Re: In game chat system needs rework urgently

If our TOS team has denied your appeal @borna_lk then it means they found evidence to support the ban. 

Darko

@borna_lk 

In order to avoid things like this happening you need to make sure no one else uses your account BTW account sharing is against the ToS as well.

Here are some tips for the future. See the bolded ones particularly. 

Account Safety

How to keep your account and hardware safe 101:

1. Use strong passwords for you game accounts. Keep track of your game account information (ownership) and to what other accounts they are connected to.
2. Use strong passwords for the associated E-mail account. Keep track of your E-mail accounts and what they are connected to.
3. Do not use e-mail accounts that you cannot fully control, like those provided to you through, schools, universities, workplace and or other organizations etc. If the Org. revokes your E-mail or you leave the school, switch workplace etc and no longer have access to that E-mail you will end up having issues you do not want or need.  
4. Do not share either of these passwords with others. Keep note of your passwords in a safe place.
5. Enable two factor identification for both the game and associated E-mail accounts.
6. Do not let others use your game account (Friends and family alike) because if they do something wrong on your account it is still your fault, nobody wants to have a sanction on their account because somebody else did or said something wrong.
7. Do not use internet café’s to access your account and play, you do not know what software is on the hardware there, you do not know if the hardware at the cafe has a hardware ban and this can affect your account in a negative way.
8. I would suggest only accessing your account with your own trusted hardware, gaming on another person’s hardware brings some of the same risks as above.
9. I would also suggest not letting others use your hardware in order to play with their account, because if they get a hardware ban on your hardware while using it, it can have a negative affect on your account.
10. Buying used hardware comes with risks as well. The hardware could have been banned and this is not an EA problem but a problem between the buyer and the seller. 
11. Play nice with others, in other words do not de-mean, harass or bully others in Chat or over voice coms, both can be reported and that can also have a negative effect on your account.
12. Use non-offensive user/gamer tag/club tags, if you get a warning about such change it, doing otherwise can lead to a negative effect on your account.
13. Play fair, boosting and teaming are cheating.
14. Play fair using cheating software or hardware is not fair and is really only cheating yourself.
15. Do not buy and or sell accounts, do you really know what has been done with the account? What cyber info are you giving up? What risk is there that the account is bunk. What is the risk to your hardware?
16. Re-read the Terms of Service agreement and the Terms of Sale agreement you agreed to play this game and adhere to it. https://www.ea.com/legal/user-agreement and https://www.ea.com/legal/terms-of-sale

About points 7, 8, and 9, I do know that not everyone can afford multiple hardware setups for the entire family and there is trust that has to be there, talking about the does and don’ts on the use of shared hardware should be done so everybody can enjoy what they do on the hardware and everyone can be safe.

If you believe you have been hacked take appropriate measures to secure your account and associated E-mail account https://help.ea.com/en-gb/help/account/secure-hacked-ea-account/

If you believe that a sanction (Suspension/Ban) placed on your account was by mistake you should reach out to the Terms of Service team https://help.ea.com/za/help/account/information-about-locked-or-banned-or-suspended-accounts/

Contacting EA help https://help.ea.com/help/faq/using-ea-help

Thank you for your message,

that’s a problem in of itself as no one had permission to go on my account, so does that constitute it being hacked? 

The reality is, I asked the EA TOS to not simply unban my account but to suspend it instead for any amount of time they deem fair for up to 1 year.

again the 2 words they specifically emailed to say their banner my account over do NOT violate the TOS. So unless they are using a separate reason they are not willing to share details on, the account did not breach any other rules to my knowledge.

i understand protocol and procedure, and i don’t see how anyone is benefited by my account having a permanent ban over a lengthy suspension, it would not be desirable for any player to lose access to their account for a whole year like I offered, but that should indicate the desperate position I’m out in when I’ve been banned for something such as this 

If you allow others access to your system @borna_lk then you are responsible for any actions they take.

It is your responsibility to keep your account safe and ensure that others cannot access it. 

Darko

Dear Darko,

as previously mentioned there is nothing that was inputted in chat that would violate the TOS to terminate,

Had my account been hacked, it would still not merit a ban. That’s why I am so upset by this

If I may ask you a question,

I’m sure you have many years spent working with EA,

how would you feel if after all those years of good behaviour, you were answering a question from a costumer and instead of the word “ask,” you accidentally spelt the a rude word used to describe “butt.” 

and then you wake up to see your account permanently banned, all your assets deleted, and all those years never existed, furthermore there is no way to plead your case other than an email that sends the same (slightly altered) response every time.

the difference between that fictional scenario and mine is the word that was typed was not even a swear word but like any other word such as “ask.”

in my opinion it’s even more ridiculous now because if the case if the TOS team can pick and choose definitions of words then the chat system should be removed altogether. In no world does it make sense that a player can scream every swear under the sun, with zero consequence, and ban players who don’t use any swears in the chat, but maybe the TOS rep decided they’d ban anyway.

(also, how I know there was no swear inputted in the chat is because the first email they sent they listed the words they banned me over) 

There is nothing that we can do to assist @borna_lk if our TOS team has denied your appeals.

You are responsible for all actions taken on your account.

Darko

Dear Darko,

if I am responsible for all actions taken on my account, the TOS should be responsible to make decisions based on fact not interpretation.

e.g not to take a word that has no bad meaning and make their interpretation. To do otherwise should merit EA as a company to not be allowed to have in-game chat functions as the TOS team is neither fair with their decisions nor responsive for their appeals

@borna_lk 

Its exactly that the automatic ban system for the chat is doing. Its not interpreting the context; it just detect certain words or variations close to those word and flags you for it. I am not 100% certain of this but MOST LIKELY; you also need a teammate to report you for it for the system to actually punish you. I have been temporarily banned for saying "I didnt have any fword ammo", i.e just a swear word when playing with randoms but when I play with a premade trio, we type things to each other sometimes much worse than that without getting banned.  But perhaps its just disabled if you play premade trios. FACT WAS: certain prohibted words were said from your account. No interpretation at all needed.

Look at it this way:

It was not you who was banned, it was the account from which the bannable offense was committed from. Totally fair and the only way to handle such matters, both prohibited chat text and hacks/cheats. Imagine hackers getting a free out of jail card by just saying "it was my little brother who doesnt know any better" =)

Hacking is not comparable to swear words in my humble opinion.

the chat words that were inputted were “knee,” and “grenade.”

in seperate messages. Interpreted as only what I can assume is a similar sound to a variation of the N word. 

when my nephew was instructed by the other players to type in two simple words that even had difficulty understanding the gimmick of, I don’t believe that no longer constitutes a bannable offence, especially when my nephew said those players were cursing, calling him names, etc. 

Do you believe in the real world people should also get the same punishment for not wearing a seatbelt vs. driving drunk? 

I offered the TOS team to suspend the account for up to 1 YEAR, which I strongly believe is a more than sufficient punishment for any swear but for the words “Knee,” and “Grenade,” there is no world I believe a 5 year account should be banned for that. 

@borna_lk 

I totally agree that Respawns rules are silly. I think its ridiculous that you get banned for words other than pure hate speech, sexism and racism, in a game where the main  goal is to shot other humanoids in the head =) This especially now since, just like you mentioned, the voice chat is literally no mans land. You can recite Mein kampf without getting banned hahaa.

My comment was more about the general responsibility of your account  etc etc. So if your nephew had written something else, like for instance a word thats very similar to the nword but actually means someone who complains alot, then I would undrstand the bann since it doesnt matter who is behind the computer. But knee and grenade seems very strange. No memes or anything if you google it.

Those times Ive been banned for "chat abuse", they mailed me the chat logs.. Did they really send a mail something like

"

HERE'S WHY:
While reviewing your account, we saw:

Apex Legends

Your name: Knee

Your name: Grenade 

We consider this to be Hate speech.

"

 Then I understand your frustration