Questioning the way Gameforge sanctions their players recently

Many of you may have already realized how dangerous and scary Gameforge has started to play in recent months. Before the merges if someone was suspected of breaking the rules it was the GO's and SGO's job to investigate their case and sanction them, while maintaining the possibility of making a mistake. If we felt we were innocently banned, we could contact them through the support system, discuss the problem, present possible evidence of our innocence, and if they figured we were wrongly banned, they could change their decision. I can't remember a case in recent years where the developers or the product team had the right to take control and permanently ban players.

A few months ago, everything changed when Gameforge introduced their new lobby ban system. For those who don't know, a lobby ban means, they lock you out of your entire lobby, that being said they do not only ban the character you broke the rules with, but all of your characters which were connected to your email address, and not only in gladiatus, but in every other Gameforge game as well. A ban like this is handed out by Gameforge itself, without providing any explanation or proof, and most importantly without providing a possibility to appeal. Over the past months, Gameforge has made irreversible decisions about banning their oldest paying players using this method. Although this is not related to the topic of lobby bans, the peak of the unnecessary ban wave was probably when hundreds of players were banned from their accounts on the evening of May 26th for "bug using". The only problem was that not only those who exploited the bug were banned, but also those who had ever received or purchased cloned resources without knowing that they were breaking the rules. They have no chance to prove their innocence. And the wave of bans didn't stop there, two weeks later, yesterday, Gameforge employees got rid of another batch of players, this time for alleged bot usage.

The key thing is that whoever banned us made an irrevocable decision that the gladiatus team has no authority to change. If we try to address the issue through the support system, the only answer we can get for our tickets, is that the GOs and SGOs are not in charge to modify our bans. We are left alone without the possibility to prove our innocence or at least present some mitigating circumstances related the issue. I understand the team's hands are also tied in a situation like that, but then how could we contact the those who banned us?

I really hope I didn't break the forum rules with this thread and you won't delete it. The point of this thread was not to discuss our bans, but to discuss the way Gameforge handles this whole situation. There's no way you can ban someone without any possibility of legal remedy! Everyone is entitled to the protection of innocence, even if they have actually committed a crime, at least this is how it works in a democracy. In my opinion, in the last few months, this company has started to go in a very bad direction in terms of customer service and I hope they don't want to go down this path in the future.

Take this thread as a suggestion regarding how GF will handle its issues in the future. If any members of the gladiatus team read this message, please let your superiors know that what they are doing is not only unfair, but also probably illegal.