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Hi all,

This is my game background:

1. 10 years Iphone player inside APAC (not lived in Mainland China)
   
2. Always use one Iphone only and update from official Apple App store.
   
3. Have lived/studied/worked/traveled globally throughout my whole life (APAC and North America).
   

I created this post because I see lot of whining (抱怨) in many similar post.

As a result, these are the advice that I provided to other 简体中文 player as well since online people always have lot of regional/cultural misunderstanding well.

if you are NOT from Mainland China, here are the possible use cases that would possibly get you banned:

1) Idevice (e.g. Iphone, Ipad)- your device is jailbroken, you would still get banned even if you download/updated through Official Apple App Store.

2) Android smartphone- you download/install the apk file from 3rd party site (e.g. apkpure.com), you would get banned because the game must come from Google App Store.

If none of the above, submit ticket to Kabam support for review.

However, if you are from Mainland China, then the case would be more complicated:

1) Android-

the Google Play Store is indeed unavailable in China. This is due to censorship restrictions and regulations in place by the Chinese government. As a result, Chinese users typically rely on local alternatives like the Huawei AppGallery, or third-party app stores such as Tencent MyApp or 360 Mobile Assistant

Google Play 商店在中国确实无法使用。这是由于中国政府的审查限制和监管。因此，中国用户通常依赖于本地替代方案，例如华为应用市场，或第三方应用商店，例如腾讯应用宝或 360 手机助手。

Since mainland China does not have google play store access, if you install it from 3rd party site, it would get you banned.

2) Idevice (e.g. iphone)

Yes, "Marvel Contest of Champions" is available on the Apple App Store in China. The game is accessible within the Chinese App Store, and there are active advertisements for it in the region, according to Sensor Tower. Digital Creative also states that the Apple App Store is available in China and is actively used by millions

Then, if you really installed it through official Apple App store, you should submit a ticket to Kabam support for review.

Also, as per my understanding, people in Mainland China must use Game Accelerator (加速器) to play this game due to Chinese firewall. Every foreigner (perhaps even KABAM themselves) on this forum had cultural/regional misunderstanding about the term game accelerator, and they THOUGHT this is the mod app that can make the player has infinite health in the game. THIS IS WRONG. It’s a legal VPN that only works for certain connections of which the vast majority are for online games.

The reason that they named it as Game Accelerator is because if you mentioned the name of VPN online, that app would IMMEDIATELY banned by Chinese government. So, they named it as Game Accelerator.

Finally, I personally traveled to Mainland China for business/personal purpose. Once you got there, you cannot check your gmail, yahoo mail at all. I tried to use some well known VPN (e.g. Express VPN) and that does NOT work either. if you contact their CS support, they would say their usability is not stable inside China due to the firewall restriction and they provide me some refund on monthly fee (don't trust the express VPN ads online saying that they can be used in Mainland). So, the only way that you can get access to gmail, google, yahoo email in china: I ended up looking for VPN service inside telegram and find the legit Game Accelerator service in China (usually you pay for few days of that VPN service).

Just want to clarify the regional misunderstanding to everyone online.

P.S. Don't post your phone serial number online.. nobody want to see that in public.

Can we just kick them off the forums as well? Not only have a bunch of people cheated and been caught but now half the threads are about how they are so hard done by and that it was a mistake they got banned.

I hope you get banned soon for no reason! Let's see how much calm u stay! 🙂

You were banned for a reason.

Oh, I don't think so! Kabam will come up with some BS reason! Only time will tell!

There r YouTubers who r mercing openly and yet their accounts haven't been suspended! So it's no surprise that Kabam has actually messed up big time! 🙂

Saying that doesn't help your cause at all. It makes me thing you believe your ban is unjustified because you think other people deserve the ban more, not because you're innocent.

The only reason I'm not going ham on everyone claiming they are innocent is there is a tiny, tiny probability there are a few out there. I'm talking like one or two. Maybe a dozen, maybe. But the vast overwhelming majority were banned for the stated reasons correctly, whether anyone thinks unauthorized clients are a justified reason or not, whether they think the punishment fits the crime or not. They looked for unauthorized clients, found them, and took action. I'm pretty sure virtually everyone targeted was targeted because they did in fact do what the ban wave claims they did.

Why some players were only temp banned while others were perma banned I don't know, but history suggests a possibility. In the past players have been issued temp bans, and then upon further review those bans were escalated to permanent bans when the anti-cheat team poured over those accounts with a fine toothed comb. Something like that is probably happening here.

No one got banned for no reason. Either you got banned because you did what Kabam says you did, or there's something exceptionally weird about your account that makes it look like you did. If there was a problem with the bans that caused them to ban players just randomly and for no reason, we'd know it by now.

A person came forward on the Discord to say they were errantly banned and drew a lot of supporters who thought if anyone was innocent it was him. They subsequently stated they appealed their ban and Kabam reversed it. As it turns out, they were never banned and the ban was never reversed. They just said that to rabble rouse (and was banned from the Discord as a result).

This doesn't mean everyone is lying. But it says anyone could be lying.

Can we just kick them off the forums as well? Not only have a bunch of people cheated and been caught but now half the threads are about how they are so hard done by and that it was a mistake they got banned.

I hope you get banned soon for no reason! Let's see how much calm u stay! 🙂

You were banned for a reason.

Oh, I don't think so! Kabam will come up with some BS reason! Only time will tell!

There r YouTubers who r mercing openly and yet their accounts haven't been suspended! So it's no surprise that Kabam has actually messed up big time! 🙂

...
No one got banned for no reason.
....

Yes, because Kabam is unerring and their software doesn't give any errors

Everybody makes mistakes. But if Kabam's software was banning people for literally no reason, meaning it was just banning players randomly, we would definitely know it by now. First, because of the high probability of baning a high profile player, and second because Kabam has been investigating reports of errant bans, and so far hasn't actually found any errors. So if errors exist, they have to be very rare, and if the ban algorithm is making very rare error they almost certainly have to be being generated for some very odd corner case reason that makes those accounts unique for a very specific reason. Widespread random errors would have been spotted by now.

To be honest, the more snarky comments like this I see, the less inclined I am to spend time trying to sort through this all. I've already spent more time looking, reading, and questioning, and so far the best I've come up with is wasting the devs time looking at a proven fraud.

I am someone that has assisted players getting erroneous bans reversed. I don't assume everyone is lying or wrong. However, I have also seen enough vacations to Mexico to know that the vast overwhelming majority of the time people are lying or mistaken or both. The bans I got reversed were not random, they both had very obvious reasons for triggering the bans. Bans from out of nowhere for no reason are vanishingly rare.

Hey , another question. Again, assuming they aren't lying (as I write this I wonder if the question is futile). There are claims of people who have multiple accounts and some getting banned and others not. And claiming it's on the same device. Is there any way that could happen?

Angela, Odin and whoever else is needed for a fight.

Can change depending on the hacks I get. A max sig, r4 Sisniter is also OP.

Talking about incursion squads, what your Mr. Sinister team? Really want to run him, just not sure what team & hacks work best

Depends on the hacks I get. But typically, I make him a horseman and keep Apoc on the team for synergy. If I have to remove Apoc, then I switch him back in for another star rarity level. Put Odin pre-fights on [rare times where you may not want to]

Regular Hacks: Degen hacks [increase duration and potency], stun +50%, increase attack by 4% per debuff

Boss hacks: Second chance [when it activates, let them just hit you. If you get a crit against you, you'll probably heal to max health], increase debuff by 30% and reinforcement hacks by 50%, the two that deal degen [heavy attack and special attack I think]
@Giantwalrus56 [and for your venom team, don't forget about Knull's synergy. Coupled with Second chance, he is virtually unkillable].

So, before Kabam adopted this new technology, these accounts were compliant, but after it was adopted, they became illegal?

no, they were never compliant, they're just enforcing their rules. as far as i know, and i'm 99.9999% sure, using modified software has always been against the TOS.

i totally get your frustration and even if you didn't gain any competitive advantage, they're clamping down hard on the cheating ecosystem.

Why don't they seriously catch those who actually violate the rules in BG mode, but suddenly ban a lot of innocent people who have never used cheating software?

BG is actually really tame right now today. And not a modder in sight (Diamond 3 to GC, 104 points, just today). So it does seem like the ban worked as the app was probably sideloaded and modified for the BG cheaters.

But it accidentally killed many players who played games in a law-abiding manner.

Using an app that was illegally obtained in the first place!!

After such a long time, they suddenly use a ban to notify customers who have paid, saying that the client you downloaded is illegal and in violation of regulations? Not even prior notice？Who taught him to do this?

What are you on about? It's never been ok to download the game via other methods than the authorized ones. And they have periodically sent out in game mails saying so for years. So there always been a warning they only just now have the tech to identify it easily.

Since they have long considered these to be illegal, how should they deal with the money spent? Can Kabam collect money from illegal sources?

Think of it this way - shopping at Costco is technically only available to members. Some people aren’t members but borrow a membership from someone they know to go buy stuff. Some non-members may sneak in to just get a cheap hot dog at the food court.

Once Costco is able to better detect who is and isn’t a member, they can choose to “ban” non-members from buying more stuff until they become a real member. There is no reason that Costco needs to refund money for past purchases. The money itself was not illegal, and the non-member obtained goods for their money at that time that.

We don’t know — and can’t know — if someone using an unofficial client is actively cheating or not. If there’s a possibility they’re modding and they’re already violating ToS by using the wrong client, then Kabam has to act in the best interest of the game. I feel bad for someone who lives in a region where they are only able to access the game through unorthodox means. But it is what it is.

Just to amplify this a bit, a lot of people don't fully appreciate why Kabam very strictly prohibits things like the use of emulated environments or unofficial game clients. The reason why is because once you allow players to play on environments you do not control or do not have a complete understanding of, you can't trust anything that happens anymore. Even if you build anti-cheat capabilities into the client, you can't trust what they say if the game runs in an emulated environment where the player theoretically has the ability to control anything the game client sees or does. Ditto if the game client has been altered in any way.

When someone says they should only ban people when they actually cheat, that's like saying banks should allow people to wander around in the bank vaults and teller stations, sift through the cash, and only stop them if they actually try to leave with money in their pockets. That's asking for too much. They have to stop players from using tools that make it extremely difficult to catch cheating, even if those players aren't cheating. There's no way to be certain those players aren't cheating, and we can't just take their word for it.

I do in fact have sympathy for players who side load the game because circumstances make it impossible for them to download through authorized channels. However, it is also important to note that Kabam didn't just straight up ban everyone. According to their announcement, a bunch of people were banned permanently. Some were temporarily banned and/or given warnings. Players have come forward to state they were either perma banned or temp banned, so we know both kinds of bans went out. This wasn't done randomly. Some players who were using these unauthorized clients drew warnings or short term bans. The rest got perma banned. There's likely to be a very good reason Kabam had for deciding which players were permanently kicked. It wasn't just for side loading the game client.