I'm writing this ticket on behalf of a community member, that is not speaking English.
His problem is the global ban, that he received after joining a server by IP. He bought the game in Steam. He couldn't know it was a pirated server until he saw vehicles. He tried it, sat and drove and disconnected. After that he got a global ban. It was approximately at 0.46 in July.
There are very interesting arguements
- He couldn't know the server is pirated. He found some forum thread and copypasted it's IP 5.178.137.150:2302 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjHizGeRzb4
- The game allwos joining any IP without checking it's official whitelist status.
- It checks version but never checks files or trustwothiness.
- There is NO OFFICIAL OR ANY OTHER WARNING MESSAGE for user that warns them about NOT joining custom IP, because it may result in ban. Sometimes servers are not listed in the browser or lag and you can only find it by custom\remote ip connection.
- The only thing that was told was Senchi who posted this https://twitter.com/_SenChi__/status/497423703266058240 on his twitter. And this twit actually made this player contact me and complain, that he finally understood the nature of his ban and why developers had no warning ingame. He lost money and feels frustrated even more, becuase now he got banned in all BIS games.
I know BIS do not deal with unbanning. As well as BE not doing any unbans. But I insist on discussing this situation and contact BE for ligting bans for using speedhacks on pirated servers - this what BE detects driving a car on pirated server - speedhack.
If BE is not cooperative, please, investigate and may be you can issue a refund or any other kind of official support.
This problem lies far beyond alpha security issues and you will not deny that any new player is NOT safe and can get a global ban easily after joining custom IP server or EVEN joining a friend that plays on pirated server+.
Terms of service state it's fobidden to use modified content and join modified servers, but how can a player know the server is modified?
I hope you devote appropriate attention to this issue.