Update On Endeavors Resetting Issue

Troodon80 · August 2023

JoeCapricorn wrote: »

I encourage anyone who does find what triggers it to issue a similar PSA, to spit in the face of the automated banbots.

While well-intentioned, that advice is more likely to get people banned for disseminating information about the exploit. Unknowingly exploiting and coming to the forum to broadcast how they got it to happen are two very different things. You may or may not get banned for the former, while you will almost certainly get banned for the latter.

spartaxoxo · August 2023

Amottica wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

Lets play roulette then. Certainly our odds are good, right?

... Right?

Zenimax is not playing roulette. They would be looking for specific behavior to determine who they banned up front.

They literally stated that they unbanned a ton of people because it was determined they had not met their criteria.

JoeCapricorn · August 2023

I'm glad I didn't find the bug myself. I kept an eye out for it, in case it propped up during normal gameplay, but if the consequence of tripping on the bug is even a temporary ban, other users deserve to know what to avoid doing for the time being while ZOS fixes the broken thing.

After all, from what I can gather, on Playstation EU, all one needed to do to "eXpLoIt" was travel to Reaper's March. Then the stupid banbot did the ban first before "investigations" but not before freaking people out with "permanent" bans.

If it was as easy as logging into a different character, there could have been cases where people got 130 extra endeavors if they crafted writs on 18 characters (for the Craft 4 Clothier items endeavor). I can tell you that when I am in writ-mode, I'm just going through the motions and not really paying attention to what I'm seeing at the corner of my screen. For many of my alts I craft 6 days in advance and today was a day-1 of that 6-day cycle so I was crafting 18 Clothing items on 8 characters.

The other day there was a "Complete 2 quests" endeavor. Imagine if that one bugged out and was repeatable. For many of my characters that are only doing writs, I log-in, grab the quests, turn in, log-out. 15 seconds per character. Some of my alts are doing Honest Toil and crafting as they go, so that is 8 quests for them. My main is doing a Necrom daily to appease Azandar, as well as 6 or 7 Master Writs for the Zenithar presents - upwards of 16 quests. Finally I'm running the main quest and skillpoint quests on my baby Arcanist - which could be even more quests. Had it been bugged, I would not have realized it. And I don't tend to spend my seals of endeavors that often, so if I got an extra few hundred of them somehow I wouldn't really notice it.

Those were all hypotheticals, but it sounds like what happened over on PS-EU really was just as easy. It's like accidentally leaving a land-mine somewhere in public. What you do: Disarm the mine. What you don't do: Leave it until it is set off.

vsrs_au · August 2023

ShawnF wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

we understand some people will unknowingly run into this through normal play

For those of us who want to actively avoid being banned, do you have any guidelines on what not to do? "don't do writs in auridon on a khajiit between 8 & 10 GMT" or whatever? Sure, people could theoretically take that information and choose to exploit it, but you've already said you'll ban them.

I don't pay close enough attention to endeavors to notice if I'm getting them more than once, and now, like the poster above, I feel like I have to be paranoid.

I completely agree!
This whole situation has made me afraid to do my usual daily endeavours, and I'm worried that even logging in and doing my normal activities will end up getting me banned, because someone misinterprets my unintentional achievement of the same endeavour twice as intentional.

I realise that publishing any details of how this exploit is triggered may encourage the daring to do a bit of cheating, but it also leaves the rest of us with a lot of uncertainty and stress, wondering if it's safe to play the game we paid for.

Jaimeh · August 2023

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Just disable the endeavor system on all platforms until it’s fixed so more innocents don’t get banned, simple.

This ^ It's kind of ridiculous to transfer all responsibility to the player without even mentioning which platforms are affected, and being vague about what constitutes an extreme exploit of the bug... If an endeavour is 'craft X items' and someone does writs on 18 characters would that be extreme? Without clear parameters people won't feel comfortable even doing their normal daily activities let alone anything extra. It would have been far better to disable the endeavours until you can fix the bug, no one would complain if the alternative is to potentially get a ban. Very stressful handling of this situation.

ZOS_Kevin · August 2023

Hi all. Just wanted to follow up here based on some of the feedback. Our intention with highlighting the Endeavor reset issue is to be proactive with the community, noting we are aware of the issue and working toward a solution.

We do not expect players to be monitoring their endeavors in fear of accidentally encountering the exploit, and we'd like to highlight the Endeavor resetting is not a widespread issue and is pretty rare to trigger. In addition, we have a better understanding of the issue and have set up systems on our side to see when someone is specifically exploiting. So if you accidentally run into the issue, you don’t need to worry about having your account actioned.

We are not looking to punish anyone who accidentally stumbles into this, but rather inform the community about an issue we discovered and warn that we will take action on those who take extreme advantage of it (which, again, is not accidental.) We hope this helps to clear up any concerns here. Thanks for your patience and understanding regarding this.

Elsonso · August 2023

.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Are people actually seeing their Endeavors get reset on such a regular, even daily, basis?

i only notice the daily endeavors resetting daily

That is actually more often than I notice...

TaSheen · August 2023

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all. Just wanted to follow up here based on some of the feedback. Our intention with highlighting the Endeavor reset issue is to be proactive with the community, noting we are aware of the issue and working toward a solution.

We do not expect players to be monitoring their endeavors in fear of accidentally encountering the exploit, and we'd like to highlight the Endeavor resetting is not a widespread issue and is pretty rare to trigger. In addition, we have a better understanding of the issue and have set up systems on our side to see when someone is specifically exploiting. So if you accidentally run into the issue, you don’t need to worry about having your account actioned.

We are not looking to punish anyone who accidentally stumbles into this, but rather inform the community about an issue we discovered and warn that we will take action on those who take extreme advantage of it (which, again, is not accidental.) We hope this helps to clear up any concerns here. Thanks for your patience and understanding regarding this.

Well, that's a bit more "forward on". Thank you Kevin. Regardless, I'm now tracking how many endeavors I do on each account both PC megaservers with my character spreadsheets. I haven't done daily writs on more than one character for a while, so that's not an issue for me. And only one character on each account both PC megaservers does the Zenithar daily. Nor am I questing at length on anyone right not. For one thing, it's too damn hot here with no AC - hard to think!

I'm not expecting to have any issues. But if I do, be assured that I will have tracking information to pass along.

code65536 · August 2023

We are not looking to punish anyone who accidentally stumbles into this

@ZOS_Kevin I think the controversy stems from the temporary banning that happened. Last year, there was an exploitable bug that allowed people to claim daily login rewards multiple times. In that case, there was no temporary ban. Last year, you investigated, found the people who exploited egregiously, and banned them, without ever subjecting innocent bystanders to a temporary ban.

A temporary ban, even if it is reversed quickly, appears to be what people are concerned about, esp. since this wasn't something that you had used in the case of the previous high-profile exploitable bug.

Dagoth_Rac · August 2023

code65536 wrote: »

We are not looking to punish anyone who accidentally stumbles into this

@ZOS_Kevin I think the controversy stems from the temporary banning that happened. Last year, there was an exploitable bug that allowed people to claim daily login rewards multiple times. In that case, there was no temporary ban. Last year, you investigated, found the people who exploited egregiously, and banned them, without ever subjecting innocent bystanders to a temporary ban.

A temporary ban, even if it is reversed quickly, appears to be what people are concerned about, esp. since this wasn't something that you had used in the case of the previous high-profile exploitable bug.

The immediate disabling of accounts was because currency was involved. A rather rare and limited currency, which people could spend on items in the interim. Then you have the mess of not only needing to claw back seals, but potentially claw back the items bought with exploited seals. It is kind of like how a bank might be concerned if someone was exploiting and getting multiple free toasters when they open an account. They will look into it but it is not a critical emergency. But the bank will be in an absolute panic and start disabling checking accounts and ATM cards left and right if people are getting more money in their accounts than they are supposed to. Currency is a very, very different beast than potions or scrolls.

Elsonso · August 2023

code65536 wrote: »

We are not looking to punish anyone who accidentally stumbles into this

@ZOS_Kevin I think the controversy stems from the temporary banning that happened. Last year, there was an exploitable bug that allowed people to claim daily login rewards multiple times. In that case, there was no temporary ban. Last year, you investigated, found the people who exploited egregiously, and banned them, without ever subjecting innocent bystanders to a temporary ban.

A temporary ban, even if it is reversed quickly, appears to be what people are concerned about, esp. since this wasn't something that you had used in the case of the previous high-profile exploitable bug.

I suspect that extra daily rewards didn't raise a lot of alarm in the studio. However, getting extra currency, especially one that can be used instead of Crowns...? That seems to raise the bar. Rightfully so.

I agree that they should handle this outside of the view of the players.

kringled_1 · August 2023

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

We are not looking to punish anyone who accidentally stumbles into this

@ZOS_Kevin I think the controversy stems from the temporary banning that happened. Last year, there was an exploitable bug that allowed people to claim daily login rewards multiple times. In that case, there was no temporary ban. Last year, you investigated, found the people who exploited egregiously, and banned them, without ever subjecting innocent bystanders to a temporary ban.

A temporary ban, even if it is reversed quickly, appears to be what people are concerned about, esp. since this wasn't something that you had used in the case of the previous high-profile exploitable bug.

The immediate disabling of accounts was because currency was involved. A rather rare and limited currency, which people could spend on items in the interim. Then you have the mess of not only needing to claw back seals, but potentially claw back the items bought with exploited seals. It is kind of like how a bank might be concerned if someone was exploiting and getting multiple free toasters when they open an account. They will look into it but it is not a critical emergency. But the bank will be in an absolute panic and start disabling checking accounts and ATM cards left and right if people are getting more money in their accounts than they are supposed to. Currency is a very, very different beast than potions or scrolls.

Except that in the case of the effected PS-EU players, it wasn't immediate, banning happened weeks after the primary event where endeavors were resetting. And just as problematic is the messaging around it. I'd guess that at least for some of the affected players, if the messaging were more along the lines of "unfortunately, we have to lock this account while we remove excess currency that was earned inappropriately due to a bug at our end" rather than the very accusatory initial messages, and the rather backhanded "well, you got your account back but be better at avoiding exploits in the future" for those that were restored, that the situation would not feel as heartless as it does.

TaSheen · August 2023

kringled_1 wrote: »

Except that in the case of the effected PS-EU players, it wasn't immediate, banning happened weeks after the primary event where endeavors were resetting. And just as problematic is the messaging around it. I'd guess that at least for some of the affected players, if the messaging were more along the lines of "unfortunately, we have to lock this account while we remove excess currency that was earned inappropriately due to a bug at our end" rather than the very accusatory initial messages, and the rather backhanded "well, you got your account back but be better at avoiding exploits in the future" for those that were restored, that the situation would not feel as heartless as it does.

Yep. Someone at ZOS needs to learn how to phrase things more effectively. Or maybe just hire someone who's already less inept at it.

Vrienda · August 2023

So glad I peaced out of Seals of Endevour after the two back to back pvp events hard burned me out on this game.

Given the horrible changes to the system that're coming in the next update it's probably best if everyone stop doing them. It's neither worth the ban not the pitiful amount of credit they give to loot box items.

ghost_bg_ESO · August 2023

I'm amazed by last couple of weeks and "decision making" that happens...

hmm about extra currency... i do have some memory about xbox and crowns, atleast then they just owned their own mistake.

stargazer69 · August 2023

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi everyone, before the weekend starts, we want to provide an update on the current issue where daily Endeavors are sometimes resetting more often than intended. We are aware this is happening, and we are currently investigating solutions for this. While the investigation continues, we would like to remind everyone they should not exploit this issue. While we understand some people will unknowingly run into this through normal play, we will be monitoring and banning those who take extreme advantage and exploit it. Once we have additional information on a fix, we’ll follow up on those next steps. Thank you for your understanding here.

Fix your code and stop punishing the people who pay your wages.

And the fact that there is no apology, and thus not assuming any blame, appears to me that your lawers are calling the shots now.

spartaxoxo · August 2023

kringled_1 wrote: »

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

We are not looking to punish anyone who accidentally stumbles into this

@ZOS_Kevin I think the controversy stems from the temporary banning that happened. Last year, there was an exploitable bug that allowed people to claim daily login rewards multiple times. In that case, there was no temporary ban. Last year, you investigated, found the people who exploited egregiously, and banned them, without ever subjecting innocent bystanders to a temporary ban.

A temporary ban, even if it is reversed quickly, appears to be what people are concerned about, esp. since this wasn't something that you had used in the case of the previous high-profile exploitable bug.

The immediate disabling of accounts was because currency was involved. A rather rare and limited currency, which people could spend on items in the interim. Then you have the mess of not only needing to claw back seals, but potentially claw back the items bought with exploited seals. It is kind of like how a bank might be concerned if someone was exploiting and getting multiple free toasters when they open an account. They will look into it but it is not a critical emergency. But the bank will be in an absolute panic and start disabling checking accounts and ATM cards left and right if people are getting more money in their accounts than they are supposed to. Currency is a very, very different beast than potions or scrolls.

Except that in the case of the effected PS-EU players, it wasn't immediate, banning happened weeks after the primary event where endeavors were resetting. And just as problematic is the messaging around it. I'd guess that at least for some of the affected players, if the messaging were more along the lines of "unfortunately, we have to lock this account while we remove excess currency that was earned inappropriately due to a bug at our end" rather than the very accusatory initial messages, and the rather backhanded "well, you got your account back but be better at avoiding exploits in the future" for those that were restored, that the situation would not feel as heartless as it does.

Absolutely.

"This account has been permanently suspended for cheating." is accusatory and alarming.

VS

"This account has encountered a bug that allowed it to more seals of endeavors than it should have, as a result it has been temporarily suspended as we investigate this issue. If it is determined that no fraudulent behavior occurred, the account will be restored. We apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for your patience as we investigate this matter."

Mik195 · August 2023

Elsonso wrote: »

Are people actually seeing their Endeavors get reset on such a regular, even daily, basis?

I see the endeavors be unable to count on a regular basis. Kill 17/20 and see 3 NPC, kill them and endeavor shows 18/20.

TaSheen · August 2023

Mik195 wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Are people actually seeing their Endeavors get reset on such a regular, even daily, basis?

I see the endeavors be unable to count on a regular basis. Kill 17/20 and see 3 NPS, kill them and endeavor shows 18/20.

Is this "kill with class skills" or "kill with weapon skills? I have ongoing issues with these, as my mains (who are the ones doing the endeavors) are all wardens - and it takes me a bit to remember to either summon the bear (if kill with class skills) or dismiss the bear (if kill with weapon skills).

Which is why I generally don't do either of them....

Elsonso · August 2023

spartaxoxo wrote: »

"This account has encountered a bug that allowed it to more seals of endeavors than it should have, as a result it has been temporarily suspended as we investigate this issue. If it is determined that no fraudulent behavior occurred, the account will be restored. We apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for your patience as we investigate this matter."

Yes. ZOS really needs to reconsider the full nuclear "shock and awe" emails and messaging.

React · August 2023

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all. Just wanted to follow up here based on some of the feedback. Our intention with highlighting the Endeavor reset issue is to be proactive with the community, noting we are aware of the issue and working toward a solution.

We do not expect players to be monitoring their endeavors in fear of accidentally encountering the exploit, and we'd like to highlight the Endeavor resetting is not a widespread issue and is pretty rare to trigger. In addition, we have a better understanding of the issue and have set up systems on our side to see when someone is specifically exploiting. So if you accidentally run into the issue, you don’t need to worry about having your account actioned.

We are not looking to punish anyone who accidentally stumbles into this, but rather inform the community about an issue we discovered and warn that we will take action on those who take extreme advantage of it (which, again, is not accidental.) We hope this helps to clear up any concerns here. Thanks for your patience and understanding regarding this.

Ah, so we're tripling down on not apologizing for wrongfully banning innocent players, even if only temporarily.

Got it.

MidniteOwl1913 · August 2023

TaSheen wrote: »

Mik195 wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Are people actually seeing their Endeavors get reset on such a regular, even daily, basis?

I see the endeavors be unable to count on a regular basis. Kill 17/20 and see 3 NPS, kill them and endeavor shows 18/20.

Is this "kill with class skills" or "kill with weapon skills? I have ongoing issues with these, as my mains (who are the ones doing the endeavors) are all wardens - and it takes me a bit to remember to either summon the bear (if kill with class skills) or dismiss the bear (if kill with weapon skills).

Which is why I generally don't do either of them....

Also dismissing companions seems to help. But yes I notice that even when I am careful to only use weapon skills some of the kills don't count. I have no idea why.

TaSheen · August 2023

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Mik195 wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Are people actually seeing their Endeavors get reset on such a regular, even daily, basis?

I see the endeavors be unable to count on a regular basis. Kill 17/20 and see 3 NPS, kill them and endeavor shows 18/20.

Is this "kill with class skills" or "kill with weapon skills? I have ongoing issues with these, as my mains (who are the ones doing the endeavors) are all wardens - and it takes me a bit to remember to either summon the bear (if kill with class skills) or dismiss the bear (if kill with weapon skills).

Which is why I generally don't do either of them....

Also dismissing companions seems to help. But yes I notice that even when I am careful to only use weapon skills some of the kills don't count. I have no idea why.

I don't use companions, so that's not it for me. But yes, I do notice that ever if I'm NOT just a space cadet, and even if I "fix" the bear (depending on the actual endeavor), it still doesn't work all the time.... I do have to say though, that my mega ping could be my issue.

Mik195 · August 2023

TaSheen wrote: »

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Mik195 wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Are people actually seeing their Endeavors get reset on such a regular, even daily, basis?

I see the endeavors be unable to count on a regular basis. Kill 17/20 and see 3 NPS, kill them and endeavor shows 18/20.

Is this "kill with class skills" or "kill with weapon skills? I have ongoing issues with these, as my mains (who are the ones doing the endeavors) are all wardens - and it takes me a bit to remember to either summon the bear (if kill with class skills) or dismiss the bear (if kill with weapon skills).

Which is why I generally don't do either of them....

Also dismissing companions seems to help. But yes I notice that even when I am careful to only use weapon skills some of the kills don't count. I have no idea why.

I don't use companions, so that's not it for me. But yes, I do notice that ever if I'm NOT just a space cadet, and even if I "fix" the bear (depending on the actual endeavor), it still doesn't work all the time.... I do have to say though, that my mega ping could be my issue.

I just allow myself to be surprised when all the kills count and expect it to be wrong. Low expectations at this point.

Amottica · August 2023

boi_anachronism_ wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

Lets play roulette then. Certainly our odds are good, right?

... Right?

Zenimax is not playing roulette. They would be looking for specific behavior to determine who they banned up front.

Ok so for example the weekly is "complete 3 trials" i run idk how many a week. Or "complete 6 dungeons" i do way too many to count across all my toons. Id rack up thousand in endeavors. If im farming for gear i may run a dungeon 20x in a day. Do 1 dungeon is a daily very frequently. For those that pvp "do x amount of damage with siege" you do that in like 10mins.

Hypotheticals are great but your example is lacking what Zenimax is looking for to trigger the ban.

Lets be real for a moment. If someone is doing 20-30 raids a week, as some players do, then their pattern has not changed and they are doing what they normally do. If a player normally does not raid or rarely raids and after this exploit was discovered did 20+ raids during a week that was the weekly then, well, then their actions are extremely questionable and likely would be caught up in a ban.

Taking the example a step further, if an action is required to reset the endeavors and a player completes a couple of endeavors then does whatever needs to be done to trigger the reset and repeats these actions multiple times then we have an open and shut case for the ban hammer.

Now those are much more complete hypotheticals and the second one is often used by game developers when specific behavior is required to trigger the exploit. Even Zenimax has noted this with a different exploit a while back.

Amottica · August 2023

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Finedaible wrote: »

Lets play roulette then. Certainly our odds are good, right?

... Right?

Zenimax is not playing roulette. They would be looking for specific behavior to determine who they banned up front.

They literally stated that they unbanned a ton of people because it was determined they had not met their criteria.

That is not the same as playing Russian roulette. Far from it. They set criteria in their search to grab accounts that might be involved and yes, it grabbed some that were not but had similar behavior. Russian roulette is nothing but a shot in the dark, a completely random gamble which is hardly the case here.

RevJJ · August 2023

Based on the last year or so, the bar that I set for ZOS’s treatment of and communication towards their customers was on the ground… and they brought a shovel.

Banning first and asking questions later, no apology towards those that were falsely banned, now this message that doesn’t even state if it applies to all servers and platforms.

And that’s on top of a lack of communication on the crown crate “against the tos” gifting issues, a game breaking bug that is preventing people from playing a chapter they paid money for, ranking broken in the middle of a pvp event, login issues in the middle of another event… And many more issues.

ZOS truly seems to have lost all interest in treating their player base with respect and retaining them. I know every time something happens people will say the game is dying or on maintenance mode… but with all of this combined and the way ZOS is treating this… I’m starting to believe it too.

SeaGtGruff · August 2023

SimonThesis wrote: »

@Zos_Kevin Why wasn't this issue caught and resolved in the PTS before mass amounts of players were banned then unbanned?

Well, if the problem is only(?) occurring on consoles, there would have been no way to catch it on PTS because PTS is only for PC and Mac.

FeedbackOnly · August 2023

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all. Just wanted to follow up here based on some of the feedback. Our intention with highlighting the Endeavor reset issue is to be proactive with the community, noting we are aware of the issue and working toward a solution.

We do not expect players to be monitoring their endeavors in fear of accidentally encountering the exploit, and we'd like to highlight the Endeavor resetting is not a widespread issue and is pretty rare to trigger. In addition, we have a better understanding of the issue and have set up systems on our side to see when someone is specifically exploiting. So if you accidentally run into the issue, you don’t need to worry about having your account actioned.

We are not looking to punish anyone who accidentally stumbles into this, but rather inform the community about an issue we discovered and warn that we will take action on those who take extreme advantage of it (which, again, is not accidental.) We hope this helps to clear up any concerns here. Thanks for your patience and understanding regarding this.

Whoever hired Kevin,

You did good. This will addresses community concerns. By saying it won't happen again along with letting improvements that were made

This is appropriate human response while still being professional. Do hope for the players they understand a fail safe shoukd exist

If 100 people get banned or more a human should be notified. This isn't the first time AI incorrectly banned people.

Overall I appreciate the heart, but people won't forget nor forguve just yet. Please don't let AI decide people's fate. Someone should review bans before they go in place once a day.

PlayStation comrades nor PC EU comrades did not deserve this situation. If a human sees a large number of bans for the same thing then they can seeing if it's real or there's a real problem

This was all over Twitter X, reddit, I felt for these people because they were casuals eating food , doing usually daily routine only for this injustice to happen .

People really love and adore the world not just a game was created. We live out numerous hours fighting dragons or smack talking in zone chat. We want to know our world is a safe place

Troodon80 · August 2023

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

You did good. This will addresses community concerns.

No, it won't. Or if it does, it's only in the short term. Just wait until the next ban wave and the forum explodes again saying they need to change things (and knowing ZOS won't change). For reference, ZOS has a history now of seemingly randomly banning people over crown trading (early days TCE EU and Crown Exchange lost a lot of sellers because of this), gold duplicating because an addon was automatically taking gold from mail (but the gold wasn't actually being duplicated), and now this. And let's not forget the people who have been banned in the past for reporting bugs. I understand that it's one of the parts to the mail saying that they want to verify the contribution, but why is it ban first and ask questions later? What don't bots get banned this fast?

ZOS made a formal apology over the gold duplicating problem where many, if not all, of the affected people had all their gold removed on top of being forced out of the game for anything up to a week. They owned that mistake and apologised, which seemed like it would be a good line going forward.

Now we're back here again. Why no apology? Yes, it's perfectly understandable that innocent accounts are going to occasionally get swept up as false positives, but the least they can do is apologise. A statement that they wrongfully banned people is meaningless without being followed up by an actual apology.

They've admitted it's a bug. The only action needed was to do a cleanup during the next maintenance to remove superfluous endeavours, with a public statement saying as such so people could be pointed to it when they invariably come to the forum to complain about their loss of endeavours. Very simple, very easy, no threats, no bans, no stress. How is any of what we got acceptable? The only professional thing to do at this point is to apologise for the wrongdoing having already acknowledged it, and maybe a little something for the people affected to take the sting out of all the stress/anxiety they've been through thinking they've lost their account.

And one would have to be extremely naive to think there will never be another ban wave. Once this one is finally over, what will the next big ban wave be? Maybe you'll be on the chopping block in the next one? Never say never.