EA has begun rectifying around 150 “faulty bans” issued to legitimate, law-abiding Battlefield 3 gamers on PC.
Hackers handed out these bans by exploiting third-party anti-cheat software PunkBuster. Their mission was to expose not only PunkBuster’s weaknesses, but also those of GGC and PBBans – more anti-cheater server software that live-tracks bans among other things.
“Together with the third-party service providers, we have taken steps to remove the faulty bans and improve the protection against future fake bans,” wrote Kusa_EA on the Battlelog forum.
“We have determined that the root cause resulting in the server bans is not directly related to Battlefield 3, but rather related to select third-party services which server owners can use in conjunction with PunkBuster to protect their servers.
“If you are able to log in to Battlelog,” Kusa_EA continued, “your account has not been banned by EA or DICE so there is no need to contact customer support.”
The post was updated when more reports of the issue still affecting gamers came tumbling in.
“As seen in the comments,” Kusa_EA added, “we are receiving reports that this issue is still affecting some players.
“We are continuing to investigate what may be causing this issue with some servers.
“If you are still experiencing problems please try joining other PunkBuster enabled servers – only a subset of servers are affected.”
EA clarified that this issue did not and does not affect gamers on PS3 and Xbox 360.
Published: Jan 30, 2012 12:00 am