Last April, the Guild Wars 2 community was shaken by the news that over 1500 players had been suspended from the game after ArenaNet silently patched in (and then patched out again) what players characterized as invasive cheat-detection spyware. ArenaNet claimed that it “targeted programs that allow players to cheat and gain unfair gameplay advantages, even if those programs have other, more benign uses,” but it admitted it could not actually prove any of the players suspended had actually ever cheated in Guild Wars 2. Across Reddit and our own comments, players surfaced to claim they’d been unfairly suspended for having programs like UNF, CheatEngine, and MMOMINION installed on their computers for use in offline games or work, without ever having cheated in GW2 itself. Other folks said they didn’t have any of those programs at all. But still others sided with ArenaNet, and the story went cold.
Now it’s back. One of the affected players, who goes by slashy1302 aka Fire of Spirit on Reddit, has a thread up this week says he’s been appealing to ArenaNet ever since April to reinstate his account and clear his name. Support originally told him ArenaNet had tracked him using UNF; he didn’t even know what that was. After what appears to have been months of back-and-forth and run-around, he ultimately invoked the GDPR to force ArenaNet to turn over the data it had pertaining to his suspension. Eventually, he secured those data. And what did he find?
“I had the cheat detection logs (though with erased timestamps) including the md5 sums of the programs they detected,” slashy1302 writes. “I was determined to find out which of my programs triggered the false positive… It took me a whole minute to find out that they fucked up badly. As I have been dealing with MD5 a lot I recognized that hash: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e It’s what you get when you hash an empty file or string. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
Yesterday, slashy1302 received an email from ArenaNet’s Gaile Gray that admits to the mistake. “We reinstated all suspended accounts by October 2018,” ArenaNet wrote. “When you let us know you had spotted a possible anomaly in the data you received in response to your personal information access request, we immediately began a full investigation of the data related to all accounts that were suspended during this initiative. As a result of that investigation, we discovered that a very small number of accounts were suspended in error, including yours. We are extremely sorry for this error, and very grateful that you made us aware of it.”
Of course, as Anet notes, the six-month ban concluded in October, so the suspended accounts had already been reinstated, though presumably with a black mark on them. Other players also report receiving similar emails, though without the specifics about slashy1302’s sleuthing, of course. According to the note, all players affected will receive free unlocks for the ongoing living story season (which they’d not have been able to secure before, since they couldn’t log in) and 2500 gems.
Reddit responses are generally sympathetic to the victims; there have even been calls for firings of the developers involved and criticism of the level of compensation being doled out.
We reached out to ArenaNet for a statement this afternoon; here is what the studio told Massively OP:
“In our ongoing process to continually improve the overall experience of Guild Wars 2, we discovered a very small number of accounts that had been erroneously suspended last year as a result of our anti-cheat detection processes. Those suspensions expired last October, returning those accounts to active standing. After recently concluding a thorough follow-up investigation on the matter, we felt strongly that we needed to apologize for our mistake and we sent the affected players a gift of content unlocks and gems as a means of expressing our sincere regret.”
Although Arenanet are the ONLY affiliate of NCsofts who I have not had an experience when they have acted unfairly and treated me disrespectefully (or utterly disgustingly) it doesn’t surprise me that they have followed suit in having abyssmal practices and utterly incompetent customer service staff. And this is why I will no longer touch any NCSoft or its affiliates games ever again.
There are only so many bridges they can burn in regards to goodwill before enough is enough. They could care less about right from wrong or looking after thier players all you are is a figure on a profit and loss spreadsheet.
This is my new favorite GIF! :D
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. -William Blackstone
If anyone is wondering just how or why this could have happened, I think the top response in that Reddit thread is also worth noting, from user fwosar who previously analyzed how ANet’s spyware worked back when that story broke.
I’m not normally one to call for firing poeple, rather learn from mistakes, but this a whole new level of fuck up and shitty culture.
They banned people, due to their own mistake.
They refused to properly investigate it.
A player had to uncover this on their own (which as it turned out did not take long once access to the data was available, so Anet did fuck all to investigate themselves).
This is a serious failing at Anet, not only in the mistake, but the lack of investigation, and teh shitty level of compensation offered is pretty much an insult at this point.
The orignal dev who made the mistake is one thing, learn from it, people fuck up it happens.
The person in charge of investigating customer service complaints needs to go…they have created a culture where they treat customers with disdain, and obviously do nothing to help.
I agree that this is a serious internal problem, but it’s a systemic failure and won’t be resolved by the firing of one person. More thorough reforms are needed within the company.
A total lack of comprehensive investigative procedures. In other words the norm. Oh wait….
It took me a whole minute to find out that they fucked up badly. – Fire of Spirit
Right, I stand corrected. A total lack of any investigative procedures before action. Seriously, the norm anymore is to react before actually doing the leg work to find out for sure. QC standards lack in most cases anymore, whether it’s mmo developers or industrial manufacturing or health care.
Anyone with a level head saw that coming. Anet is extremely overprotective of their ways. Everytime, they double down on everything they do. This time, it bit them in their asses.
And good. Everyone said this crap was over the top. Their whiteknights kept defending this garbage.
Heh.
That was actually what burned me. Not that the programmers made a mistake, but that Anet doggedly stuck to its guns on this, that it rifled through our machines unawares, that it held up innocent people as cheaters even knowing then it had false positives, and that it apparently didn’t even understand the reports of the data it pulled from our PCs. It was all the layers of hubris piled on top of the initial error in judgment, plus as you note all the fanboys who jumped in with glee to publicly stone those singled out for punishment. You can even see them in our old comment thread.
I have no idea why these victims would ever come back to GW2 after being treated this way. And that’s Anet’s loss. And not its first time.
Nobody will ever take one of Anet’s banwaves seriously ever again. People will be linking to incidents like this for the next decade.
Hence why i don’t take anything Caile Gray says seriously. She’s a great CR, and it’s exactly why she’s that good that i don’t take ANYTHING she says as more than facevalue PR. She was the first one to keep the defensive tone, accusing people, saying it was minimal accounts banned wrongly, she was brought late because Anet PR before her was abysmal, and after her, Anet became expert on irrelevant info.
It’s the standard though Bree. These companies,regardless if they’re mmo developers, food manufacturers or pharmaceutical developers, they’ll stick to their guns and double down on their dogma regardless of the mounting evidence.
Hey Bree Royce,
I’m the one who wrote that reddit-post and I want to thank you for that article. After all this time and energy it feels good to get the word out. People in general public defended (or rather whiteknighted) ArenaNet and called those affected liars as per usual … so yes, I think it’s okay if people don’t take ANets banwaves seriously… after all they don’t do it themself, are they?
Well, in fact as of now I actually won’t be.
Btw, just as a sidenote, “Fire of Spirit” is only my subreddit-flair. My nick (on reddit) is actually slashy1302 ;)
You’re a goddamn hero! Thank you for pursuing it to the ends of the earth and helping other people clear their names. I’m horrifically sorry for you and the other players. It must feel like an incredible betrayal, not just by Anet but by the other gamers – and yep, I saw that too – we even got attacked for covering it! I’ve felt wounded by studios like that before and can’t bring myself to enjoy their games again – I can only assume it feels like that. I hope you wind up moving on to a game that treats you right.
(And oops, I will amend our post to include your real Reddit nick – sorry about that!)
Haha, thanks! That was my actual intent. Clear my and everyone else’s name. All this wouldn’t have been possible without the moral support of my wife and my friends to pushed me to see this through till the end. At certain points, I actually thought about dropping it all as it seemed pointless since I already stopped playing (I’m am now a happy citizen of Eorzea playing FFXIV with my wife and friends :D). But those around me (who I played with the most) encouraged me to do the right thing.
Thanks :)
The big issue this causes not only for ANet, but also for other MMO publishers, is that it casts doubt onto their automated cheat detection processes; if a MMO publisher was found to have banned players for having a zero-size file with an EXE extension somewhere their overeager cheat detection system could find, and then spent over half a year refusing very reasonable requests to look again at the data, what guarantee do we have that bans by this and other publishers are actually deserved?
Considering the seriousness of this issue that’s seems pretty reasonable. They need to change how they handle bans and more importantly appeals to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
“we discovered”
That doesn’t appear to be the case, does it?