Hey there,
I am Qeight, one of the newer Game Masters, before that I was the Moderator Team Lead.
I asked for this thread to be moved into public viewing again as I believe there is value in having our viewpoints stated publicly as well.
The post is a bit of a mix so I'll dissect the points 1 by 1.
All bans, are manual bans. Automated bans haven't been taking place for quite a long time now ( around 2+ years). You are hitting on two completely different subjects as well.
Unauthorized software is something like botting software, speedhacks, any kind of third party software while having "too many accounts" are simple mistakes that get unbanned in 99/100 cases, the 1 case being someone who yells and insults staff for their ban (even though they haven't read the rules).
Good question, we don't know. I banned people with 6000 hours and 6 hours for doing the same thing, unfortunately your hours, status, money donated and what not don't matter when banning someone. We have to treat all players equally and fairly, based on the punishment policy.
Friends often lie, it's the internet, nobody wants to be seen as a cheater. If you can put your hands in a fire for a friend, you will get burned if they swear they didn't cheat.
The appeal center is there for honest players, unless you are banned for investigation purposes you are guilty. It's not "innocent until proven guilty", we banned you because we proved that you were guilty through methods we never gonna disclose. We are not disclosing them for obvious reasons.
It really depends on the ban itself, all are done manually to ensure there isn't anything wrong with the bans. If you are banned for macro- usage or any 3rd party programs you are guilty by default otherwise you wouldn't have been banned. Mass-account bans are often due to people sharing accounts, it is indeed very hard to distinguish who is who sometimes, if you have 30 accounts use the same device. Mass account bans are 99/100 cases successful and people get unbanned.
Here is my take on this, PRO had an automated system during the time Shane was still a Dev. The system flagged you for simply lagging out, creating bans that weren't accurate.
There were a few auto bans like "Auto Ban: S2" was one of the more faulty ones while "Auto Ban: Third Party Software" was 100% accurate. This system was removed a very long time ago and replaced with something way more secure made by Eaty. What exactly gets detected, how detection works is only need-to-know basis within staff as well.
At first nobody was getting banned and then people got banned in waves, this of course raised questions about how detection works even within staff. I was by far the loudest voice against it because the story was always the same "I didn't do anything", "I didn't cheat" & so on. I was only a Moderator at the time, not a Game Master who deals with this kind of stuff but I had my doubts and I made my doubts be heard loudly.
However overtime bans slowed down, people were still getting banned for it, the bans were made more severe over time to a permanent ban for users' who cheat. Eaty is very confident in his anti-cheat and we have to trust that. It would be not logical to think that Eaty wants people to be banned for no reason or faulty bans. It goes against everything Eaty is trying with this game. I came to that realization after I left staff for 3 months.
I would correct that, we banned more than 10 users, some of those were detected months ago but weren't banned due to shortage of GMs. This is on us but we are catching up, hence you might see increased numbers of bans.
I think you are confusing something, yes anti-cheats can not detect all cheats, that's a fault on the anti-cheat but saying our system is faulty because "people are innocent get banned"? Our system detects known cheat programs to us. The chances that you are detected and innocent equal 0.
It stays open till people starts insulting staff or yell at each other.