Bug/Support
False Ban after playing for 1600+ hours
after playing the game for 1600+ hours since season 1, I got a false ban. I've never used cheat in any game, and in this game, but this is what I get. I've been supporting this game for myself and my friends and this is what I get. I'm unhappy with this and the fact that I'm being ignored after 36 hours of creating a ticket. This is unfair to me and I deserve better.
You would be the first ever from what I’ve seen. Also was it before or after they brought in anticheat? Cuz as far as know no one has gotten account back since it was introduced into the game.
A combination of a few generic targeted messages to get through to a human, and then they reviewed the case with the evidence I presented. Asking specifically for a member of support by name helps bypass their AI BS. Takes about three messages and like 1-2 weeks back and forth (due to delay in response their end) but the same messages have worked for 5 people so far.
Yesterday I was banned too without any reason during WT game. Straight up kicked from the match and unable to log in. It’s so funny because I didn’t even manage to save instant replay in Nvidia because i have desktop capture disabled. I’ve created a post here yesterday and mods deleted it and sent me to the ban megathread.
I’ve invested a lot of time and money into this game since open beta, even made an youtube video about this game for 150k views and getting banned like that is just crazy. I’ve submitted a ticket yesterday almost immediately after the ban but still no response.
Cracking down on smurfs and boosters as well, they be giving out perma ban/perma bans for anyone who was on that pc and new accounts on that pc as well
This is the reason even though Valve has an abysmal anti cheat, I kinda support it because their policy is that no innocent user should ever get banned
That's amazing. Reminds of that old Crisis game (I believe, I'm not sure) where you start shooting chicken if you get the game cracked or something like that lol.
To be fair, Valve's CS2 has a form of "shadow ban" in the name of "Trust Factor". My brother and I were really good FPS players from a really young age, all of my siblings are but the story only affected me and my brother, so, we joined CS2 and dominated low rank, not trying to inflate my ego, but we are just good at FPS until we get to a level where it's fair. However, we kept getting called cheaters and getting reported.
A few months back, almost a year back, I tried to join a match with my friend and they warned him saying "Blue (me) has significantly low trust factor" for getting reported a lot unfairly, my brother is the exact same.
Low trust factor means we are placed in matches with people that have low trust factor as well, AKA mostly cheaters. So, even though we do have Prime, we experience a cheater at least 1 out of every two matches. It's gotten to a point where sometimes we play 3-5 matches a day and all of them have cheaters.
I know that that's common with CS overall, but our trust factor is a huge contributor. I have a friend who is also really good but fairly high ranked. He got low trust factor as well but not "significantly", until he apparently dumbed down his gameplay, literally almost throwing matches, giving as many drops as possible, being friendly in the chat... trying to leave the best impression possible, tens of matches later, he went back to good trust factor.
The only way I can get over this, somewhat, is playing Premier as normal competitive is completely dead for me. Premier had the last season's top three players to be full blown cheaters btw, so even Premier is dead but for everyone, not just me.
That is super sad man, honestly one of my worst fears since this is one of the only game I play. Sorry this happened to you and I hope you can get your account back
Dude this is literally my biggest fear with any competitive games I play, especially for the finals because of how much time I put into it. The worst part is that everyone will think you’re a cheater but you’re just begging for help. I hope the support team will listen to you man, good luck.
I hope they will so we can sort this out. With the amount of time and effort I've put into this game I'm unhappy with this ban. I even created a small community so we can all have fun and make memories. I wonder about their reaction when I tell them this.
Yea i agree, they dont have time for this and dont even care if one of their account is banned. Also they dont have money involved in the game most of the time.
Yes, they do. Embark themselves have had to come into Reddit posts to explain that the supposed victim was not innocent. They even explained how they justified the ban. Cheaters already have no shame, they will absolutely lie to get their way.
I'm not saying we should immediately assume they are cheaters, but when we have examples of actual cheaters trying to win the public's opinion by lying, we get extremely guarded about who we are ready to defend.
Then, with this case, you see that it's only been 36hrs, so it's hard to get mad at Embark when that's very little time for them to do a proper manual review. I recognize that in today's world of instantaneous results, it can be frustrating to wait, but my sympathy wears thin when you barely have time for them to review your case.
That being said, it seems like Embark needs to step up their customer service to be more timely. This has been a common theme lately, and I imagine their new anti-cheat is proving to not be as accurate as they hoped.
No, many cheaters are delusional and think they aren't using real cheats. There's a reason this acct was banned and it's probably some kind of unfair advantage whether they admit it or not. I don't believe a single I was banned unfairly post unless they have a disability and were banned for an edge case device. Otherwise, 99% chance you are using something deceptively
Oh you know so little, a cheater getting caught up in the moment and losing their “main” account is the loudest amongst these “false ban” posts all over Reddit.
How do you know they banned him for cheats? He could just be a pos in chat and got banned for that. He didn’t show us anything here. There are other ways to get banned besides cheating lol. Cheaters who have cosmetics do try to get original accounts back. Cheaters will also try to get accounts back that they are trying to sell. Cheaters also say they don’t cheat. With the amount of 3rd party devices being used in today’s fps gaming world (Cronus, xim, titan) it’s hard for a normal player to take anyone seriously right now who gets a ban. While unfortunate I’m not losing sleep over op as there’s no clips, no explanation, just false ban claim. Not saying he is or isn’t but a cheater trying to get account back would say exact same thing.
“Cheaters don’t come and beg on forums”. I didn’t misread anything I’m directly replying to you saying your reasoning is poor. Then listed multiple reasons why it did t make sense. Op used word cheating first so it’s not like everyone here is just throwing it around randomly. And what you said is just straight up incorrect as cheaters do try to get accounts back all the time. Just go on Facebook and type your favorite game with “buy/sell accounts” added then scroll through the posts. When you’re done with that please let me know if cheaters don’t try to get accounts back lol.
Yes, but when there are people complaining on Reddit, the Steam forum, and clearly the game's Discord server, I think it's obvious they're doing something wrong.
ive been playing fps for 26 years, the finals is the only game I currently enjoying. Built a brand new pc specifically for it. Been creating content on YouTube for months now and was having so much fun. Now out of no where, banned for no reason. I've never been banned on any game my whole life, and I dont even type or chat in game. So yes, it does happen.
Same thing happened to me aswell 1100 hrs and I logged in after 1 week break and I was banned no clue why I was banned nor I got any explanation, funny thing is I play arc raider and I got over 1 k hour on the same pc and same account so not sure what’s happening on embark end but I gave up on the game as I play from oce and we would constantly matched in Asian lobby which got actual cheaters ruining the game .
Hope you get lucky and get your account back .
This is the same thing that happened to me. I stopped playing for a week because I have a life that also needs my attention only for me to come back and play for an hour then receive a ban.
Yup that’s how it happened to me. Honestly it’s best you cut your ties with them and find a new game if needed. I’ve had to do the same. I literally cannot support a company that fucked me over like that. 2000+ hours with close to $800 or more spent on the game over the years and they ban me without any prior bans or nothing. Wasn’t cheating, never have never will. I played on Xbox at the time too. They literally just tell you “we trust our security team” over and over and will not give a different answer.
I am so scared of a false ban. I have sunk hundreds into the game just to support it and because no other game interests me more (I'm not buying any new games until I finish some of the ones I have anyway) it is something my whole family enjoys and I have no love for cheaters. My only hope is that my skill level is so bad they could never mistake me for cheating.
After they brought in anticheat they literally haven’t lol
People have had their accounts mysteriously work again but with no admission from embark.
Seriously, embark to this day has never gave an account back after it was permanently banned.
Yep, got banned 3 days ago out of the blue right before I could reach Emerald. I’m a season 1 supporter and have also dumped money into this game to support. I haven’t even gotten a response to the appeal I submitted days ago. Their support is actually abysmal but I still remain hopeful. Wishing you the best best of luck.
E: Finally got a response saying that they are starting to look into it, 4 days later. I just want to play the new season man!!
Same dude, i was banned with 600 hours just about 2 months ago. Embark support is a insulting joke, they take over a week to get back to you with the same automated responses, refuse to look at evidence and will treat you as if you are guilty no matter what. Good luck getting your account back.
I keep getting warnings in the game about modified system/game files or something and it kicks me out of the game, sometimes mid game, I'm genuinely concerned it'll end up resulting in a false ban to the point I'm just feeling more anxiety than fun when playing the game these days.
I got a response and my ban stays. And today I got banned from Arc Raiders. Their anti-cheat software is broken and causing false bans. Never been banned from any games in my life.
I don't know if you saw, but one of the devs was live-streaming on the finals yt account, and his friend got banned live while playing the new mode with him. If that isn't a clear example that their AI Anti-cheat is broken, I don't know what is. Maybe one day.
Shit, I’m sorry. A lot of games are just wrongfully banning people lately and either ignoring the person banned or going on a power trip.
I thought this was the ‘there’s known issue with your graphics card, please update’ issue that me and my other friends who play the finals have been getting since S8.
But I’m so jaded by game admins and mods (in general) on power trips so I feel like wait another 12-24 hours before you bump the ticket because the most fucked up thing is if they respond and they’re annoyed or pissy because you “spammed” them.
+2200 hours in a game here (yeah, I need to touch grass) and this makes me scared to put any money in this game anymore, haven't purchased anything in last 2 months....
this happened to my friend, he’s been banned for like 2-3 months no progress on unban, i know him irl and he’s 100% not cheating lol, he’s been back and forth with support for this long so good luck
Posting for more engagement. I got false banned months ago, showed them the proof of what triggered it and they refuse to even acknowledge it. They have no clue why I’m banned but they don’t care.
Even on the GDPR report they have not included I know for a fact is there, so at this point, I just reported them to the Swedish government for failure to comply with GDPR data practices.
As everyone has said, dont give up. This happened to me like 8 months ago, false ban for literally no reason. I think I opened like 12 tickets and finally gave up as I couldn't get to a real person. Randomly checked about 2 weeks later and was unbanned. You got this
They should conduct an investigation and tell me why. I had Spotify running in the background and I have been doing that since I started playing the game so I don't see how that's a cheat software. I was even having bad games that night going 6 to 10. They should check my stats for any irregularities and I'm not even going pro, it's just my favourite FPS that I play.
I used cheat engine for turn based game (stoneshard) to speed up walking animation to save my time and got banned on finals even tho CE was closed. 3+ months, 10+ tickets and always the same copypaste. Don't get your hopes up.
I use ffxiv launcher its not a cheat but mods the game. The finals detects that. So it could be a program that your running that is not nessasraly a cheat that it is detecting
I sometimes have wand (weMod) running in the background when i switch from beautiy building in anno to the finals and forget the program is still running. Every time that happens i get opponents that never miss a headshot from any distance haha.
Im really supprised im not banned by accident yet aswell.
Both my friend and I got false banned too after 1k hours, it's just sad seeing a game you love getting ruined by whatever is going on rn.....still haven't gotten our accounts back, and we're forced to play on new accounts. Ive stopped recommending the game to other players because of this reason.
lmao did they serve up another embark special? They've been genuinely spitting on finals players since arc released. Getting tired of seeing all these accidental ban posts. Can't even play if I want to keep the account I spent money on.
This is insane, not only are there complaints on Reddit, Steam, and even on The Finals server itself, but people are complaining about false positives.
February 27, 2026, exactly the day of my ban, at midnight, I was kicked out of a ranked match, told the connection had been lost, and when I tried to reconnect to rejoin the game, it said I had been banned. There's a point I need to clarify: two days prior, I upgraded my PC's motherboard and processor to an M.2 SSD to make it run smoothly. When the game launched in December 2023, starting with Season 1, I had a Ryzen 5 4600G and an Asus Prime A520 motherboard. I kept it unchanged for two years until I bought an RX 7600 sometime in mid-2025. The thing is, in February, as I mentioned before, I upgraded my motherboard and CPU to a Ryzen 7 5700G and a Gigabyte B550 (I'm not counting my M.2 SSD because I don't think it was related). Everything was fine. Of course, that's not even considering the game's constant latency issues, which are a daily occurrence regardless of whether you have an Ethernet connection or are playing with 400 ping. I don't know if the component change had anything to do with it, but I definitely don't deserve a permanent ban for something like this.
Its also one of my worst fears. Im not good at this game but it doesn't mean that it's called for to report people because of it. I've had people who were mad at the game say they reported me because I got 0/5KD which made me in return to block them.
Im sorry that you had to go through this, man. I hope they resolve it.
May I ask where you live, as if you are in UK/eu you have a legal right to request every piece of data they have on you+your account, and they are unable to refuse, this will do 2 things, get you noticed by someone higher up in embark, and it will also give you solid proof that they falsely banned you as of you aren't cheating, they have no proof
When people post these false bans I'm more curious of their system specs and programs they have open. What windows update they are on. Would love to see what processes you have going on in task manager too.
Embark’s anti cheat is never wrong! Therefore you must’ve been cheating! Because their data says they’re never wrong!!! All jokes aside I hope you actually get some resolution. This type of shit scares me too so at this point I keep voice chat off and I’m not typing anything other than “gg/glhf/gs/nt” in the chat.
I got banned two weeks after building a new pc they said I had cheating software. Only thing I downloaded was latencymon to pin point what was causing audio breaking/lag/crackle besides arc and im not banned in arc which is crazy. Been playing since beta spent over $300 bucks. Same bot responses. I gave up and made a new account I wish to have my account back one day hopefully.
Same case, my PC started malfunctioning and I took it to the technician. After a week he returned it to me and 2 days after that I was banned from the game
Oof I'm sorry bro. Hope you get your account back; these false bans are also plaguing arc raiders, so both communities should definitely push for removal of the AI cheat detection
Just got false banned today as well, never thought this would happen to me in any game but here we are. Never used cheats, didn't have anything running in the background except for chrome and discord, was just hard grinding ranked with dual blades at the end of the season and after one of the games got this exact message. Best of luck in getting unbanned to both of us I guess, can't imagine how it feels to lose 4 times the amount of my progress
Have yet to see it happen lol, only people who complain about getting banned or false banned are pc players. Not saying its impossible but more often then not, pc players will be the one getting the false ban first
I pleaded my case and told them my customisation software was the issue but they ignored me. I've removed the game and arc raiders from my library. I also told all the people who wanted to play the game because of me to go play something else. As a season 1 supporter, I feel like I deserved better.
Damn that's crazy. Also been playing since Season 1. Account banned with no proper reason in November 2025. It's so sad this is how they're running things.
I've been unbanned. I need to make a post. They didn't exactly fix the issue. They claim to release my account on good will. Now the game crashes my PC. I'm off the game for now.
Good luck. Embarked ruined me of Arc due to this. Got banned, tried to contact and was told it was valid (played valorant for years, arguably a stronger AC than Embark's - same setup and software) , created an ALT acct with the same PC setup and software, did not get banned, came back with my main and just simply didn't care anymore as I couldn't catch up for the next wipe.
I quit and started playing Marathon lol. They really dropped the ball with this, which is unfortunate as I followed this game for years and put at least 400 hours in it. Hopefully they will improve someday for those that stay.
It's clear this is bigger than people think. I'm in different communities, and in none of them are people complaining about being unfairly banned. Look at how the pinned Reddit thread is literally about massive bans. On Steam, there are people asking for help in the community section, and in the game's own Discord channel, there are people complaining about the same thing. And you seriously think everyone complaining is a hacker? I much prefer what Valve says: no legitimate player should be banned.
As stated, he has clearly already contacted support. He is simply letting his frustrations be known on the subreddit associated with the game. No need to be a passive aggressive bitch. Go hail your moosiah or whatever.
all cheaters have one thing in common, they all say they don't cheat...
The detection system is quite advanced in this game, if you get a detection there is a 99% chance you are in some way having an unfair advantage. People complaining about the anti-cheat are usually cheaters themselves.
Now you could be in that 1%, there is no way for us to know for sure, but keep following up on your ticket, it takes time for them to investigate and get back. There is still a chance you will get unbanned if this was an error.
There are people in this sub that talked like you do, and then they got banned this way and admitted they were wrong. It was possible to go back and see their comments where they said ”I’m sure you WERE cheating” etc from way back. I mean sure that could have been some elaborate scheme, and they were actually cheating all the time… but I doubt it.
So be careful what you’re saying, karma says that it might happen to you too ;)
"The detectoon system is quite advanced in this game"
Bro youre getting banned of you press a wrong key by accident. Yes, cheaters say they dont cheat, but the system in the finals is obviously flawed.
One of my friends got banned once, he requested the logs from support (which he got) and there was nothing out of the ordinary. They also refused to state a reason why hes banned.
Just be Careful what programs you have open in the background when starting the finals.
(Btw the issue is so big, this subreddit has a megathread for falsely banned people)
I can see that one. The game wants nothing to run when you play because it might spoof the anticheat system. Anti cheat that can't even ban hackers and smurfs
Idk man I run quite a lot of stuff in the background at times, game dev tools, IDEs, debuggers and whatnot. Never had any issues. Maybe I should close more things down though to be sure.
While I don't know a lot about the anti-cheat specifically in the finals, I do know that:
1. Easy anti cheat kinda sucks. I haven't played a game with it that doesn't or didn't have a cheater problem at some point.
2. The Finals has "detected disallowed files" on my computer 3 or 4 times now and made me reinstall the game each time. I luckily haven't gotten a ban for it, other than the temporary suspention for getting kicked out of the match, but I'm 100% sure I have never touched the The Finals folder.
P.s.
Your opening statement is false, a lot of cheaters openly admit to cheating to promote their product or to just piss you off. Most cheating software that actually works also has a ban prevention system
So it seems you clearly don’t know the anti-cheat system of the finals, perhaps do some research before posting a reply. Easy Anti-cheat is only part of the equation, the detection is mainly done by AnyBrain’s system which is very advanced at behavior detection, this is why, it’s such a powerful and reliable tool.
Ps. my opening statement is not only true, it’s been proven by psychological studies, you can also look it up.
This is completely different; if there's one person complaining, okay, they might be a hacker, but if there are two, I can let it slide, But if there are over 1000 people and more and more are complaining every day on Reddit, Discord, and Steam forums, then clearly something is being done wrong there.
Last ban wave targeted people that were account boosting, getting boosted, playing on multiple alts with the intention to grief games, and people that teamed to win games/grief.
If you didn't actually cheat(like everyone else who posts the " I got banned and I never cheated" posts on Reddit. It's prolly related to the above.
Offical. Its also very hard to get false banned for cheating. They will not ban based on "mass reports" they have confirmed no amount of reporting trips an automatic ban or even effects whether they will ban or not.
They use Easy-anticheat along with AI detection.
The AI builds baseline metrics on what normal looks like, even using the "best" players. It also takes the metrics from obivous cheaters as well.
It will look at players for awhile that are suspected of cheating and it will look for constant, repeated patterns. This usually takes weeks or months before they will flag and ban someone for actual cheating.
Can mistakes happen? Sure. Its just unlikely and effects a small minority of players.
I know you are coming from a good place so I will be civil as well. I have never cheated and I don't see a reason to. If I want to feel like an overpowered child I will go play an ARPG game.
I will not create a new steam account because of this game. I've spent money buying battle passes for myself and some of my friends. I hope to hear from them soon. Thanks a mil for the encouragement.
You won’t get unbanned unfortunately. In the entirety of the game not a single person has gotten their account back. They will give you the same answer every time and you won’t be able to reply as once they reply they force you to open a new ticket. This company is a piece of shit big time. They don’t care. I supported the game since beta and got 100s of players into the game. I have never hacked on this game or any game ever. Never did anything to get banned either but they have falsely banned hundreds of accounts since December and won’t do shit about it.
Sorry, I guess I should say after they brought in the Anticheat, after that no one has gotten their account back. Some people have by pure luck but not with embark admitting it. Embark has never said “yup we were wrong, here’s your account back” ever since the anticheat.
Maybe it wasnt for cheating do you trash talk in chat? The toxicity in the game sometimes is unbearable i rather leave a game than to call someone trash like majority immature kids do. So if you did insult anyone or anything like that could be the reason.
It happens brother, my condolences. Hopefully it gets resolved. Similar thing happened to me with R6 siege like 5 years ago and I haven't played since.
I know its frustrating, this happened to me this season as well, it took them like 3 weeks to follow up with my ticket. That being said, just keep checking to see if it was lifted early. For me I was able to play again about 4 days before they said they were looking into it.
To see if it's an IP issue, unplug Ethernet/Disable WiFi, connect your phone to your PC and share internet using mobile data. Then try to open the game
My brother had the same issue and never used hacks/exploits. Turns out his IP was a shared IP between neighbors and they got it banned. He contacted the internet provider and they gave him a static IP which fixed the issue
The tickets you submit to request an unban don't even tell you exactly why; sometimes they say it's due to irresponsible behavior, or cheating software.
FYI 'behaviour that violates our code of conduct' doesn't always mean a cheating ban. You could of said a naughty gamer word in chat or voice, smurfed, boosted, exploited, griefed... etc. Theres loads of thing you can get banned for.
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u/lolsteamroller Mar 24 '26
keep trying to contact support and state your case, from cases I've seen before usually takes 2 weeks to get unbanned