I’ve noticed a disturbing pattern the last few weeks. If you ask for transparency, you topic gets locked. This is very poor and only goes further to show there is something to hide. Why else lock a thread? It serves no purpose but to attempt to stifle feedback.
Most recent example;
Thank you! I am blown away they just swept it under the rug and locked it after I continue to ask why I was suspended.
Their response…open yet another ticket that AGS will ignore. I came to the forums because I had no other option!
They just completely deleted one of the PVP threads that had 300+ posts on it. Whether you are for or against PVP it should be alarming that they are willing to mute such a large discussion. They didn’t lock it, they just outright deleted it.
Tubers indicating same thing is happening in other areas of the internet. The only way to fight opposition is to silence it!
Poor reaction andy’s what will they do…
Guess we need to take it to Reddit and other forums they can’t touch but have high visibility.
Indeed. Sure would make visiting anywhere else a whole lot more pleasant.
If we feel in the mood for a bit of soap boxing and shit flinging we have one convenient place to visit.
I feel like this is off topic.
This isnt anything new…i had a post ninja deleted in the first two weeks of this forum…never did get an answer as to why. No notification…just “this post is private” when you went to find it.
How does it show there is something to hide? If you raise that tin foil hat just a little above your eyes you can see the post is only locked, still visible for anyone to see within the listings, still free for anyone to find.
Not only that, it is also answered with an understandable reply. There is no insight in the report logs on the forums, contact customer support.
Which in my eyes seems like just the standard no discussing of bans on the forums rule as just about any community has.
If you actually read what he posted, they were referencing a number of other threads being straight up deleted.
Also for my post about my suspension I already exhausted the create an appeal ticket and got told to piss off - AGS refuses to tell me why despite asking at least 7 different ways privately through their requested channels. At a certain point the public forum is our only option.
Thank you for presenting an alternative side.
From my point of view, not having logs in any sort of networked activity is implausible (I dare say, improbable). This seems more a case of the support staff not being given the correct tools while gaslighting the customer into believing they just don’t exist.
I may have gotten a little off point though. My main concern is that discussion should always be welcomed. The only reasons to stifle discussion are not positive ones (in my opinion, I should state).
To touch on your point of “don’t discuss bans” (paraphrasing), why not? I understand that this may be in the ToS that they are within their rights to enforce, but I would still ask, “why?”
The last part of this really resonates with me. Asking us not to discuss why some of us are being suspended with 0 explanation despite going through their support ticket process feels like employers asking employees not to discuss their wage.
Why? And who does that benefit?
It’s not that AGS doesn’t have it, but rather it’s just not attached to your forum account directly.
And that also directly chimes in on this. Yes, forum account and Steam account are linked. So customer support can likely jump through some hoops to find out if your report came via the attached Steam account or not, and if so what the contents of the report were.
But let’s be fair. We, as a general public in this discussion cannot. And with that, it leaves no room for discussion, because truth cannot be determined. Letting these sort of discussions go is often not fruitful, it’ll get people on one end demanding answers, others suplorting the claim because they heard the same thing happened to their best friend’s dad’s workbuddy, whereas even others will be sure to tell the topicstarter that he is a lier, likely did something to justify the ban.
And all of those posts have a certain sense to them, but leads to absolutely nowhere and will never lead to anywhere because the ground truth is missing, the report log.
The first quote is more the responses I see from customer service agents on the direct support line (instant messages through the ticket system). Often the response is “We don’t have that information”, “we won’t tell you that information”, or conflicting statements of the root cause.
Regarding the second quote, I understand this view and it makes sense. Unfortunately, in any discourse, there can be a lot of unfortunate elements such as you describe. This isn’t limited to forums or Internet based discussions (although the certain level of anonymity does seem to fuel more types of unkind comments). The information is available, but isn’t being shared by the support tickets. The ticket is then closed without recourse. The user then seeks to open a dialogue using the only other method, the forums, which are then also shut down. Fair enough, this may be because the staff on the forums don’t have that information, but the channel that (supposedly) does, has locked them out of that mediation route. One can understand the frustration that ca bring.
Rounding the subject back to the point, while discussions in any format or medium can have unfortunate elements that cause them to get disrupted or put of course, we shouldn’t discourage conversation and discussion because of it.
I see where you’re coming from and I agree, the only people that can help in this situation are Customer Service and AGS. Everyone else is just a bystander with their own anecdotal experiences.
My account suspension was lifted with an apology. After I continued to ask why it was suspended in the first place Customer Service got frustrated and hit their permanent ban macro to kill the ticket so I would stop responding. This seems just…insane levels of lazy or not providing CS with the tools/access they need.
If tomorrow you logged on and your account was banned. Let’s say you went through their ticket appeal process, live chat, and email asking why with no answers. Would you just say “oh I must have deserved it, I guess I don’t play this game anymore”?
No, I would attempt to get a refund from Steam and buy a product from a company that has a better ethic, if you find the customer support options objectionable.
AGS moderators lock those type of threads because 1) they can’t help, 2) it just encourages baseless conspiracies (like in that post) 3) the ban system probably works fine for most players, and users just come here to try and get mob mentality on their side.
If people aren’t willing to share the key bits of their customer support conversation, as a rule of thumb, they shouldn’t be believed about being banned for no good reason.
No, I can understand the frustration in case it’s a ban without solid grounds, or even if you personally can’t understand based on what grounds because the reasoning wasn’t made clear.
But I’m also fair, people lie. I myself recall being a 16-year old cheat as well. Got banned for botting in Runescape. Walked the path of a public forum post, story of supposedly not botting, just mindlessly fishing, bla bla bla. That by now roughly 18 years ago. Had people siding with me, they ‘knew’ me, would never bot, had people not knowing me side with me, for it happened to someone they knew too. And people calling me out as bot, liar. But this was actually just a minority. Mob mentality is quick to pitchfork against developers.
In the end, the latter groups were right in this case.
None of the involved parties on the forums knows what is truth and what is not though. The only thing we can know is that we cannot or should not trust these sort of public ban appeals. Yes, some may be honest, but many others will also just not be. Most will just have the intent of getting unbanned by getting public sentiment on their side, rallying against the company which placed the ban. Not because they know they did not do anything wrong, but because they know that many companies go along in this to prevent negative community backlash.
The best a company can do to prevent these sort of things, is just to lock it early and prevent escalation. As what AGS did in your topic’s case.
In my personal experience, non gaming related, but shopping related is that customer service employees are just working off a script. So if you don’t resolve with them, it’s a dead-end in that regard.
Escalating by asking for a manager, these days to be considered a proper Karen move, is usually futile.
What may help in those regards is contact a higherup personally. Via these forums, consider a private message to reach out to either @Luxendra or @NW_Mugsy for example.
If that is to no avail, and it is still not clear on as to why you were banned, you can in this case also consider contacting Steam support, in case you have purchased the product via their platform. And explain to them that your product access has been suspended with no grounds provided.
That is of course, if no grounds have been provided. Up to you yourself to make the judgement call on that.
Beyond that, it’s just pretty much end of the line really. I mean, sure, theoretically you can seek legal council to act as an intermediate in discussing with AGS in this matter. But let’s be fair, who’s really going to do that for a 40 USD product.
Here you are already yourself providing a possible grounds for the suspension though, and it might already be coming to light that the ban was perhaps not as unwarranted as you have suggested it to be. And depending on whether or not similar crude language was also used in your engagement with customer support, this may have been the reason for a possible permaban.
Once more, I’ll leave this one up to your own judgement. You were there, we were not. But I would suggest you do question yourself on as to whether if crude language could have been grounds for a suspension, how was your interaction with the support staff? Was it a respectful conversation? Was it disrespectful or condescending?
Especially when approaching a third party, e.g. Steam support (if purchased via the Steam platform), your own interaction will obviously be of impact in any further outcome.
Highly doubt that would make any difference ;).
Alright so you are sort of grasping at straws here but to be honest that is because I have not provided you with enough information to form the full picture but I didn’t think it was appropriate to load the screen shots yet. I genuinely appreciate you trying to be as impartial as possible but that example was merely provided to show that the suspension could have only been for something minor but even then it was reversed.
As I originally stated my prime intention was to get a hold of someone at AGS for escalation into this absolute nonsense. As someone who worked in Customer Service 15 years ago I understand the position they are in and always treat them as the human on the other side, again I have screenshots and time stamps of every interaction.
I’m in my 30’s man and I lack the edginess to spin this differently but what I do understand is how their business is set up and I can say this with 100% certainty:
For whatever reason the New World Customer Service team either can not or will not tell me why my account was originally suspended. After multiple polite (figured this was a given) requests I have not been given an answer and a New World Customer Service agent decided that they no longer wanted me asking why. That agent then used the macro built into their CRM (ticketing system) to automatically close my ticket and say my account was now permanently banned for asking them to provide information on the original suspension.
Just think about that for 10 seconds. Were they probably having a bad day? It seems likely. Or perhaps I was seen as taking up too much of their time and Amazons strict metrics made them think this was a good idea. We have all heard about other situations where Amazon employees have felt “forced” into specific actions so they don’t get fired.
This customer service team needs oversight.
Boom, this is what I was hoping for from the beginning. I was hoping a community manager would step in and regulate their own team a bit here. I’ll reach out to them directly and get some answers.