My brother and I play WarEra. Turns out that's illegal. Last week I got fined because the system decided two brothers existing near each other looks like cheating. We've never shared a device or an account, not once. What we have done is see each other regularly, because we're family. One of the "flagged" incidents was even during account creation, when I was in a different country, which didn't stop anyone from treating it as evidence.
The rule doesn't ask if you cheated. It asks if you're related. It started when a ticket got claimed by the alleged professional handling the case. First question: how do I know my brother. I said I introduced him to the game. Next question: why hadn't we declared a "Family Group," a rule apparently designed for exactly our situation, that neither of us had ever heard of.
My brother pointed out we live separately and asked what actually triggers the flag. The answer was two things. A device flag, and the same IP shared seven times. The device flag turned out to be nothing, it was only from when we created our accounts, and the mod himself admitted he discarded it. The IP one? Sure, we've shared an IP. Because we spend time together, because we're brothers, not because we're running a scheme.
I brought up that the device flag landed during account creation, while I was verifiably in a different country, I had actually been travelling for 5 months away from our home country. That should have killed the device sharing theory outright. Instead, the conversation kept drifting toward "so you're admitting you shared an account," despite nobody admitting anything of the sort.
Eventually the alleged professional backed off, said he'd discarded that flag, said he wasn't accusing us of account sharing. Convenient, after several rounds of implying exactly that.
The end result: 450B fined, for not declaring a status we didn't know existed, over behavior that was never actually cheating.
Here's the actual rule, word for word:
"Players can share an IP address if they have been registered as a Family Group. This status must be requested in advance to an admin on our Discord. Group members are prohibited from trading equipment, working for each other, and all transactions must stay fair and balanced. Any attempts to bypass these rules can result in removal of sharing status, fines, and temporary or permanent bans."
Notice what that rule is actually built around: attempts to bypass it. Trading gear, propping each other up for an unfair edge, working the system together to get ahead. That's the exploitation it's meant to catch, and fair enough, catch it.
My brother has worked for me, sure, we're brothers, that happens. But nobody gained an advantage nobody else could have had. No unfair edge, no rigged transactions, nothing that put either of us ahead of a normal player. The rule isn't broken by the existence of a favor between family, it's broken by exploitation, and there wasn't any.
So the fine wasn't for bypassing the rule in any meaningful sense. It was for not paperworking around a rule we didn't know was there, while doing none of the actual harm that rule exists to prevent.
At one point the response to all this was basically "the system doesn't lie." That's a wild thing to say with a straight face. Every system lies eventually, that's what logs, flags, and detection heuristics do, they produce false positives. Believing a fraud detector is infallible isn't professionalism, it's just naivety dressed up as authority. The whole point of a human reviewing a ticket is to catch the cases where the system gets it wrong. Blindly trusting the flag defeats the purpose of having a person in the seat at all.
And speaking of the person in the seat: for someone billed as "the professional" in this exchange, the conversation didn't feel professional. It felt like being slowly walked into admitting to something we never did, questions rephrased and re-asked until it sounded like we'd contradicted ourselves, insinuations dropped and then denied being insinuations. Call it what it is: that's not investigation, that's gaslighting with extra steps. Yes, I got a little heated. I'll own that. But I wasn't the one being paid, badged, and trusted to handle this calmly. He was.
In the end it got "resolved." Family Group confirmed, no ban, just 450B gone, for a rule we didn't even know existed until we were already being interrogated over it. The alleged professional eventually dropped the account sharing insinuations once we called it out, but only after wasting everyone's time implying we were cheating. This whole ordeal left a much sour taste in our mouths. Wasn't the most exiting time for WarEra right after.
So here's your PSA: if you've got family or roommates on WarEra, go declare a Family Group right now, before some mod treats your family as a red flag.
And to whoever's actually in charge of these rules: fix Rule 2. Right now it doesn't catch cheaters, it catches siblings. If your detection system can't tell the difference between exploitation and two siblings existing near each other, that's not a rule, that's laziness dressed up as enforcement.
This fine took out a third of my capital over something I didn't even do. If you want to help me recover from getting punished for having a brother, tips are appreciated. <3