Publisher Microsoft invites aggrieved fans to get in touch
An attempt by publisher Microsoft Game Studios to ban cheats from Forza Horizon 3 has resulted in players being handed 30-year bans from the racing game. But some say they have been unfairly hit by bans.
Two Forza fans contacted Polygon to complain that they had been banned unfairly and were unable to get a response from Microsoft. Reddit threads also detail instances where players say they were wrongly banned.
Developer Playground recently updated its game to fix a glitch in which players were able to earn massive XP by merely skidding up against a barrier on a coastline road. However, despite much use of this trick, it wasn't the cause of the bans. The company was trying to target save game hacks like "Forza Horizon 3 Trainer" which massively boosts in-game currency.
One user said he was banned for trying to tweak the game's running speed, and had never used any cheats.
"I was tweaking the game getting it to run at 60fps and not actually playing the game," he wrote. "I highly suspect my messing around to get the game's vanilla version's poor CPU load balancing in check that triggered the ban, maybe it was messing with memory contents or something."
A spokesperson for Microsoft emailed a statement to Polygon:
"Last week, we performed a ban of a small group of Forza Horizon 3 players on Windows 10 PCs suspected of using software such as the ‘Forza Horizon 3 trainer’ to hack their profiles and affect their game saves. We use bans to maintain the integrity of our in-game economy and to preserve gameplay balance for everyone. Players who feel they have been unfairly banned can appeal by sending an e-mail to [email protected], where we investigate all appeals and either remove or uphold player bans as appropriate."
Source: Polygon
