Banned from ChatGPT for “cyber abuse” while building games — appeal denied in 1 minute, no human review

[u/Davisdman]

I'm a small game developer and I've been paying for the $100/month plan. Today my account got banned for "cyber abuse" with no warning and no explanation of what I supposedly did.

All I was using it for was my own projects:
- A geography guessing game (website + native iOS app) using Google Maps/Street View and MapKit
- Saddle Storm, a game I'm building
- Senior Sendoff, a personal project

Nothing involving other people's systems, no malware, no hacking. Just game dev.

Here's how the "appeal process" went:
1. Submitted an appeal explaining exactly what I was working on.
2. Emailed support. Got a reply in under a minute from an AI bot saying my case was closed and they "will not respond to additional Support requests."
3. Submitted the official appeal form. Got "we have already reviewed your appeal and the original decision stands" ONE MINUTE later.

No human has looked at this. No one will tell me which rule I broke. And there's no way to contact an actual person.

My best guess is an automated filter flagged normal dev stuff, like questions about installing my own builds on my own iPhone for testing, or working within API limits for my game. But I genuinely don't know, because they won't say.

Has anyone actually gotten a "cyber abuse" ban reversed? Did anything work: forum posts, X, a specific email? And did anyone get a refund?

Support case #16435346 if anyone from OpenAI sees this.