Gaming
·3 min read

RUMOR: Mysterious PSN Permanent Bans Are Being Handed To Accounts

Rizwan Anwer··
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I am a frequent lurker and observer of the PS4 Subreddit. It is a common occurrence to see the bi-weekly or so post from people getting banned from PSN, and later on, finding out said accounts did send toxic messages, did a chargeback or something that did warrant a ban. But a series of posts has grown concern in the community that people are getting mysterious PSN Permanent bans on their accounts. The stories vary but the common thread is that they were all banned within hours of each other.

 

UPDATE: there are now reports coming in where people are reporting that their bans are being reversed. One of the Reddit users linked below Granosx has had his ban overturned in error.

and then there is also this tweet from one of the earlier accounts that was banned.

Further investigation revealed that the cause for the ban could be an exploit uncovered last week which allowed people to redeem the same prepaid game card twice on a system. This has not been confirmed by Sony.

I am used to seeing people on the subreddit posting about being banned on PSN. It is later uncovered that they did have a toxic text exchange with another PSN user or did a chargeback.

There are however some very odd accounts of 3 reddit users with a whole line of tweets that could suggest something bigger is afoot.

Redditt user TheRealMoBamba shares their incident. While the post itself is very vague, the timing is very uncanny.

PSN Ban 1

The story continues with reddit user slaruffa in their thread.

The most convincing case is of reddit user Granosx who has a thread with 40 upvotes.

PSN Ban 4

When we go to the PlayStation subreddit, we encounter the story of Daydream_Tm

What is most disconcerting is how each user reports using their PS4 regularly, and the fact that a lot of these people have been transparent in their threads. The subreddit is always very skeptical of the people reporting incidents of getting bans, but when the frequency of posts is this much within the span of 6 hours, even the PS4 community is having a hard time figuring out what is going on.

Going outside of Reddit. there are several reports on Twitter too. This time the number is absolutely massive.

https://twitter.com/docgamingbruhi/status/1059680159043702784

https://twitter.com/moh7_gamer/status/1059694848905744385

https://twitter.com/MrMayoNice/status/1059741468838019074

https://twitter.com/clutchhcaptain2/status/1059718957035384832

You can see that this is not a coincidence. There is definitely something going on here. There is an unconfirmed rumor that there is a new version of the Juegas message bug which is causing this, but I reached out to all the reddit users. None of them got any message from anyone prior to the ban. I tried reaching out to other twitter users who claim to have had the message prior to the ban but still waiting for their reply.

All you have to do is search Twitter for ‘PSN Ban‘ or ‘PSN Banned‘ to see that the number of reports coming in is increasingly abnormal than usual. The numbers are now reaching very high numbers.

There is also a popular theory that the people being banned are the ones who sent the Juegas message when it was viral and they are getting their just deserts. I also probed this from the reddit users and none of them had any reason to do so.

Whether you’re a believer or skeptical, you have to admit that so many accounts getting banned simultaneously is anything but coincidence.

Whatever the reason is, this is a developing story and we will keep you updated as events come to our knowledge.

What do you think is the reason for the bans?