Global Conflict

Okay so guys PunkBuster has fraked up and has decided to ban me along with hundreds of other BF4 players in the past couple hours or so (time now SBT+3) I was playing alongside tea-assualt, and suchcrnch with a server running PBBans and I get kicked with the message:
Error
Game disconnected: you were kicked by PunkBuster. Stated reason: PunkBuster kicked player 'MONGO_abaday' (for 5 minutes) ... Violation (GAMEHACK) #81568



I'm not a happy person at the moment but its a good job we are in between campaigns at the moment. but hey ho Iife's a bitch sometimes and i'll just have wait it out until EA, DICE & PunkBuster sort this crap out.

yes wait till some mega big body will notice the little man, sort their own mess
up and say sorry with free copies of one of their games. EA is the best company in the world
after all...

you file up and open ticket at the punk or open chat with Indian ea tech support that will
name himself Jeff, and you get that sorted yourself, and maybe 25 % discount on one of the worthless game
in origin, not one of the good ones. but you handle it. now, cuz we are in between campaigns..
good luck

best of luck with this mess!

It seems to be some sort of frak up as i joined a server and 20+ people were being banned for the same code as you and others are reporting the problem too.

Think I'll play it safe and not play any BF4 tonight.. That sucks man hope it gets figured out.

calm down and get your facts right.

First of all you weren't banned by Punkbuster.
Punkbuster doesn't ban cheaters, it only kicks them from the server, as it did to you.
So even a cheater can remove the cheat and re-join the server and play normally.

Streaming services like GCC/PBbans/etc... catch PB log lines, and if the line is a kick for a cheat, issue a "manual admin ban" to all streaming servers. But this is not Evenbalance, this is a 3rd party sending the bans.

So you should be able to play on Punkbuster enabled servers that doesn't stream to a 3rd party that attempts to create a global database of cheaters. The problematic PB client might kick you again for a false positive until EB issue an update though.

Second, this is not the first time it happens. Punkbuster has banned innocent players before. One very big issue that i recall happened when Evenbalance would identify a specific cheat by a character string that was part of the cheat and loaded into the memory.
What the guys behind the cheat did when they found out about how their cheat is being detected by pubkbuster was simple - they joined full servers and posted that string in all chat. The effect was immediate - everyone had this string in their memory from in-game chat -> everyone got kicked out of the server for using that cheat. I know PPBans removed the bans very soon after, while Evenbalance said there were some "false positives" and issued a new version of PB few days later.

so the more widespread it is, the more likely these bans will be removed by those streaming services, and faster.
in the meantime you can post about it in their forums to turn their attention to the issue.

This is true if you truly haven't used cheats of course....
but right now it seems like a ton of people got banned, so it seems like EB fraked up again to me.

look at the PB website. http://www.pbbans.com/mbi-latest50-bf4-lfb44.html

I looked at it when i first got put on there and now its more than tripped in the number of bans in the last 24 hours.

Its funny because PB's motto is "Always quality Over quantity" and I think that motto can be turned on its self today.

GG punkbuster I always knew how reliable you were...

That's not actually an official PB website. PBbans is a 3rd party service that server admins can run on their server which acts as a shared-blacklist kind of setup. They catch PBkicks, add it to their banlist, all servers pull from that banlist.

I know its more of a support site but still it seems to hold more information that anywhere else that I can find

PBBans website
Evenbalance/Punkbuster website

Its PBBans.com slogan that says "Always Quality Over Quantity", its not EvenBalance's, that produces this crap software thats called "punkbuster online countermeasures".
Though they are not developing the punkbuster software, they have to rely on it and its detection.

https://twitter.com/Battlefield/status/ ... 6959655936

@Battlefield
We are investigating a recent unwarranted PunkBuster ban. We're working to resolve this as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

https://twitter.com/Battlefield/status/ ... 0944726016

We've identified an issue with PunkBuster on MOH BF3 & BF4. There should no longer be any unwarranted bans. Thank you for your patience.

PBBans

We have lifted all 81568 bans for BF4 and 81567 bans in BF3 for the time being.

We don't always wait for EB to confirm a false positive before lifting bans as it can take EB a few days to confirm if a violation number can be triggered by non-cheat software.

Thanks for the update guys and I will see if what they have said actually works later on today. I'll let you know if I have still got to put up with this false positive blacklisting my name.

This is EB's reply to the current situation when I appealed my ban
06/21/2014 23:47:30 - "Alex J"
Note #3: We do not find this violation to be triggered in error, and it will not be removed. It is at the discretion of the third-party ban list administrator to remove any ban given as a result of this violation.

To be clear: we are not saying that you cheated as we have no way to know who triggered the violation. If it is certain that no one playing on your computer ever had a cheat/hack violation triggered by PunkBuster, then your GUID (cdkey and/or game account password) has been stolen by or leaked to someone who has used it on a different computer to trigger the violation. We do not have the means to help you find out who is responsible for compromising your GUID.