The Controversial Reasons These Gamers Got Banned

This one is not only notable for the ban, but also for how the game's creators chose to carry it out. In this case, Guild Wars developer ArenaNet decided to make an example out of one particular hacker.

After multiple Guild Wars 2 players complained about a hacker who had been making their lives miserable over the course of a few weeks, Guild Wars 2's Security Lead took control of the hacker's character. What followed was essentially the online gaming equivalent of a public humiliation and execution. The hacker's character was stripped of his clothes and forced to walk off of a cliff, waving goodbye to the rest of the Guild Wars 2 community. The only things missing were tar and feathers.

Some Guild Wars 2 players felt like the ban was appropriate, but that the way it was done was pretty messed up. One user criticized ArenaNet's actions, saying, "This to me shows just how amateurish these jokers are ... This isn't going to stop anyone from cheating ... Talk about childish."

Luke Munday, aka MrDeadMoth, a noted Fortnite streamer, landed himself in a lot of trouble when viewers of his Twitch channel overheard some disturbing things in one of his livestreams. As thousands of viewers watched his channel, he stepped away from his camera and could allegedly be overheard assaulting his pregnant partner in front of their children, who could also be heard crying. Prior to this incident, Munday had been previously charged for "malicious damage and common assault." 

Though Munday was banned from Twitch after many concerned viewers brought the incident to their attention, Twitch drew the anger of many users when they rescinded the ban not long after. Between the fan backlash and the comments from people coming out of the woodwork to defend Munday's actions (which Twitch likely wanted to distance themselves from), this was clearly turning into a real mess for Twitch.

Twitch ultimately decided to re-ban Munday's account. Twitch then issued a statement to The Verge, which said, "Protecting the integrity of our community is incredibly important to us. We want everyone on Twitch to have a safe and positive experience and work constantly toward that goal."

While it seems to have been resolved (at least where Twitch is concerned), the whole situation is ugly.

Three Fallout 76 players earned a ban when they harassed and killed a fellow player's character while shouting homophobic slurs. While we won't be repeating any of the offensive language here, it was graphic enough that, although the aggressors were initially banned for three days while Bethesda investigated the incident, the decision was eventually made to permanently ban them. 

When speaking to Eurogamer, NathanTheHicc, the attacker who notably uploaded his own footage of the incident to his personal YouTube channel, showed zero remorse for his part in the controversy. "It was just a late night of having fun and after the first encounter (seen on my channel) we felt it would be fun to offend them somehow," NathanTheHicc said via email. He also said, "I will not apologise given the opportunity."

The entire incident has made it pretty clear that Fallout 76 desperately needs some kind of dedicated reporting system. It should be noted that 76 does have a solid "anti-griefing" mechanic, which punishes gamers for killing players that didn't want to fight by slapping them with a bounty and a big red mark on the map. However, there isn't a way for Fallout 76 players to actively report a fellow gamer. 

As mentioned by the victim of the attack, "Reporting in-game is necessary. Simply blocking someone from a session is only temporarily protecting yourself, but not stopping anything from happening again or to other people."

Imagine if Batman decided to start using killer laughing gas, just to try to somehow prove to the Joker that it wasn't cool? That's essentially the thought process behind our next ban.

As reported by Eurogamer, one player took it upon themselves to raise awareness of hackers and cheaters running rampant in Splatoon 2's online multiplayer. Naturally, he accomplished this by hacking the leaderboards of the popular game, altering the top players' power levels and using their rank listings to display a message that said, "Please Add Anti Cheat."

This had already drawn Nintendo's attention, but it wasn't long before the hacker revealed himself on Reddit. His username? PleaseAddAntiCheat, naturally. He explained, "Nintendo, you're welcome to ban my console any time. My purpose was to call attention to the current issue that plagues the game, and I've done that. But my message is, please make protecting your players the top priority." 

Needless to say, PleaseAddAntiCheat eventually updated his thread to let folks know that he had indeed been banned. Hopefully, though, this is a case where he made his voice heard, and perhaps Nintendo will take this as a sign to look further into the security gaps in Splatoon 2.

Shortly after the release of Ubisoft's action game For Honor, there were numerous reports of gamers receiving ban notices for seemingly no reason. According to Kotaku, these bans were the result of a program called EasyAntiCheat, which was apparently sensing the use of hacks when there weren't any.

As Kotaku points out, however, some of the banned players were technically within a bit of a gray area. One gamer was using third-party software to aid his second campaign playthrough and found himself banned as a result. Even so, this shouldn't be a problem for the community at large, since the single-player campaign is offline; it's not as though this player was using cheats in an online match. Imagine if your NES console had banned you for using a Game Genie to get some extra lives.

None of that explains how one player managed to be banned without even owning the game. In a Reddit thread, this player explains that he played the beta version of For Honor, but never purchased the full game. He still somehow received a ban notice from Ubisoft, leading to one commenter hilariously theorizing that Ubisoft employs "time cops to enforce the rules" against cheating.

It's hard to argue that a ban for toxic behavior isn't well deserved. People just want to have fun without being bombarded with negativity. As Blizzard explained to Kotaku, "We take toxicity seriously and take appropriate steps to monitor, and we validate claims regardless of how it is brought to our attention." This included monitoring gameplay videos on YouTube for signs of unsportsmanlike behavior, which meant that players could be banned without first being reported by other players.

This has resulted in some backlash from the gaming community, with one concerned gamer accusing Blizzard of overstepping their bounds: "This is too far ... You may do nothing wrong in-game, and still get banned. Nobody reported you, they just watch your every move on social media."

While this may at first seem like an overreaction, it should be noted that Blizzard has not been shy about dropping the banhammer in the past over concerns of toxicity. In fact, over 18,000 players were suspended from the game in South Korea alone for violating Blizzard's anti-toxicity policies. On the flip side, a formerly toxic player has shared that his own ban caused him to reevaluate his behavior, and he has changed his attitude following a discussion with a Blizzard moderator. Despite the controversy, stories like this one prove that there is real merit to Blizzard's toxicity bans.