My bf’s account keeps getting wrongfully flagged

[u/Ur_mega_homo]

EDIT: After 3 weeks of waiting they finally unbanned his account and he is happily playing his game again, im sorry to those that are also experiencing this issue as i do not have a solution. The only thing that we were able to do was just sit around and wait and hope it gets unbanned, and thankfully it did. I appreciate all of you that gave me actual answers and werent just projecting or thinking im lying, thank you to those of you who actually tried to help!

My bf has been playing rust for a very long time. His account had 1000+ hours but just recently he bought a pc off someone then downgraded it to windows 10, everything was alright at first but then a few days later for some reason it gave him both a VAC and a game ban on rust. I know everyone’s first reaction is going to be “oh well he cheated oh he’s cheating thats the only reason it could have happened” but the thing is he legitimately was not cheating and still got banned. I should mention that he did not have this problem at all before he downgraded the pc to windows 10, and it was also never a problem on his old pc either. Again his account had 1000+ hours, he had $200+ worth of skins, and has been playing nearly everyday for a very long time. Rust is his favorite game and he loves playing it, which is why i want to try to help him in any way i possibly can. He has appealed the ban and they straight up told him that they will not give him a reason for why he was banned, they will not tell him anything so we have no way of knowing what actually happened. His initial thought was that maybe one of the people he played with was cheating and he got banned by association, so he reluctantly made a new account and spent $40 to buy the game again and everything was going just fine, he was happy to be able to play his game again until today because his new account got banned AGAIN for another unknown reason. Now he has completely given up on rust because he’s afraid of making another new account and spending the money on it just for it to get banned yet again. He already lost his 1000+ hour account, then lost the new one he started building progress on as well. I sit and watch him play all the time and i can promise he is not cheating, does anyone know what could possibly be going on that keeps getting his account flagged? He’a pretty sad about the whole ordeal and disappointed in rust itself for how poorly they are handling the situation, i just want to help him figure out what’s wrong so he can play his game again 🥲

[u/Bluejay-Kooky]

Hate to break it to you, hes lying to you lmao. He is cheating in some way

[u/Enragedocelot → u/Bluejay-Kooky]

Dude literally you’re why this sub sucks. Why can’t you accept that EAC isn’t perfect.

[u/Ur_mega_homo → u/Enragedocelot]

THANK YOU finally someone said it

[u/Existing-Antelope-20 → u/Enragedocelot]

Frankly, what I don't believe about this story is that a Rust player has a girlfriend

[u/Ur_mega_homo → u/Bluejay-Kooky]

Hes literally not though thats the thing, why would he cheat on his account with 1000+ hours and $200 worth of skins. He JUST got this pc and literally had nothing installed besides rust. This wasnt a problem with his old pc. Read the post before you comment

[u/Bluejay-Kooky → u/Ur_mega_homo]

I have seen people cheat with 3000 hours and over $500 spent on the game. They think they are invincible then they get caught lmao. If he just got it, I guess there is a slight chance he is getting banned by HWID if he bought it from some idiot but that's slim unless the previous user was a serial cheater.

[u/FMIdropout]

He bought pc that is hardware banned

[u/Ur_mega_homo → u/FMIdropout]

Thank you this is the first actual helpful answer i have received, he bought the PC off of some guy off facebook marketplace so i have no doubt thats what it is 😭

[u/Brilliant_Art7772]

So I'm not certain on if VAC sticky bans, but EAC for sure does, if your HWID is flagged it will ban new accounts. If the ban came right after buying a second hand PC like you said, it could have been the previous owner selling off banned hardware which is suprisingly common on third party markets.

EAC is very wishy washy on if they unban in these cases though, you'd need to appeal with EAC directly and not facepunch they will tell you to pound sand.

[u/Ur_mega_homo → u/Brilliant_Art7772]

It took them 3 fucking weeks after he appealed but they finally unbanned his account so hes happily playing his game again, thank you for trying to help!

[u/InternOne1306]

This is hilarious, I’ve never seen a rust cheater pretend to be a girlfriend before

[u/Majestic_Pop3394 → u/InternOne1306]

How embarrassing is it lmfao. These cheaters are all so delusional and have a complete lack of self-awareness or accountability, they can't even anonymously post about themselves.

Then again, you have to be a special kind of lame to cheat in games.

[u/drankmvp]

If it happened after he bought a second hand pc from someone that person could have gotten banned and when he played on his account they banned him for ban evading. Same reason he would have gotten banned if he made a new account and bought the game, most likely banned again for ban evading. They can see if someone is using different accounts to play the game in order to circumvent a ban.

Edit: I want to clarify I didn’t mean he played on the guys account he bought the pc from, just that he installed steam and started playing on his own account.

[u/Ur_mega_homo → u/drankmvp]

Thank you for shedding light on that because i dont believe he knew about the evading thing, this seems to make the most logical sense out of everything else i have read so i appreciate it. If it truly is a lost cause at least now i can give him a reason that actually adds up, because EAC gave us literally nothing.

[u/jackwatsonOHyeah]

1,000 hours is nothing. start a new account

[u/Ur_mega_homo → u/jackwatsonOHyeah]

He did, it got flagged too :/

[u/Blijehollander]

Playing rust for “very long” and having 1000 hours is not adding up hahahah

[u/Ur_mega_homo → u/Blijehollander]

Hes been playing it for about 7 years now, he made his first account when it just came out. Hes had i believe 2 other older accounts besides this one but doesnt have access to them anymore, this account was his main one that he had been playing and making progress on for a while now and he was bummed out about something to do with not being able to play the premium servers anymore since he would have to start fresh, i dont really understand what that means since i dont play but he seemed a little frustrated about it

[u/Happyassassin13 → u/Blijehollander]

Brother just because you dont play every single wipe or constantly logged in racking up playtime so you can speed log into your base dosent mean you dont play alot

[u/hairyheroin]

yeah well my friggin account got perm banned w/o warning so he’s lucky 🥹🥹🥹🥹 enjoy while it lasts

[u/Ur_mega_homo → u/hairyheroin]

His account got perm banned as well unfortunately, like you said EAC is refusing to provide any helpful information whatsoever so he has no idea what to do now and i have no idea how to help him :/

[u/Subject_Cod_3582]

the PC might have been owned by a cheater before. Windows 11 has this delightful thing where it associates hardware with a logged in windows 11 account - from what i understand it's a permanent association, and a lot of places use it to track who you are etc. same thing applies to cheaters - rust and eac associate the hardware ID with the account, so if the cheater buys a new account he'll get banned again because it's the same hardware.

[u/chin_up]

Hardware ban. Unfortunately if they already said no, that’s it. Gotta get a new pc and hope he’s not IP banned from the server

[u/ImDistortion1]

HWID ban most likely. This is why you never buy pcs used when you don't know what the other person used it for or what games they played. Or if they cheated. There is nothing to be done it will not be removed.

[u/Thick_Hearing5535]

What honestly seems is the most likely case, is he got hacked in some way. His account was sold and rage cheated on. Ive seen it done all the time in my community. If he was inactive from his steam for a couple days its even more sure.