Battle against cheaters update - June 6th, 2023

MCOC Team

It has been a while since the last anti-cheat update. The reason for this is we have been working on some new tools to tackle one of the areas of the game that players have regularly asked us to pay more attention to - Arena!

Arena

Earlier today we banned over 300 players for Arena modding and/or botting in the Moondragon and Adam Warlock arenas. Because cheaters have a meaningful advantage in the mode, many of these players placed near the top of the leaderboards. In addition to the ban, the following actions are being implemented:

Those who were not permanently banned can expect something missing from their accounts when they return. The associated 6* champion(s) (Moondragon and/or Adam Warlock) will be removed from their accounts regardless of rank or sig level. No compensation will be made for lost materials.

Many players who placed outside the top 400 will be promoted to the top 400 and receive their earned 6* copy of the champion(s). Because of the number of cheaters at the top, this will be a significant number of players.

If you were one of the cheaters/modders that was not permanently banned, consider yourself lucky. Further infractions will result in a permanent ban.

Battlegrounds

Our Battleground anti-cheat measures continue to be improved. We learned a lot from the last few days of Season 7, where cheaters really increased their pace of play starting the weekend before the season ended. Beginning with this season, our autoban will be running more frequently, to hopefully lessen the impact these cheaters have. We will also be dedicating more staff time to manual review of our dashboards in the closing days of the season.

Edit: We're seeing a number of reports that bans have been reverted. Some of these bans (not all) were always intended to be 7-Day bans. In some cases, the system erroneously escalated to perma-bans. We have made the correction to these bans.

pseudosane

Love this!

Standardman1989

Glad to hear it, on the other hand some accounts were reactivated when they had a ban or it's false information 🤔

DNA3000

Standardman1989 said:

Glad to hear it, on the other hand some accounts were reactivated when they had a ban or it's false information 🤔

Apparently some players were banned for incorrect times, in some cases temporary bans were showing as permanent. The devs are working to correct those display errors.

nOux

So u pushed ban wave and after that realised most of the bans were top whales and reverted bans? And now calling those players “lucky”?
Guessing can’t bite the hand that feeds…

Pascals001

Amazing.

Beewee

I imagine there will be some who don't care if they farmed over 30k units and only got hit with a 7 day ban. If you don't refund units you should’ve just made it permanent

startropics

I really hate to see someone lose their account, but modding and botting are capital offences in this game because it shrinks the value of this game down to zero. What's to stop temp-banned players from doing it again when they update their modding tools as they usually do?

DNA3000

nOux said:

So u pushed ban wave and after that realised most of the bans were top whales and reverted bans? And now calling those players “lucky”?
Guessing can’t bite the hand that feeds…

There's an escalation process for bans, and most players do not draw a permanent ban the first time around, even potentially serious ones. As far as I am aware no ban is being "reversed" they were simply set incorrectly. That's why it initially seemed like a huge proportion of them were permanent. No ban wave is typically nothing but perma bans.

Eb0ny-O-M4w

Cheaters = Perma ban. No excuses.

Stop giving 3/4 chances and just get rid of them already

pseudosane

startropics said:

I really hate to see someone lose their account, but modding and botting are capital offences in this game because it shrinks the value of this game down to zero. What's to stop temp-banned players from doing it again when they update their modding tools as they usually do?

they will get caught and banned again. This isnt a one and done deal.

startropics

Are you able to share how many of the 300 are permanent?

Syndicated

Finally did something against arena cheaters, thanks Kabam for doing some justice for real grinders.

ZameZ

You had given them permaban and you regretted it for a 7 day Ban. These people have been stealing units and characters FOR YEARS. When you had finally done something right you regret it, what joke is this?

startropics

pseudosane said:

startropics said:

I really hate to see someone lose their account, but modding and botting are capital offences in this game because it shrinks the value of this game down to zero. What's to stop temp-banned players from doing it again when they update their modding tools as they usually do?

they will get caught and banned again. This isnt a one and done deal.

They've been getting 7 day vacations for years. Is there a new standard going forward?

pseudosane

startropics said:

pseudosane said:

startropics said:

I really hate to see someone lose their account, but modding and botting are capital offences in this game because it shrinks the value of this game down to zero. What's to stop temp-banned players from doing it again when they update their modding tools as they usually do?

they will get caught and banned again. This isnt a one and done deal.

They've been getting 7 day vacations for years. Is there a new standard going forward?

this follows the same pattern as in BGs. Repeat offenders are permabanned

BitterSteel

Eb0ny-O-M4w said:

Cheaters = Perma ban. No excuses.

Stop giving 3/4 chances and just get rid of them already

First of all, there were permanent bans in this ban wave. So let’s not forget that.

Secondly, they said that it was one more chance, “ If you were one of the cheaters/modders that was not permanently banned… Further infractions will result in a permanent ban”. So while it’s not an instant perma ban, it seems that it’s not 3/4 like you’re saying.

It’s one chance to go straight, or get perma banned.

I can see the argument for instant perma bans for sure, and I’m not disagreeing, but let’s not spread misinformation when they’re saying in the post that perma bans
will come after one more infraction for people who have only done it once.

Typhoon

DNA3000

startropics said:

pseudosane said:

startropics said:

I really hate to see someone lose their account, but modding and botting are capital offences in this game because it shrinks the value of this game down to zero. What's to stop temp-banned players from doing it again when they update their modding tools as they usually do?

they will get caught and banned again. This isnt a one and done deal.

They've been getting 7 day vacations for years. Is there a new standard going forward?

In the past, players have generally been given three strikes based on reports from players who were banned. Although I keep hearing about players who supposedly just get banned for seven days repeatedly, I haven't seen any actual proof of this.

I would love to see actual proof of this.

WolverineX

MCOC Team said:

It has been a while since the last anti-cheat update. The reason for this is we have been working on some new tools to tackle one of the areas of the game that players have regularly asked us to pay more attention to - Arena!

Arena

Earlier today we banned over 300 players for Arena modding and/or botting in the Moondragon and Adam Warlock arenas. Because cheaters have a meaningful advantage in the mode, many of these players placed near the top of the leaderboards. In addition to the ban, the following actions are being implemented:

Those who were not permanently banned can expect something missing from their accounts when they return. The associated 6* champion(s) (Moondragon and/or Adam Warlock) will be removed from their accounts regardless of rank or sig level. No compensation will be made for lost materials.

Many players who placed outside the top 400 will be promoted to the top 400 and receive their earned 6* copy of the champion(s). Because of the number of cheaters at the top, this will be a significant number of players.

If you were one of the cheaters/modders that was not permanently banned, consider yourself lucky. Further infractions will result in a permanent ban.

Battlegrounds

Our Battleground anti-cheat measures continue to be improved. We learned a lot from the last few days of Season 7, where cheaters really increased their pace of play starting the weekend before the season ended. Beginning with this season, our autoban will be running more frequently, to hopefully lessen the impact these cheaters have. We will also be dedicating more staff time to manual review of our dashboards in the closing days of the season.

Edit: We're seeing a number of reports that bans have been reverted. Some of these bans (not all) were always intended to be 7-Day bans. In some cases, the system erroneously escalated to perma-bans. We have made the correction to these bans.

there is an app that is used a lot that simulates clicks on the screen and allows you to do many units without playing, are you going to do something?

tusharNair

Isnt it just easier to just perma ban for any ToS violation, why give a chance. They can have their "Chance" if they want to by creating new account(I would like this also not an option, Device Bans!) . Is it because of "industry standards" . Thats not a rule one need to follow.

Luckylefty01

I finished 419 in the second run of the arena… so your saying there’s a chance

Oakenshield

Thanks for doing this Kabam team. I definitely grind arena, and while I’m not always trying for the champ at 6* it is nice to know I’ve got a fair shot if I do.

Anggito11

I finish 466 in first arena my score is 141.494.495.
Please kabammmm

DNA3000

tusharNair said:

Isnt it just easier to just perma ban for any ToS violation, why give a chance. They can have their "Chance" if they want to by creating new account(I would like this also not an option, Device Bans!) . Is it because of "industry standards" . Thats not a rule one need to follow.

Long standing Kabam corporate policy. This conversation has been going on for as long as I've been around.

tusharNair

DNA3000 said:

tusharNair said:

Isnt it just easier to just perma ban for any ToS violation, why give a chance. They can have their "Chance" if they want to by creating new account(I would like this also not an option, Device Bans!) . Is it because of "industry standards" . Thats not a rule one need to follow.

Long standing Kabam corporate policy. This conversation has been going on for as long as I've been around.

startropics

DNA3000 said:

startropics said:

pseudosane said:

startropics said:

I really hate to see someone lose their account, but modding and botting are capital offences in this game because it shrinks the value of this game down to zero. What's to stop temp-banned players from doing it again when they update their modding tools as they usually do?

they will get caught and banned again. This isnt a one and done deal.

They've been getting 7 day vacations for years. Is there a new standard going forward?

In the past, players have generally been given three strikes based on reports from players who were banned. Although I keep hearing about players who supposedly just get banned for seven days repeatedly, I haven't seen any actual proof of this.

I would love to see actual proof of this.

I can't give actual proof, but they're still around after all these years and on leaderboards almost every arena. Some with 1.5-2.5m+ PVPs from obvious bot farming alliances, others from whale alliances who've been mercing and getting merced since Act 6 legends runs and earlier.

These whales used to get piloted, now it's obvious modding because only a fool would pay a merc to go for champ they verifiably already have and at max sig. Surprised they weren't banned long ago...actually I'm not, it would be silly to bite the hand that feeds you. These players spend a ton of money and if I was Kabam I might only temp ban them too, it's business suicide otherwise. No shade thrown at Kabam, these are their spenders and they'd be hurting if they weren't around.

LilMaddogHT

I'm happy to see this. Since the arena reward update last month, I've personally been recording the various arena leaderboards... It's extremely interesting what you find by looking at the top 200 of each arena and how the same people are in the top positions arena after arena and even in top spots in multiple arenas in the same run and then on top of that how many come from similar alliances. I won't mention specific names or alliances but anyone can look at the leaderboards themselves as it's public in-game data. Pretty easy to point out suspicious activity. To say that a person can consistently hit the top ranks in arenas twice a week (& in multiple arenas) + hitting the T1a/T4B/T4C top ranks... I don't grind arena as much as I used to but hard to believe so much effort, time and resources would be allocated to do it yet if your brain wouldn't even be turned into absolute mush.

startropics

LilMaddogHT said:

I'm happy to see this. Since the arena reward update last month, I've personally been recording the various arena leaderboards... It's extremely interesting what you find by looking at the top 200 of each arena and how the same people are in the top positions arena after arena and even in top spots in multiple arenas in the same run and then on top of that how many come from similar alliances. I won't mention specific names or alliances but anyone can look at the leaderboards themselves as it's public in-game data. Pretty easy to point out suspicious activity. To say that a person can consistently hit the top ranks in arenas twice a week (& in multiple arenas) + hitting the T1a/T4B/T4C top ranks... I don't grind arena as much as I used to but hard to believe so much effort, time and resources would be allocated to do it yet if your brain wouldn't even be turned into absolute mush.

100% all of this. The same names from the same teams, both basic and feature arenas plus the small catalysts ones AND top ranks in the Sunday arenas every week for years. This hasn't gone unnoticed.

DNA3000

startropics said:

DNA3000 said:

startropics said:

pseudosane said:

startropics said:

I really hate to see someone lose their account, but modding and botting are capital offences in this game because it shrinks the value of this game down to zero. What's to stop temp-banned players from doing it again when they update their modding tools as they usually do?

they will get caught and banned again. This isnt a one and done deal.

They've been getting 7 day vacations for years. Is there a new standard going forward?

In the past, players have generally been given three strikes based on reports from players who were banned. Although I keep hearing about players who supposedly just get banned for seven days repeatedly, I haven't seen any actual proof of this.

I would love to see actual proof of this.

I can't give actual proof, but they're still around after all these years and on leaderboards almost every arena. Some with 1.5-2.5m+ PVPs from obvious bot farming alliances, others from whale alliances who've been mercing and getting merced since Act 6 legends runs and earlier.

These whales used to get piloted, now it's obvious modding because only a fool would pay a merc to go for champ they verifiably already have and at max sig. Surprised they weren't banned long ago...actually I'm not, it would be silly to bite the hand that feeds you. These players spend a ton of money and if I was Kabam I might only temp ban them too, it's business suicide otherwise. No shade thrown at Kabam, these are their spenders and they'd be hurting if they weren't around.

A lot of this stuff seems extremely unlikely, but not even Judge Dredd will execute a perp on 99%.