference.

Imagine a friend asks you to just log into the game for his/her dailies for a few days while they are away. You accept and help them out. New thing you know your main account is banned.

This is way too harsh! You catch a cheat? You can the account. You don’t ban all accounts that were recently played from that IP! I’ve worked at a game publisher before and this is a ridiculous policy to have. Imagine this IP was in a internet cafe or a PC bang. You’d be banning random people’s accounts. Or in this case someone who’s infractions are little to none.

I urge you to reconsider your stance here and simply ban the accounts you detected the cheats.

Why are you so intent on defending cheaters?

If someone has 10 accounts and has been caught cheating on one there’s a good chance his cheating on the other nine hasn’t been detected yet .. BAN THEM ALL is a perfectly reasonable policy.