MLB The Show 16 News Post

SCEA Bans Many Players for Using Exploits in MLB The Show 16

01:07 PM - June 28, 2016 by RaychelSnr

If you've been on Twitter lately, you've no doubt been seeing Ramone Russell answer fans inquiries about why they were banned over the past couple of days.

Over the weekend, Ramone also posted in the SCEA Forums reiterating that breaking the rules and standards of the community could result in a console and PSN ID being banned.

Quote:


	"If a player is found cheating, exploiting, harassing other players, or breaking the rules in game or here on The Show Nation forums, we will suspend the account for a limited time or even permanently ban the ID and console. This isn't new and we've always been on the lookout for these types of players, but it's important to remind the community of the potential consequences that may await players if they decide to travel down the dark path."

Also of note via TheShowNation (Victor_SDS)

Quote:


	There was an exploit related to cancelling transactions on the marketplace. If someone took advantage of this exploit egregiously, their ID would have been flagged and banned. Flipping cards on the market is not an offense. Buying and quick selling is not an offense. It had more process than just cancelling an order.

A number of players were banned in the past few days according to Ramone's Twitter Feed:

"We banned a number of users who exploited community market transactions. Bans will not be reversed, fyi flipping cards IS NOT an exploit.

Flipping cards doesn't get you banned, we encourage flipped cards, flipping cards is good for everyone."

Several users were quick to claim innocence but it appears Russell came armed with info, telling at least one user they were in the top 1% of offenders of the glitch. In fact, the SCEA investigation into the matter was three weeks long and involved multiple runs and checks of the same data.

This was a bold move by SCEA to protect the online gaming experience for many MLB The Show users. While bans are nothing new in the online gaming world, it does appear SCEA has taken some pretty dramatic steps in order to safeguard the online experience for gamers. While some of the bans are permanent, others are temporary and will last anywhere from days to weeks to months.

What do you think of the bans? Was SCEA right? Is this a good move?

UPDATE (6-30): via Twitter

Quote:


	We hear your concerns. This is very important to us. We are looking into it. We thank you for your patience. More to come soon.

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Member Comments

# 221 elbomberoloco @ 06/30/16 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ubernoob


	Hasn't stopped Steam from taking over the PC World.

They randomly ban people from playing games they purchase?

# 222 Factzzz @ 06/30/16 07:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Speedy


	Well. This has not been a good year for The Show.

Loll while that's true in many aspects, i'd guess that this year the Show has made more money than any other year.

# 223 SmashMan @ 06/30/16 07:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elbomberoloco


	He also brought up some great points that if there was an exploit he would have gone big as I think others would have too..

I've seen this a lot and it always reads weirdly to me. "If I was exploiting, wouldn't I have done it for more?!" sounds like some odd justification.

Not saying they did or didn't exploit because I'm not in position to make that call, just saying it's not exactly a defense I'd use to prove my innocence.

# 224 countryboy @ 06/30/16 07:14 PM

I don't know why people are so ready to believe someone that offers up justification/defense for being banned. I doubt you're going to get too many people who were banned to come right out and say, "yep I exploited the system. I cheated. I deserved to be banned."

# 225 baseballsim @ 06/30/16 07:38 PM

I can't believe I was able to sit through the whole podcast but I did and it was very insightful. For those who feel they are still on SDS side I highly recommend that you listen to the podcast https://soundcloud.com/scorespace/the-bangate-tapes.

They had some folks that were banned call into the show.

PITCHING_REBEL, the #1 player on the leaderboards was banned. He has an email of one of the developers and supposedly received a list of orders that were flagged. Some of these orders were for a measly 150 stubs. Why would an individual try to exploit a game with a 150 stub order? The email apparently also pointed out that they had made zero errors with these results yet there seems to be some sort of glitch at least once a week like the Collections Glitch recently.

PITCHING_REBEL also mentioned he had over 1000 pages of transactions. I myself am at almost 900 pages.

PITCHING_REBEL also pointed out that these some or all of these flagged orders were dated on March 30th. The game was released on March 29th with major server problems. The Server performance was awful if you remember back then.

Another caller was Trevor who was one of the top 1% of exploiters. He was an aggressive card flipper but his strategy was no different than what he did last year. I think he said he had over 400 pages of transactions. 41 of those transactions were flagged with an amount of 3M stubs. Trevor earned 5 million stubs without even purchasing any stubs yet he's being penalized.

There's really no pattern to pinpoint what caused all of these bans that I can think of. None of these callers had one specific thing in common other than they all were heavy users.

After listening to this podcast I am very convinced that SDS made some sort of a mistake on their end.

# 226 Gosens6 @ 06/30/16 08:07 PM

Very interesting podcast. I just don't believe SDS is 100% correct like they say they are. I firmly believe we'll see some retractions in the next coming days. This could get messy

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

# 227 SmashMan @ 06/30/16 08:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by baseballsim


	PITCHING_REBEL also pointed out that these some or all of these flagged orders were dated on March 30th. The game was released on March 29th with major server problems. The Server performance was awful if you remember back then.

To me, this is the only tidbit that is interesting because it gives at least one specific timeframe. The rest of it...eh.

Really odd that apparently not one person has received an email explaining what they apparently did by now though. I've never been banned in a game, but I assume these companies usually tell someone what they did to receive the punishment.

# 228 baseballsim @ 06/30/16 08:27 PM

Another odd thing is the marketplace being closed down. They fixed the supposed exploit a few weeks back but the marketplace was closed down just a few hours after the mass ban. Are they possibly implementing something to help prevent users from heavily using the marketplace? I hope not because I myself cannot afford to buy stubs with money. I need to use the marketplace in order to earn stubs.

One of the banned callers was also asked what he would like for compensation if it turned out that he was wrongfully banned. He mentioned he'd like some extra stubs or maybe Flashback cards (since those are the only cards he has yet to acquire). For those who weren't banned this wouldn't be too fair. But, I think PITCHING_REBEL had a better idea to be compensated with a free copy of MLB 17 The Show.

I think PITCHING_REBEL has the devs email address as part of a friendship.

# 229 WaitTilNextYear @ 06/30/16 08:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by baseballsim


	I can't believe I was able to sit through the whole podcast but I did and it was very insightful. For those who feel they are still on SDS side I highly recommend that you listen to the podcast https://soundcloud.com/scorespace/the-bangate-tapes. They had some folks that were banned call into the show. PITCHING_REBEL, the #1 player on the leaderboards was banned. He has an email of one of the developers and supposedly received a list of orders that were flagged. Some of these orders were for a measly 150 stubs. Why would an individual try to exploit a game with a 150 stub order? The email apparently also pointed out that they had made zero errors with these results yet there seems to be some sort of glitch at least once a week like the Collections Glitch recently. PITCHING_REBEL also mentioned he had over 1000 pages of transactions. I myself am at almost 900 pages. PITCHING_REBEL also pointed out that these some or all of these flagged orders were dated on March 30th. The game was released on March 29th with major server problems. The Server performance was awful if you remember back then. Another caller was Trevor who was one of the top 1% of exploiters. He was an aggressive card flipper but his strategy was no different than what he did last year. I think he said he had over 400 pages of transactions. 41 of those transactions were flagged with an amount of 3M stubs. Trevor earned 5 million stubs without even purchasing any stubs yet he's being penalized. There's really no pattern to pinpoint what caused all of these bans that I can think of. None of these callers had one specific thing in common other than they all were heavy users. After listening to this podcast I am very convinced that SDS made some sort of a mistake on their end.

None of this adds anything new, imo. Banned people still claiming innocence is par for the course and there is only circumstantial evidence here at best. More likely, these are people really ticked off that their game was taken away and they have nothing better to do right now than spin conspiracy theories.

So what if it was for 150 stubs? Some of the orders? What about the others? lol. So what if it's a top player? What does server performance have to do with anything? Wouldn't everybody playing the mode be subject to the same server limitations? All this detail is a distraction from the actual issue, imo.

It doesn't matter one iota if it's a "top player." In fact, you might wonder if some of these "top players" are that way because of systemic cheating and exploitation.

Once SDS comes out and says, "yes we messed up" and reinstate some people or "no we didn't," then people can start to move on from this fiasco. It's not really up to "the internet" to adjudicate this issue. SDS will either be right and there will still be a lot of anger or they will have made a mistake (at least with some users perhaps) and make up for it in some form or fashion. In the latter scenario, the PR will be bad in the short term, but long term there will be no effect.

# 230 oski96 @ 06/30/16 08:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WaitTilNextYear


	None of this adds anything new, imo. Banned people still claiming innocence is par for the course and there is only circumstantial evidence here at best. More likely, these are people really ticked off that their game was taken away and they have nothing better to do right now than spin conspiracy theories. So what if it was for 150 stubs? Some of the orders? What about the others? lol. So what if it's a top player? What does server performance have to do with anything? Wouldn't everybody playing the mode be subject to the same server limitations? All this detail is a distraction from the actual issue, imo. It doesn't matter one iota if it's a "top player." In fact, you might wonder if some of these "top players" are that way because of systemic cheating and exploitation. Once SDS comes out and says, "yes we messed up" and reinstate some people or "no we didn't," then people can start to move on from this fiasco. It's not really up to "the internet" to adjudicate this issue. SDS will either be right and there will still be a lot of anger or they will have made a mistake (at least with some users perhaps) and make up for it in some form or fashion. In the latter scenario, the PR will be bad in the short term, but long term there will be no effect.

You are missing the point by a large margin. For heavy market users, 10 - 20 k is NOTHING. There is no way it would be worth their time to "exploit" a glitch that results in them receiving a fraction of a percent of their stub total over the life of the game.

I mean, we get that you are on a witch hunt, but if you had the ability to see this objectively, you will agree it does not add up one bit.

# 231 WaitTilNextYear @ 06/30/16 08:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oski96


	You are missing the point by a large margin. For heavy market users, 10 - 20 k is NOTHING. There is no way it would be worth their time to "exploit" a glitch that results in them receiving a fraction of a percent of their stub total over the life of the game. I mean, we get that you are on a witch hunt, but if you had the ability to see this objectively, you will agree it does not add up one bit.

While I enjoy your condescending tone, all 'evidence' produced so far by the banned is circumstantial at best (including your but but but guys can make so much more stubs doing something else!!!!!! argument) and a distraction at worst. For one, you're still relying on firsthand testimony of the banned to make your entire case...what if they actually got more stubs for it than they're letting on? There's no way for you to know that or not outside of what you got or didn't get personally.

You want to believe all these stories because you feel it helps advance your case that SDS is in error here and you, therefore, will be reinstated. Maybe you will be and maybe SDS is wrong, but go ahead and hang out here yelling your arguments into the void until you either get vindicated or don't, by all means.

# 232 elbomberoloco @ 06/30/16 09:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by countryboy


	I don't know why people are so ready to believe someone that offers up justification/defense for being banned. I doubt you're going to get too many people who were banned to come right out and say, "yep I exploited the system. I cheated. I deserved to be banned."

I'm not too concerned on innocence here. I'm very concerned about buying a product, then randomly not being able to use that product to it's full extent. Sony has not put a message out what exactly these users did wrong, just some generic you did x event y amount of times for z amount of tokens. I mean exact description of the events so that I know as a consumer it's safe for me to play the way I want w/o the concern of being banned. I have spent money of stubs because I don't have 8-10 hours a day to be playing the market. I have 2ish hours a day if I'm lucky to play and sure as hell don't want to be playing stock broker, I bought a baseball game to play baseball (shocker). I'm fortunate to have disposable income to choose to spend if I want. However I'm very hesitant to spend any funds on this game with the threat of the company suspending my account with no explanation. Which is a little annoying to me because I just got some "free" amazon money and was going to parlay that into stubs to get Chipper this weekend...

The good thing with these forums, podcasts, and tweets, it will be well documented who is right and who is wrong here for all to see. Right now with Sony's silence and the lack of the web page still not supporting transactions not sure it's looking to good for Sony.

# 233 elbomberoloco @ 06/30/16 09:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SmashMan


	I've seen this a lot and it always reads weirdly to me. "If I was exploiting, wouldn't I have done it for more?!" sounds like some odd justification. Not saying they did or didn't exploit because I'm not in position to make that call, just saying it's not exactly a defense I'd use to prove my innocence.

So when the player unlock glitch happened you think people only took one guy, so Sony wouldn't notice, or took them all...I would venture to say the data would support the "thieves" took all the players they could.

# 234 oski96 @ 06/30/16 09:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WaitTilNextYear


	While I enjoy your condescending tone, all 'evidence' produced so far by the banned is circumstantial at best (including your but but but guys can make so much more stubs doing something else!!!!!! argument) and a distraction at worst. For one, you're still relying on firsthand testimony of the banned to make your entire case...what if they actually got more stubs for it than they're letting on? There's no way for you to know that or not outside of what you got or didn't get personally. You want to believe all these stories because you feel it helps advance your case that SDS is in error here and you, therefore, will be reinstated. Maybe you will be and maybe SDS is wrong, but go ahead and hang out here yelling your arguments into the void until you either get vindicated or don't, by all means.

... and by that same token, you don't have any information other than vague statements from SDS. If you are willing to share with all of us SDS' methodology of "sweeping up the cheaters" we would be very thankful - because that is what we've been asking from SDS all week.

But, I guess you know something we all don't which allows you to smugly dismiss the many, many people (who even go through the trouble of setting up pod casts and blogs, etc. to explain there must be an error) who believe there may have been a mistake.

So, by all means, go ahead and join the herd, parading your apparent superiority over all those that claim to have been victimized by an overzealous and inaccurate banhammer - taking this position must make you feel good because as you say, "there is no way to know that or not outside of your own personal knowledge."

Taken to its conclusion, you say the only way to know is to rely on your personal knowledge; by your admission, you have no personal knowledge, but you shoot down those here that are sharing what they claim is their own personal knowledge. That is the definition of "close minded."

# 235 WaitTilNextYear @ 06/30/16 09:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elbomberoloco


	Right now with Sony's silence and the lack of the web page still not supporting transactions not sure it's looking to good for Sony.

I will agree with you that the timing of their lack of communication is worth a raising of an eyebrow at this point. I'll stop short of spinning this coincidence into an admission of guilt and them being absolutely wrong, but this is becoming a delicious mystery and it will be interesting to see where it goes. I hope that the mystery is solved at some point in a fair and transparent way; I think everyone can agree on that point. Further I hope that cheaters stay banned permanently and that any innocents get reinstated soon and get 40 packs and a virtual mule for their trouble.

# 236 oski96 @ 06/30/16 09:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WaitTilNextYear


	I will agree with you that the timing of their lack of communication is worth a raising of an eyebrow at this point. I'll stop short of spinning this coincidence into an admission of guilt and them being absolutely wrong, but this is becoming a delicious mystery and it will be interesting to see where it goes. I hope that the mystery is solved at some point in a fair and transparent way; I think everyone can agree on that point. Further I hope that cheaters stay banned permanently and that any innocents get reinstated soon and get 40 packs and a virtual mule for their trouble.

I agree with this. I am very certain that if the actual transactions histories are analyzed, it will be fairly easy to differentiate an accidental use of the glitch and an intentional one - the transactions in question will look very different for each of these groups.

# 237 WaitTilNextYear @ 06/30/16 09:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by oski96


	... and by that same token, you don't have any information other than vague statements from SDS. If you are willing to share with all of us SDS' methodology of "sweeping up the cheaters" we would be very thankful - because that is what we've been asking from SDS all week. But, I guess you know something we all don't which allows you to smugly dismiss the many, many people (who even go through the trouble of setting up pod casts and blogs, etc. to explain there must be an error) who believe there may have been a mistake. So, by all means, go ahead and join the heard, parading your apparent superiority over all those that claim to have been victimized by an overzealous and inaccurate banhammer - taking this position must make you feel good because as you say, "there is no way to know that or not outside of your own personal knowledge." Taken to its conclusion, you say the only way to know is to rely on your personal knowledge; by your admission, you have no personal knowledge, but you shoot down those here that are sharing what they claim is their own personal knowledge. That is the definition of "close minded."

I have no knowledge of their methods for catching cheaters at all. In that sense I am relying on motive...or, rather, what does SDS gain by banning loyal, paying customers capriciously? I think the answer to that question...nothing...makes it pretty clear they wouldn't invest the time and headache in instituting these bans without a good reason.

Now, what's open to debate here is whether some or all people have been unfairly banned and there's really no way for any of us to tell right now. All I have been saying is all these statements, podcasts, etc from the banned aren't really strong evidence given the bias from where they originate. It's like asking Anheuser Busch if beer should be banned or not....of course they are going to say no and produce "evidence" for why it shouldn't be. Nothing said or speculated on out there really holds any water whatsoever, imo, if you have any reasonably unbiased standard of evidence.

See, I don't have a horse in this race at all. Nobody is out to get you...except if SDS actually is, I guess. I just have become interested in the mystery surrounding this issue and it being solved at some point. Nothing more, nothing less.

# 238 elbomberoloco @ 06/30/16 09:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WaitTilNextYear


	See, I don't have a horse in this race at all. Nobody is out to get you...except if SDS actually is, I guess. I just have become interested in the mystery surrounding this issue and it being solved at some point. Nothing more, nothing less.

I would think we all have a little horse in the race here. What if tomorrow you account is baned with no explanation? Please don't come back with, "oh I don't cheat not concern for me...", because cheating has not clearly been defined here. In today's information age people really want transparency, which would be really easy here. Sony could release a statement that x amount of users did some certain action and exploited x,xxx,xxx amount of tokens. Instead they have put an unknown amount of bands, maybe in the thousands, with no specific data, just unofficial tweets, not even on the official page, stating we got you stealing 42 times for 3 million. Ramona might as well state we saw you turned the game on got you...Sony needs an official press release not a generic corporate America BS statement. Then the most troubling fact in my mind is, Sony states they fixed the problem but you can't use the feature (web page transactions) they fixed ? As a consumer it makes me hesitant to want to do business with this company, and I really enjoy the game. This game has really been plagued from day 1 with each issue being worse and the marketing/ PR handling each error worse than the last...

# 239 WaitTilNextYear @ 06/30/16 10:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elbomberoloco


	I would think we all have a little horse in the race here. What if tomorrow you account is baned with no explanation? Please don't come back with, "oh I don't cheat not concern for me...", because cheating has not clearly been defined here. In today's information age people really want transparency, which would be really easy here. Sony could release a statement that x amount of users did some certain action and exploited x,xxx,xxx amount of tokens. Instead they have put an unknown amount of bands, maybe in the thousands, with no specific data, just unofficial tweets, not even on the official page, stating we got you stealing 42 times for 3 million. Ramona might as well state we saw you turned the game on got you...Sony needs an official press release not a generic corporate America BS statement. Then the most troubling fact in my mind is, Sony states they fixed the problem but you can't use the feature (web page transactions) they fixed ? As a consumer it makes me hesitant to want to do business with this company, and I really enjoy the game. This game has really been plagued from day 1 with each issue being worse and the marketing/ PR handling each error worse than the last...

I don't play online and I already have all the rosters I need, so your hypothetical actually wouldn't affect me at all. Hence, me not having a horse in the race still...

# 240 baseballsim @ 06/30/16 10:34 PM

My understanding is some who didn't play online at all also got banned.

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