Many players are annoyed when their accounts are banned in video games. If you then submit a complaint, you will punch the gaming companies like Activision Blizzard on deaf ears: the spell remains. For safety reasons, the details remain closely. There is no way to object. Case closed. But a user of Steam did not want to leave a spell on Call of Duty. He fought.
That was the spell: The Steam user B00lin had played an early beta version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for 36.2 hours, the COD from 2022.
In his Steam profile, he got the news that he was banned. A objection against the spell was rejected: The security team had confirmed that its account remained permanently banned. He used unauthorized software to manipulate game data. The spell remains.
The Steam user tried to reach Activision via the ticket system, also called for support and wrote to employees via LinkedIn. But none of that brought anything.
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Tanned user meets a wall of silence for security reasons
That was so frustrating: It was frustrating for the Steam user that he pushed on a wall of silence. Nobody presented him with any evidence that he had used cheat software.
Because such evidence would be a security risk and would have to remain under closure so that cheat manufacturers do not find out exactly how Activision Blizzard works, he kept hearing.
Steam user gets his money back, but the spell remains
That was the next step: Ultimately, the user signed a declaration of confidentiality and was looking for arbitration about an independent third party. But the arbitration rejected Activision.
Then B00lin use a service to get his money back. He wanted to get the cost of the game back. Because Activision did not react here, B00lin won and got his money back, but the spell remained.
The user says to PC Gamer:
Activision paid me out, but still refused to lift the blocking of my account. They justified this with the fact that they were not asked by the dishes and would therefore not do it. I am sure that you want you to have done it because it cost you a lot in the long run.
Next, he tried to agree with Activision Blizzard and was looking for a comparison with a law firm that the company had commissioned. The Steam user was even ready to sign an NDA about the comparison to silence, but Activision didn’t want that either.
Ultimately, B00lin then stood in front of a judge and was able to prove that he had played 1,000 hours in Counter-Strike 2 without any incident and just wanted to get rid of the spell. There was nothing to him to play a game from Activision Blizzard again – only the spell had to go away.
The defense of Activision was unable to provide evidence in court that justified the spell, apparently the strict visual lines of the security team from COD did not even allow the own lawyers to find precise details about the spell.
Bann is canceled after 763 days and deleted by the Steam profile
So it went out: Ultimately, the judge agreed to the plaintiff, i.e. B00lin. Activision broke her side of the contract here and was unable to provide evidence that the spell was justified. The player’s spell was lifted in court. In addition, Activision had to reimburse the plaintiff £ 711, around € 850.
The player says that: The player says he has been playing COD on the PC since 2003 and invested a lot of time in the game and his heroes there.
He had the feeling that the spell had ruined his steam profile and reputation as a gamer. That had driven him to fight for 2 years and not to give up:
A lock for something I didn’t do on a profile that I really appreciate and in which I invested thousands of hours is not okay.
Whenever he was good in one game, people had checked his profile on Steam, saw the “cheauter” entry and then told him: No wonder he won that he was also a cheauter. B00LIN went against honor and he didn’t want to let that sit on him. He also motivated him that he was not alone, he met Discord many others who also received an unauthorized spell. At COD there are often discussions about Banns: What is a Shadowban in Cod Warzone and what can you do about it?