Bans due to launching games on ReFS

[Zinomian]

On 19/08/2025 at 09:13, Gotenks98 said:

If a game is looking at your file system, it is definitely not something you want to be playing. That is just way too intrusive.

I think is part of the anti-cheat software, validating *things* to make sure nothing is being modified.  If the software is unable to validate files, files signatures, etc, then it probably assumes something is *wrong*, and probably lead to in this case a ban.

Not validating if this practice is good or bad, however, as someone who plays online (and please dont judge me on this!) CS2, I appreciate anti-cheat software that makes competitive games *fair*, at least from a software standpoint.

[funkerwolf]

On 19/08/2025 at 16:13, Gotenks98 said:

If a game is looking at your file system, it is definitely not something you want to be playing. That is just way too intrusive.

[Zinomian]

On 19/08/2025 at 10:01, funkerwolf said:

Dont play activision games then....

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

There's an awful lot of name calling, emotion and self-justification here, but I feel for you - if you have spent time, effort and money on something to have it taken away without any discussion or means of dispute.

However, I will suggest this:  It doesn't matter what any company did - what you did was run games on a documented unsupported filesystem.  This seemingly triggered ant-cheat detections.  Lame, because they are just using "catch all" technologies, but it's sometimes necessary to "stay ahead of the cheats".

But here's the thing - you signed up and agreed to their terms.  They didn't agree to yours.  I think rather than getting bogged down in a futile crusade, you cut your losses and move on?

[funkerwolf]

On 19/08/2025 at 19:10, Nik Louch said:

There's an awful lot of name calling, emotion and self-justification here, but I feel for you - if you have spent time, effort and money on something to have it taken away without any discussion or means of dispute.

However, I will suggest this:  It doesn't matter what any company did - what you did was run games on a documented unsupported filesystem.  This seemingly triggered ant-cheat detections.  Lame, because they are just using "catch all" technologies, but it's sometimes necessary to "stay ahead of the cheats".

But here's the thing - you signed up and agreed to their terms.  They didn't agree to yours.  I think rather than getting bogged down in a futile crusade, you cut your losses and move on?

And what should all this lead to? I signed up to the agreement/terms and conditions/policy, which does not contain a ban on file systems, but I was banned. Moreover, in other games in the same series, there is no permanent ban, but only in one game does it happen; the previous one simply does not start, and everything is fine. What conclusion can be drawn from this?
I was mostly loyal to CoD, I even have licensed discs for the first games. Considering how much more was spent on games from this company and on upgrades to make everything run smoothly, getting banned in response is probably not very pleasant. And this was a purely accidental discovery, which clearly indicates a serious bug, and they are ignoring this bug report and even denying access to technical support... I'm not even talking about bans for running under Wine/Proton... and a bunch of other cases where players get banned for no reason, without any apparent cause, and they are not even told why, and they are not given a second chance, and appeals are simply ignored...
And what causes the most confusion is the use of vague terminology, blurred answers, and simply ignoring the issue.
And I understand that CoDBOCW is already an old game. But why, without any actual violations, do we have a cheater label on four accounts when we are not cheaters? And because of this ban, purchasing other games on these accounts will result in them also being automatically banned, even without launching them... This is a direct violation of rights. It's especially annoying when people refer to something that doesn't exist and isn't specified. The fact that the installation method is unofficial and hasn't been confirmed by anyone anywhere is just our opinion in theory. And why should anyone care about that anyway? And again, there is nothing in the agreement/license/policy about prohibiting this or that in my case, but for some reason it refers back to the top and simply throws it back to problem 1 on 1.

Spoiler

 

Edited August 19, 2025 by funkerwolf

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

On 19/08/2025 at 21:42, funkerwolf said:

And what should all this lead to? I signed up to the agreement/terms and conditions/policy, which does not contain a ban on file systems, but I was banned. Moreover, in other games in the same series, there is no permanent ban, but only in one game does it happen; the previous one simply does not start, and everything is fine. What conclusion can be drawn from this?
I was mostly loyal to CoD, I even have licensed discs for the first games. Considering how much more was spent on games from this company and on upgrades to make everything run smoothly, getting banned in response is probably not very pleasant. And this was a purely accidental discovery, which clearly indicates a serious bug, and they are ignoring this bug report and even denying access to technical support... I'm not even talking about bans for running under Wine/Proton... and a bunch of other cases where players get banned for no reason, without any apparent cause, and they are not even told why, and they are not given a second chance, and appeals are simply ignored...
And what causes the most confusion is the use of vague terminology, blurred answers, and simply ignoring the issue.

  Hide contents

 

Sigh… fair enough - if all this emotion and posting serves you, then fair play.

[funkerwolf]

On 19/08/2025 at 23:45, Nik Louch said:

Sigh… fair enough - if all this emotion and posting serves you, then fair play.

I just want justice and to have the cheater label removed from my account and my friends' accounts, not to mention the huge number of false bans.
^{I still sometimes get the feeling that everyone is simply afraid to go against Activision.}

  

On 19/08/2025 at 19:10, Nik Louch said:

what you did was run games on a documented unsupported filesystem.

 And this is precisely what is not specified in the terms and conditions, policy, and agreement.

[Varrning Skopeftis]

On 19/08/2025 at 23:45, Nik Louch said:

Sigh… fair enough - if all this emotion and posting serves you, then fair play.

You talking about fair play, but you dont even know how many retards playing in cs2 and other games with cheats right now. And what developers do? Nothing, even faceit, they just do nothing with AUTOHOTKEY. You can play with triggerbot and other ###### and its legit lol, becouse its just a scripts.

If you using some software, for file system, you dont getting any advantage, but getting ban. It is fair?)) Its not even sound systems (some sound visualiser, also many ppls using in cs2), or other tricks, its just nothing, its not fair to get ban for nothing.

[+Edouard Subscriber²]

On 20/08/2025 at 07:33, Varrning Skopeftis said:

You talking about fair play, but you dont even know how many retards playing in cs2 and other games with cheats right now. And what developers do? Nothing, even faceit, they just do nothing with AUTOHOTKEY. You can play with triggerbot and other ###### and its legit lol, becouse its just a scripts.

If you using some software, for file system, you dont getting any advantage, but getting ban. It is fair?)) Its not even sound systems (some sound visualiser, also many ppls using in cs2), or other tricks, its just nothing, its not fair to get ban for nothing.

"You talking about fair play, but you dont even know how many retards playing"

Please don't use that word. Everything you say is ignored when you use that word.

[binaryzero]

Format your disk back to NTFS and move on, no one cares.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

On 19/08/2025 at 21:49, funkerwolf said:

I just want justice

Let me put this bluntly: you won’t get it

[Case_f]

A game requiring NTFS and a gaming company banning people for using a different file system to store their files is certainly...something. I wonder if it's something that's explicitly stated in the game's requirements or ToS, and it would certainly be interesting to see what exactly they need that requires strictly NTFS. Windows not being able to  officially *boot* from ReFS should not matter.

[Matthew S.]

I'm going to look at this from afar, OP are you 100% sure it's due to ReFS and not some other running processes on your system?

 

If their Anti-Cheat requires direct access to the filesystem and that was known prior to the bans or even playing, then that's on you, not the developer/publisher; you're the one who chose to run an unsupported filesystem.

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 20/08/2025 at 14:05, Case_f said:

A game requiring NTFS and a gaming company banning people for using a different file system to store their files is certainly

This did not happen!

OP installed the game on a filesystem that blocked the game being able to access certain game data, or change any files in the game data (like a users game data folder) which probably also flagged the anti-cheat. And we don't even know what else was going on on the OPs system.

A game typically has installation requirements, like Windows 10, 11 etc where the officially supported file system is NTFS. A game developer is not specifically saying NTFS must be used, they are saying it is supported on 64-bit versions of Windows 11, of which currently only supports booting from NTFS. That is the environment the game targets.

The current version of  Windows 11 24H2 does not support booting from ReFS, so game developers do not care to develop for it yet.

What is complicated about these facts?

[funkerwolf]

On 20/08/2025 at 15:56, Matthew S. said:

I'm going to look at this from afar, OP are you 100% sure it's due to ReFS and not some other running processes on your system?

 

If their Anti-Cheat requires direct access to the filesystem and that was known prior to the bans or even playing, then that's on you, not the developer/publisher; you're the one who chose to run an unsupported filesystem.

that refs is not officially supported, I didn't know at that moment, and even more I didn't know that for such installation a ban is possible, and 3 additional retests with different hardware and different regions revealed the problem.

[funkerwolf]

On 20/08/2025 at 16:14, Steven P. said:

This did not happen!

OP installed the game on a filesystem that blocked the game being able to access certain game data, or change any files in the game data (like a users game data folder) which probably also flagged the anti-cheat. And we don't even know what else was going on on the OPs system.

A game typically has installation requirements, like Windows 10, 11 etc where the officially supported file system is NTFS. A game developer is not specifically saying NTFS must be used, they are saying it is supported on 64-bit versions of Windows 11, of which currently only supports booting from NTFS. That is the environment the game targets.

The current version of  Windows 11 24H2 does not support booting from ReFS, so game developers do not care to develop for it yet.

What is complicated about these facts?

I appreciate your position, but why are there such assumptions and no specific information? Shouldn't all this lead to a ban without warning anywhere? And if I hadn't started this topic on the internet, no one would have known about it at all. Except that Wine/Proton also gave out bans, and they didn't start right away. It's terrible.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

On 20/08/2025 at 14:50, funkerwolf said:

that refs is not officially supported, I didn't know at that moment

That is your problem and not theirs. You need to own that.

[Matthew S.]

On 20/08/2025 at 09:50, funkerwolf said:

that refs is not officially supported, I didn't know at that moment, and even more I didn't know that for such installation a ban is possible, and 3 additional retests with different hardware and different regions revealed the problem.

Except you technically did if you had to jump through hoops just to get windows 11 to install and boot on it...

[Matthew S.]

Right from the COD Security and Enforcement policy, now keep in mind drivers typically will fit both the device and applications definition.

[neufuse Veteran]

On 20/08/2025 at 14:43, Matthew S. said:

Right from the COD Security and Enforcement policy, now keep in mind drivers typically will fit both the device and applications definition.

I'd say that implies cheating was involved, since all their definitions say AND use for cheating

 

[funkerwolf]

On 20/08/2025 at 21:43, Matthew S. said:

Right from the COD Security and Enforcement policy, now keep in mind drivers typically will fit both the device and applications definition.

If you dig deeper, you'll find that MSI Afterburner is also banned, as well as Trial Windows. It's just nonsense. It's terrible, and for some reason, they are still not being criticized for banning the use of goodbyedpi and other things that have become a necessity in some countries.

Edited August 20, 2025 by funkerwolf

[neufuse Veteran]

On 20/08/2025 at 16:02, funkerwolf said:

If you dig deeper, you'll find that MSI Afterburner is also banned, as well as Trial Windows. It's just nonsense. It's terrible, and for some reason, they are still not being criticized for banning the use of goodbyedpi and other things that have become a necessity in some countries.

but it also says they dont terminate  unless your account has extreme or repeat offense... the others are temporary suspended

[Case_f]

On 20/08/2025 at 15:14, Steven P. said:

This did not happen!

OP installed the game on a filesystem that blocked the game being able to access certain game data, or change any files in the game data (like a users game data folder) which probably also flagged the anti-cheat. And we don't even know what else was going on on the OPs system.

A game typically has installation requirements, like Windows 10, 11 etc where the officially supported file system is NTFS. A game developer is not specifically saying NTFS must be used, they are saying it is supported on 64-bit versions of Windows 11, of which currently only supports booting from NTFS. That is the environment the game targets.

The current version of  Windows 11 24H2 does not support booting from ReFS, so game developers do not care to develop for it yet.

What is complicated about these facts?

What "certain game data" did that filesystem prevent the game from accessing or changing? That's exactly something I was interested about here.

And what has booting from ReFS has to do with anything, really? You could easily have a small NTFS partition to boot from and have everything else on ReFS. That would satisfy even the most literal interpretation of "officially supported" on current Win 11. Would that still trigger a ban is the question...I suspect it might, given what we know about OP's case. And yes, sure, you are certainly free to speculate about various other things that "were going on on the OPs system". I choose to work with the information I have and not assume anything unless given reason.

And, more importantly, we've kinda overlooked what was kinda more of my point - what specifically is the game doing with the filesystem that *requires* NTFS? The feature set of NTFS and ReFS is almost identical, we're not talking about critical differences in ie. security or access rights management that could in theory pose an issue. And it's not some quirky fringe filesystem either, it's a filesystem that MS has been using on servers for years and that now has almost complete support on workstations as well (and really, plenty of people have been using it on workstations for a long time now, even if it wasn't strictly speaking "official").

I would say that OP brought up some very good points/issues with their case that at the very least don't deserve handwaving in the style of "well who knows whatever else was going on on their system" or "well you can't yet boot from the filesystem, so it makes sense you can't use it at all". Yes, there might have been other things that lead to the ban, but I would still appreciate some actual answers to questions like "would using ReFS really cause a ban and if so, why exactly?", and I would think an issue like this would be of interest to inquiring tech journalists and their audience. Especially since cases where people will be using ReFS on their systems are only going to become more common.

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 21/08/2025 at 08:38, Case_f said:

And yes, sure, you are certainly free to speculate about various other things that "were going on on the OPs system". I choose to work with the information I have and not assume anything unless given reason.

What information do you have about the OPs system other than what was claimed?

Also you're still missing the point. The games in question were loaded on an unsupported environment. 

We're left to speculate why Activision and several others "immediately" permabanned, because we only have the word of who it happened to.

As a reminder: The games in question were loaded on an unsupported environment. 

[Case_f]

On 21/08/2025 at 09:30, Steven P. said:

What information do you have about the OPs system other than what was claimed?

Also you're still missing the point. The games in question were loaded on an unsupported environment. 

We're left to speculate why Activision and several others "immediately" permabanned, because we only have the word of who it happened to.

As a reminder: The games in question were loaded on an unsupported environment. 

What information do *you* have that justifies going "who knows what else they've done"? Unlike you, I'm not assuming anything beyond what we have to work with, that is the game was installed on ReFS on several accounts and said accounts were presumably banned for it. Yes, we only have OP's word for it.

And no, I'm not missing your point. You don't have to repeat it five times in bold. We could technically argue whether ReFS actually equals "unsupported environment" on current Win 11, because, again, we actually don't know it does, it's not stated anywhere specifically. Which, BTW, is yet another reason for someone from Activision clarifying whether it is or isn't either to the user banned as the ban was issued, or subsequently to a journalist interested in clarifying the situation.

You, on the other hand, seem to be missing *my* point, which is that this seems to be (yes, seems to be, we only have OP's word for it) a case that would deserve certain answers, be it about the specific cases or subsequently on whether ReFS is supported and what specifically prevents the game from working. As I was saying, if the accounts were truly banned for running the game on ReFS, it will only get worse going forward. Handwaving it as essentially hearsay and "unsupported environment" helps nothing and nobody, IMO. Well, except maybe Activision to maintain their lack of communication and clarification I guess.

(But it's likely my last comment on this and my apologies to everyone else reading this for dragging it on.)