Forum Discussion

piewhat

3 years ago

Linux players getting banned

Edit: Looks like they fixed the issue causing the bans.

Edit 2: EA is reversing bans and sending out emails letting you know. Yay!

Hello, I believe myself and a few others got banned for just playing on Linux.

other players:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/119uwk0/the_clients_game_account_has_been_banned_banned/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ApexLegendsOnLinux/comments/11bo2sw/permanently_banned_for_cheating_beware_users_of/

I'm going to layout everything I did and any Linux specific software I was using.

I got the "The client's game account has been banned: Banned" message when I went to play Apex the other day and I just assumed it was a bug but I had an email from EA that was sent at 6 am saying I was banned for cheating, I wasn't even awake then. I followed this EA help article and even sent videos of me playing the game the day before but I get an email last night saying "We have confirmed that your account was involved in cheating. Because of this, we will not remove the sanction on your account.".

Here everything I was using to play the game OS, recording software, etc.

Arch Linux

Steam

Proton-GE (lots of Steam Deck users use this so it shouldn't be a problem)

OBS with obs-vkcapture

MangoHud

gamemode

my launch options "gamemoderun mangohud OBS_VKCAPTURE=1 %command% -novid" (I did use the dx12 beta for a little as well)

I have been playing for months like this with no issue and I believe the only thing that all 3 of us were using was Proton-GE.

I think this was just a false positive and I hope we can get out accounts back but EA or Respawn needs to look into this because Steam Deck users could also be at risk.

495 Replies

AlphaCraft9658
2 years ago
Dear @EA_David,
I know i am late to this, but around that time, while I was on vacation, I got rushed by a surprising Email from EA, telling I've been banned from Apex Legends for cheating, now knowing what I did. Of course I tried appealing the issue, mentioning potential reasons for a false flag, which are unrealistic when thinking about them. I had used up my three appealing attempts, not knowing there was a limit, and am only getting bot responses with any further attempt. Unfortunately I doubt I had been answered by humans in the first place, as the ansewers look the same as with many other people. I had basically given up on it, with some appealing attempts as time went on. At some point I understood I've been part of a ban wave of Linux uesrs, not knowing why. But in the last days, I found out that this ban wave was caused by EA forgetting to include certain dependencies in an update, which are required for EAC to work on Linux. Although I am not sure whether it was also the cause of the first ban wave. Yet still, I have been part of this ban wave and innocent. I am writing this as one of my last desperate attempts at getting this finally resolved and I really hope you could pass this on to EA and maybe get something done. I really want to get my account back, as I really want to play this game and creating a new account for it just feels wrong. I hope that this is possible for you and that this can finally be done.
With best regards
AlphaCraft9658
RacsuChile
2 years ago
You won't be able to recover your account, so it's futile to keep attempting. Trust me.
I went through the entire process, providing as much assistance as possible on Reddit by creating the post that eventually reached the developers, yet my account remains banned.
I've decided to move on, leaving the game behind. Occasionally, I play with a new account now.
Such is life.
AlphaCraft9658
2 years ago
@RacsuChileYeah. EA is really bad at handling these things. I don't think deleting and re-creating my account would help either, as it's probably E-Mail based.
Asmodeus566
Hero+
1 year ago
@RacsuChile

Hmmmm?

From what I understand since the inception of Apex to date Linux was never supported for playing Apex.

One does really have to read the game requirements as to what OS is supported.

Just because you were able to ply via Linux does not mean it was supported.
AlphaCraft9658
1 year ago
@Asmodeus566 When the Stram Deck launched, support was enabled and EA wanted to support the Steam Deck and therefore Linux in a way. It WAS supported until recently, with the apparent cheating problem and they were transparent about it. If they didn't want to support Linux, they could've stayed silent.