In Apex Legends, there are increasing reports that innocent players are being banned by EA. Players who reported others for hate speech and insults are being punished instead of the offenders. Apparently, completely unrelated players have also been affected for no reason. MeinMMO tells you what it’s all about.
Apex Legends celebrated its 3rd anniversary this month and was once again impressive with the start of Season 12. However, reports are piling up in the community that something is wrong with the ban system.
In recent days, EA has banned several players—due to “toxic behavior,” as the ban message reveals. The issue: It is not the players who were reported for toxic chat messages that are getting punished. Instead, the victims and innocents are the ones affected.
“I reported this guy because he said the N-word, but I was banned for it.”
What have players noticed? Both on reddit and Twitter, there have been increasing reports in recent days that the ban system in Apex Legends punishes the victims instead of the wrongdoers.
On reddit, for example, Apex fan y0ungee shared an email he supposedly received from EA support.
The email states:
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us to inform us about the actions taken regarding your account. The action relates to the following violation: Hateful behavior[Representation of the reported racist insult]
After a detailed review of your account and concern, we have found that your account has been treated correctly and will not remove this sanction from your account.
However, according to his own statement, it was not y0ungee who used this racist insult. He was the one who reported it in the game. He says: “I reported this guy because he said the N-word, but I was banned for it.”
A similar story was also shared by MasterBarbosa on reddit:
In this case, a player named starboy is said to have written a nasty insult in the in-game chat. For this reason, the account of the reddit user was banned. However, the reddit user’s name in Apex is also masterbarbosa, so he is a completely different player than the insulting starboy.
Even in this case, the email from EA support contains the same message mentioning a “thorough review.” This is not the first of these cases shared on reddit. Just a week ago, user GGiAlwaysCarry reported a similar problem on reddit.
Users and developers react to these incidents
What do players say? Other users on reddit could not resist making comments.
- In response to EA’s statement that they supposedly reviewed the cases thoroughly, a user says: “I very much doubt they did that.” (via reddit)
- “Great customer service, EA. You use macros to respond to customers without even looking at the case. You are the worst,” finds JewishDonut.
- The also affected GGiAlwaysCarry says: “Welcome to the club. The reporting system is broken, no one should use it, not even the chat system, because you could get a false ban.”
How do the developers react? A Respawn developer, with the reddit name el_sanchimoto, has also stepped in.
The case of y0ungee was handled, he says. The ban of masterbarbosa was also acknowledged as an error and the player’s account was successfully returned.
As the Associate Quality Designer of Respawn says:
It’s good that we could take care of it, but we’re sorry that this happened. We are working with the teams to understand and resolve the issue. Players should be able to use existing support channels to get a satisfactory result, and not rely on attention in social media.
el_sanchimoto on reddit
The developers of Apex Legends are aware of the problem. From what it sounds, they do not yet know the underlying reasons. Therefore, currently faulty bans of this kind need to be looked at individually. This should not be a satisfactory situation for EA, Respawn, or Apex fans.
Recently, there was also another story about Apex Legends, where the help looked different than expected: Twitch streamer yells for help in Apex Legends so loudly that the police shows up
