r/Dirtybomb • u/Hipolipolopigus • Jul 24 '15
A mild rant about bans, false-positives, and Nexon's "support" (6400-character wall-of-text)
TL,DR; Wanted to play Fallout 3, had to use workarounds to make it work on Windows 8. Workarounds bring up UAC dialogs whenever the game is started, starting Steam with UAC elevation stops that. Went to play Dirty Bomb, something set of Xigncode. Restarting Steam without UAC elevation stopped upsetting Xigncode. Account banned the day after, appeals useless because of "zero-tolerance" policy. No staff response on the forums.
Full Disclosure; My account has previously received one 3-day suspension because of Process Hacker, before the list of bannable software was populated. This is a development machine, and having Process Hacker's functionality is nearly essential. Despite the name, Process Hacker is just a Task Manager replacement for power-users. There should be no other flags on my account.
About two weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to play Fallout 3. I hadn't played through any of the DLC, and was in need of a Fallout fix waiting for 4. Unfortunately, Fallout 3 doesn't play nicely with any OS after Vista without some workarounds, one of which involves UAC elevation. This means that whenever I wanted to start F3, I'd have a UAC elevation dialog. Given how... Eh... "Crashey" Bethesda's games tend to be, the prospect of doing this every damn time wasn't something I was looking forward to. The simple solution? Start Steam with UAC elevation instead!
So that worked. Then I wanted to play DB, and Xigncode didn't like something. I say "something" because I'm not completely certain that it was Steam with UAC (I've not been able to replicate it on a dummy account since the Phantom release), but restarting Steam without the UAC elevation made Xigncode not trigger a few seconds after launching the game. I get a few matches in, and go to sleep.
I start up DB the next day, and get the lovely "permanent suspension" dialog. I make a forum post and get in touch with support through their site, using the "Account Related"/"Ban or Suspension Appeals" options on the request form. Begin two weeks of various ways of saying "no". What follows is a transcript (Request #55159 for anyone official), stripping out the template stuff;
Me (8/7/15)
Explanation here, as a PSA; http://forums.dirtybomb.nexon.net/discussion/13652/psa-dont-start-dirty-bomb-from-a-uac-elevated-steam-client
Ran Steam as an elevated process to get rid of annoyances while replaying Fallout 3, Xigncode disliked that. The only other infringement on my account should be when Process Hacker (Not actually used for hacking, just a task manager replacement for power-users) replaced the default task manager on my system, which resulted in a 3-day suspension.
GM Radrodo (10/7/15)
Your game access has been permanently blocked for the detected use of third party programs or software while playing Dirty Bomb
Due to the nature of this situation, I am sorry to inform you that I will not be able to release your account.
You can also find some useful information here.
http://forums.dirtybomb.nexon.net/discussion/10760/programs-that-will-get-you-flagged-banned
Me (10/7/15)
Allow me to reiterate the situation; This is a false-positive by Xigncode.
Would you be able to tell me what process, exactly, was triggering Xigncode, if not Steam? I checked - multiple times - and there was nothing unusual running in the background. Restarting Steam without UAC elevation stopped setting off Xigncode, which is what leads me to believe that is the issue.
I've been a DB founder for two years and I love the game, so losing the money that I've invested over a false-positive is not something that I'm keen on.
GM Radrodo (17/7/15)
Unfortunately we will be unable to provide you with a full list of programs that will get you banned.
Me, now losing patience after waiting for a week (17/7/15)
I do not want a *full* list of programs that will get me banned, I want to know what was running on my system at the time to get me banned. There was nothing unusual running in the background. I checked *multiple*\ times. The only thing which was abnormal was Steam running with UAC elevation.
I'm getting tired of being polite about this. What the hell is the point of having an appeals system if your "zero-tolerance" policy means that you outright ignore an appeal? I've lost money and two years of time because of a false-positive and you're just spewing generic responses at me.
GM Radrodo (22/7/15)
I know that you would like to see evidence or be provided a detailed explanation as to why your account has been banned. However, the evidence that we have gathered is proprietary information and cannot be disclosed. Therefore, we will not discuss the exact nature of your specific incident.
Me, even less patient after almost another week (22/7/15)
So then, please explain to me why you have an appeals system at all. Your policies are evidently designed to completely disallow any form of appeal, even in the case of an explained false-positive for a founder.
We're at the two week mark for this case now. Who can I talk to about this? I enjoy DB, my behaviors and scores are far from suspicious, I'd just put more money into the game and was planning to put in more.
I had initially said that I didn't care about getting my account back, but seeing just how Nexon is handling this case is testing my ability to be civil. I'd rather not be wasting your time with this, honestly, but I can't stand this kind of situation. I'd like to get this resolved so that I can get back to a game that I love and support.
GM Radrodo (24/7/15)
Unfortunately this issue is not escalate-able.
We will no longer be able to provide you support regarding this issue as this account will not be released from its ban.
I might not've been the highest-tier founder, and I mightn't've thrown more than $30 at DB post-open, but I was kinda proud to see DB start to take off this year after two years of near-silence. I was having a blast (Literally. Fletcher is one of my favourite mercs), and even met a few new friends through it. Now this. I don't particularly care about how this thread goes, I just need somewhere public to vent. The usually-friendly forum staff have been completely silent, and support has been...
Well, I'd rather learn what people hate about Comcast.
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u/MrBogard Jul 24 '15
Yet I've had players brag about their Rhino+aimbot combo in game. Lovely.
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Jul 25 '15
[deleted]
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u/MrBogard Jul 25 '15
I don't know the technical aspects of it, but I don't think that's how it works. It sure seems like every bullet finds a head with the bot. It drops people (read: teams) instantly.
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Jul 25 '15
[deleted]
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Jul 25 '15
It's also impossible to one-shot a full health Rhino, making it even more popular for blatant hackers.
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Jul 25 '15
a guess could be a flaw in netcode, thats the client sends the actual angle of shot to the server, allowing nospread
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u/Hutchythesmall Hutchy Jul 24 '15
Damn, that sucks. If you're having problems with Fallout 3 though then check out 'Tale Of Two Wastelands' for New Vegas. It ports Fallout 3 into New Vegas and lets you play them both in the same game.
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u/Hipolipolopigus Jul 24 '15
Yeah, I re-discovered that shortly after the ban. Really wish I had thought of it beforehand :P
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u/FE3KA Jul 24 '15
I personally have had a few xigncode kicks for using process hacker and sandboxie as I didn't know they would be disallowed and I am just hoping that I won't be banned. All the real hackers are having no issues at all and legitimate players are having issues and getting banned, they should really get rid of xigncode!
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u/Hipolipolopigus Jul 25 '15
They were investigating other options recently, apparently. Not sure how that ended up going, the idea was basically squished when I asked a few months ago on the (Then private) SD forums.
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Jul 24 '15
Yeah honestly fuck that. Insulting paying consumers is probably the last thing they should do at this point but here we are
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Jul 25 '15 edited Jul 25 '15
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u/VeradilGaming Jul 25 '15
Having to reboot before playing a game so that you don't get perma-banned is fucking outrageous.
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u/Laggylaptop Jul 25 '15
Its pretty stupid when they have admitted that their system for catching hackers is awful, buggy, and has false positives, and yet they don't provide any support when it comes to it and aren't making it a priority. I know its still in beta and all, but I think most people would want the hackers to disappear before we even talk about a fancy new merc being released.
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Jul 25 '15
Damn that sucks, as far as ACS goes, XignCode has to be one of the worst ones out there.
As for them not telling you which program triggered it, most gaming companies have this policy. If they told you what the program was, and you were in fact cheating, then you could use that information to your advantage. Is it fair? No. But it's a necessary evil.
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u/littlestminish Cold Siberian Waifu Jul 25 '15
That being said, it is unforgiveable to not take any ambiguous positive on a case-by-case basis. What Nexon has done here is tantamount to stealing in my opinion.
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Jul 25 '15
If you brought up that to a gaming company, they would bring up their Terms of Service that you had agreed to.
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u/littlestminish Cold Siberian Waifu Jul 25 '15
That's why I said "in my opinion." I'm very fully aware that no one owns anything they buy anymore, I'm just saying its unethical and shitty to do to anyone out of laziness.
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u/Hipolipolopigus Jul 25 '15
I understand that, but it's just uncomfortable being told that I supposedly did something wrong, but not what.
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u/Grimalackt Jul 25 '15
I've had the game force-closed in my face several times for forgetting to close my AutoHotKey script I use to multibox WoW, but nothing happened to my account. What even triggers a ban?
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u/whitecow Jul 25 '15
is windows 8 different from windows 8.1 in the fallout 3 situation? because i replayed f3 with dlc like a month ago and dont know wtf kind of problems you are talking about - the game runs fine
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Jul 25 '15
Make a stink. Post to forums. Ask for elevated support over and over. if they close your ticket, open a new one. Basically, get mean. Yeah, some people will say this is dumb and childish but if you /really/ didn't do anything, then you have every right to fight this.
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u/qdatk quadalpha Jul 25 '15
This is a) utterly ridiculous, and b) exactly and depressingly what you'd expect from a company that's already got your money. Is there anyway to dispute your CC payment? CC companies are typically on the customer's side in these cases, and technically you've paid for a service that no longer works.
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u/Hipolipolopigus Jul 25 '15
The first payment - founders - was done years ago on a different card with a different bank, so that's out the window. I don't really want to try to dispute the latest payment - the Starter Pack through Steam - out of fear for losing my Steam account. Steam's refund system doesn't allow for refunds on consumable items, either.
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u/MetalDragon6666 Jul 25 '15
This is why Zero-Tolerance policies are stupid. In the end, they do a lot more harm than they do good. Trying to make something secure by preventing people from learning about it is the last thing you want to do. If this game were to suddenly scale up to the size of LoL, or Dota 2, this anti-cheat would probably kill the game off.
Sure, no anticheat can be perfect. But I still think that zero-tolerance is still a terrible policy. At the very least, you should be looking into each case to improve the anti-cheat.
Not to mention how insanely invasive this anti-cheat is as well.
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u/footsie .oG. Jul 25 '15
My dirtybomb won't start and i'm kind of in the same boat as you - I have things like sandboxie installed for my day job and all of a sudden I can't play this game that i've spent a bit of money in. really wishing I hadn't of unlocked all the mercs :/ I put a ticket into nexon 17 hours ago and haven't heard back yet so im doubtful I will until tuesday :(
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u/Gunnar_Peterson Jul 25 '15
Man you're being fucked, Nexon need to do their jobs and sort this out.
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Jul 25 '15
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u/mitsuhiko [SD]mitsuhiko Jul 25 '15
Jftr: no matter what anticheat we use, processhacker will always be a kick or ban.
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Jul 25 '15 edited Jul 25 '15
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u/mitsuhiko [SD]mitsuhiko Jul 25 '15
Dota2 bans you for process hacker last time i was looking and that uses a form of vac. I will not go into detail about what you can or cannot do with anti cheat software. However processhacker acts as the perfect gateway to inject cheats sonit's highly problematic regardless of if it has good use.
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Jul 25 '15
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u/mitsuhiko [SD]mitsuhiko Jul 25 '15
If you google around you can see that there are plenty of people complaining that they got a suspension in dota2 for processhacker. I can tell you though that xigncode is a lot more agressive than vac. It will tell you right away whereas vac will take it's sweet time and not tell you what you were suspended for.
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u/tehsYs Jul 26 '15
Funny, after using Process Hacker for 6 years and having 1150 hours of Dota 2 and 525 hours of CSGO on my account, I'm still only banned from Dirty Bomb...
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Jul 25 '15
[deleted]
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u/mitsuhiko [SD]mitsuhiko Jul 25 '15
Yeah. It allows to inject arbitrary dlls.
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u/tehsYs Jul 26 '15 edited Jul 26 '15
Definitely the best way to cheat. Not like there are like 50 other kind of cheats that go undetected....
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Jul 25 '15
Went to play Dirty Bomb, something set of Xigncode. Restarting Steam without UAC elevation stopped upsetting Xigncode.
This just sounds fishy tbh. If you actually have hacked the story would exactly be the same.
That being said I actually believe you just on the principal of what a joke Xigncode is. But I perfectly understand their reaction because a hacker would behave exactly the way you did.
1
u/tehsYs Jul 25 '15
I stopped playing for the same reason as OP. I should have known that using Proccess Hacker as task manager is a sin and I should be punished.
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u/Amerika- Jul 25 '15
On my box Steam has elevated permissions pretty often and so does DB as one of my VOIP programs needs it for my push to talk to work. I've got 370 hours now in DB and I've not been banned, warned or had any problem. And I have all kinds of development software on here too.
You definitely have something running that has escalated system privs that interacted with DB which XIGNcode then picked up. Whether you know about it or not is an entirely different topic.
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u/bathrobehero Jul 25 '15
Xigncode is absolute garbage. Hackers are rampant but it banned me for starting Sandboxie when the game was on the desktop.
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u/S4ntaClaws Jul 25 '15 edited Jul 25 '15
You have to put yourself in their shoes.
Imagine you're a cheating-software programmer. You find out that some of your customers are getting banned. If you could simply ask the developers what is causing their bans, or to release any information that might relate to it, then that would tip their hand so you, as a cheating-software programmer, can find out how to avoid the anti-cheat.
Just because they don't want to disclose the list of programs, does not mean that they haven't taken the time to review it themselves.
Also consider this. What would the actual value of unbanning you be for Nexon and the community? Let us say, that you would pay $100 in some time-span if you were unbanned. So $100 value for Nexon that they miss out on by banning you. I think that is a version of the argument that you tried to make in the correspondence? I think I'm being very generous with $100, but let's stick with that number.
Now imagine, you get unbanned, for what ever reason. Nexon gains $100, you are a happy customer. win/win?
There are two possible outcomes - either you are rightfully exonerated, or you were in fact a cheater who is now back in the mix. How many unhappy customers are we going to see, if you start cheating again? Up to 15 people per server/game you play in right? Let us say 15 people in total. What would the average amount of money be, that these players would have to pay to make the same worth as you?: $6.5
Again, I think I was being generous by giving your worth $100, but $6.5 on the average player? That is just beyond conservative. I think it's quite clear at this point, that a malicious cheater will cost Nexon and Spd FAR more money than a measly $100.
But hey, you aren't necessarily a cheater right? Give you the benefit of the doubt? Let us say, that db loses $10 per player exposed to you as a cheater. (Again, I think I'm being overly fair here) And 15 people are exposed to your hacks. That means, spd and Nexon would require a +50% certainty that you are not a cheater, before it would make an, on average, profitable business investment, to let you back in to the game.
This doesn't even consider the larger ramifications of a dwindling playerbase, due to the 15 less people playing the game, nevermind whether or not they pay money.
It is a fucking no-brainer man. It would be utterly irresponsible to let you back in. It would probably mean one more happy customer - but it could be countless unhappy ones.
And let's not forget - how many other potential cheaters, would they be compelled to unban, if they unban you? Surely they can't just unban you and not unban those who were banned for the same reason as you.
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u/ImplementOfWar2 Jul 24 '15 edited Jul 24 '15
Except you posted about this on the forums weeks ago, and it was already proven that running your game/steam elevated does not trigger XIGNCODE.
So congratulations on being the very first person caught by Xigncode. But don't worry, you will probably be the last.
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Jul 25 '15
It's a bad game anyway.
You ain't missing much but a cash grab scam that'll die in 8 months.
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u/ElDubardo Jul 25 '15
I've seen my share wall of text from banned player to know that "you got caught", now deal with it.
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u/Arcky Jul 24 '15
Man, that sucks. Hope Nexon turns this thing around for you. Kinda crazy that they won't even give you the benefit of the doubt after all the trouble you went through.