UPDATE: In Turn 10's week in review post on 10/21 they have stated that if you feel you were unjustly banned to email them. They have yet to acknowledge there actually is a problem, or any sort of ETA on a fix. They also haven't said anything on social media on the matter.

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*sigh* This is starting to turn into a shit show...

With the most recent patch Turn 10 has implemented aggressive automated anti-cheat measures. Given that this is their first full PC game, it makes sense for them to do that. However, there are dozens of players reporting they received a 30 year ban from Horizon 3 online play with no reason given and no idea why they were banned.

This reddit thread is one of at least a few already with dozens of people claiming they've been banned for no reason.

What does Turn 10 have to say about this? Well in their most recent weekly post they said this was going to go into effect. All threads on the Turn 10 forums about getting banned are immediately locked. The only thread on there is this one from a moderator, making insane statements like "... you know what you did wrong, Turn 10/Playground Games knows what you did wrong and we moderators know what you did wrong."

Some PC players are theorizing they were banned because they were running system monitoring programs for performance. Given how bad of a PC port Horizon 3 is that's completely reasonable, if not necessary. I saw another think they were banned because they used the Nvidia Experience program to adjust some resolution settings to take better pictures.

The Turn 10 moderators are claiming that all bans are only for content uploads, with things including profanity, racist, and/or pedophilia content. But when you have players saying they've never even played the game online or touched the in game store, there's no way that's true. Given how bad of a launch this game has had (and how bad the Forza forums are known for being), I'm 100% going to give players the benefit of the doubt.

Thankfully, Microsoft support seems willing to provide refunds to anyone that has been banned. It also seems like this is not a full Xbox Live ban, and is only associated with Horizon 3 online features.

Until this is publicly addressed by Turn 10 (if it even is...), I would recommend that all PC players turn off ALL win32 programs you normally have running when playing FH3. Nvidia Experience? Off. CoreTEMP? Off. Stuff like the Xbox app should be fine since that's a UWP app, but I would turn everything else off so to avoid giving the overzealous system a false flag.

this sucks good on ms giving refunds.

99% of the time someone complains about getting banned for no reason, they got banned for a good reason.

That is incredible. Thanks for the warning. Ill be making sure that I close all my apps before playing the game again. It is almost as hilarious as the SFV PC rootkit.

Im not turning off anything. If i get banned im gonna bomb their support about it and if i dont get a sensible answear i return the game and dont look back.

Games for Windows or whatever they wanna brand it as is an endless shitshow it seems.

I'm not saying some of these people didn't and are just playing ignorant. But given the number of people reporting this, their description of how they play the game, and the fact that these are all on the PC, there's no way there aren't a large number of false positives. ESPECIALLY with how many problems the PC version already has.

This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it being a UWP app. It has to do with Turn 10's implementation. Granted Gears has been out for a shorter period of time, but it's a competitive multiplayer shooter that most definitely has anti-cheat stuff in place and I haven't heard about anything like this going on with that game.

Good thing I stopped playing this game.

@falconer: Just because someone says they aren't playing online and creating racist content doesn't mean they aren't playing online and creating racist content.

@hunkulese: Like I said, I'm willing to give the people the benefit of the doubt on this one. Turn 10's communication with the community is borderline atrocious, and the PC version has been a mess since day one.

tl;dr - some people lie

thanks Captain

I'll wait for this to develop a bit more since I wasn't going to buy the game until winter break anyway, but if it's true that system monitoring programs are triggering bans, then I'll take my $60 somewhere else.

Hell, I'll even reinstall The Crew.

Somebody had to do it, and nobody did it. So I did.

Exactly, however 30 year ban is ridiculous lol

I have heard this story over and over, how running sweetfx or fraps gets people banned, but somehow it never actually happens to me...ever

@xanadu: i approve.

turn10 has every right to implement anti cheating in general, and *usually* people who bitch that loudly are utter shitbird cheaters anyway (see internet in general), but they really could handle it a lot more diplomatically. i typically shy away from extreme rhetoric like "shitshow," but this is definitely unfortumate for what is at the core such a great game.

maybe it's as simple as replacing an overly salty community manager, though.

@xanadu: something something take your cutoffs and gtfo

Count me among those who are highly skeptical of the "I got banned for no reason" crap. I don't expect Playground Games (Turn 10 does the numbered Forzas, not the Horizon games) to publicly waste time entertaining every assclown's retaliatory tirade, either. I'm not sure why randoms on the internet likely telling half-truths and/or outright lies should be given the benefit of the doubt over folks who have absolutely nothing to gain by just banning people on a whim unfairly. It's not like Playground/MS want to hand out refunds and have people to stop playing the game. The FAR more reasonable explanation is that the vast majority of these people deserved their bans.

every time there is a new anti cheat system put in a game there is always people who complain that they got banned for "no reason" when they were almost certainly banned for a very good reason. I am going to wait and see if there are still a ton of people complaining about being banned a week from now before I pass any judgement on the system.

on live this shit gets you a lifetime ban.

I got soft banned a week into playing Dark Souls 3. I sent an email to Nemco's costumer support with my save file and asked for them to prove to me where I "hacked" the game as they were apparently looking at each case. The one thing I can think of is that a day before I got banned I summoned a player into my game to help with a boss and once that player joined the game and as soon as we went to the boss area his character started acting funny so the only thing I can assume that he was hacking and it flagged my game. I'm not angry or ever asked for my money back, just disappointed.

I know that most bans are justified but a lot of the bans are legitimate players. It's the equivalent of getting rid of a mouse in your house by burning down the house. At least to me it does.

Turn 10s statement makes me think they're certain their anti cheat/profanity system is pretty damned on the nose and that these bans are legit. I'll choose to believe the people who have been banned have been banned for a reason until proven otherwise because of how defiant that statement is.

@mordukai: dark souls 3 is different, there are people who cheat specifically to get other people soft banned. And its not really a nam its just grouping you with cheaters, which sucks in its own right though.

Lol a 30 year ban

There's now a sticky on the Forza reddit to collect people's accounts of what has happened. There's no way there aren't false positives. A few posts in there are insanely detailed. Two people are claiming they were banned after only just buying the game today.

I refuse to believe that every single person on this matter is lying. ESPECIALLY when they're all on PC, and we know for a fact that the PC version of this game is broken.

Sucks if true, but im in the crowd saying its probably a lot of people pissed off they got caught, happens every so often with mass bans. I think there was a similar outcry that happened with Overwatch when blizzard did it not to long ago, but i don't think anyone legitimate got banned. The only time i remember mass bans being obviously wrong was with that Call of Duty Steam problem, but Valve looked at it and came out and said "our bad" and told people what the problem was fixed it within a few days.

*presses sideways on the upgrade menu screen* *game hangs as it desperately tries to work out how to load the exact same model as it's already displaying because there are no visual changes from this upgrade*

*game crashes to desktop in the first days of release if you do something as crazy and clicking any of the marketplace links to buy DLC*

Yes, this product seems like something that'll have a perfect cheat detection system with no false positives. I am sure everyone is just angry because they got caught cheating.

Is there anything these XboxOne/Windows 10 Microsoft games do right?

ITT: all i did was run cheatengine64.exe and I got banned, fucking uwp micro$oft bs

@slag: At the moment, not a lot. But I'm glad they are at least making an effort. Just wish shit like this didn't happen.

@slag: killer instinct was hassle free for me.

@slag: None of them have included a rootkit yet, so that's a plus.

Fucking hell.

30 years! That's longer than murderers get!

@slag: Apparently Gears 4 got everything right and nothing else seems to be able to.

Some players are now reporting they received an email stating their ban has been lifted. However, in-game functionality has yet to be fully restored for these people.

A Turn 10 employee on reddit is asking for a PM of gamertags if one feels they were unjustly banned and it will be investigated.

Still no official word from Turn 10 on the matter from what I can tell. They usually have a weekly news post on Fridays, so we'll see what they have to say then I suppose. That's still an unacceptably slow response though.

Well, this ensures I won't be getting this game anytime soon. Thanks for saving me some money.

It used to be that when stuff happens you could say, "Well, it probably the company's software being wonky and wrong". However, these days it is typically 60/40 in favor of the software being fine and people who screwed up.

True or not, I think there is something else to be said:

We are live in a world where people have to accept that if they did it - it was recorded, documented, and archived. And, on the bright side -if you didn't do it- that is archeive too or you can archive it. The last bastion of 'dude bro' defenses, "..it was just locker room talk" just crumbled down the side of Mt. Dingbat as well.

I've edited the original post to include Turn 10's uh... official response? They're just like "um, email us? I guess?" I feel like their handling of this is deplorable. No acknowledgement of a problem. No ETA on a fix. Next to no communication to players.

nice that theyre acknowledging it, but im still not convinced there isnt a middleground of false positives vs. legitimately banned people bitching. guess people want to automatically side with the little guy in these situations.

The handling of the PC version in general has been terrible. I love the game, but am happy I got my money back.