Hello,
All global bans have been removed, everyone is unbanned
* Legend: "global ban" = Manual ban for bad activity or AntiCheat "Banned by MTA"
MTA wishes everyone a happy new year. To show our good intentions and willingness to forgive those in which we previously lost faith, everyone that received a global ban in the past 15 years has been given a final chance to be a normal player, and redeem themselves. This is not a joke, we removed all bans (except for a handful of the worst cases, up to 20 users), and will only happen once in MTA's lifetime.
Everyone that used paid hacks, or was a cheat developer, can play again. We are extra confident in this because we recently patched (detected, blocked) the major paid hacks on MTA, unbanning paid hack users in this scenario was our traditional approach which we however shifted away from.
Everyone that did basic malicious activity against MTA, its users or a server, can play again. Of course, except for the absolute worst of cases, which is unlikely to include you.
So for a bit of context, besides giving everyone a chance to redeem themselves (if they had previously insisted they realized their mistakes and wouldn't repeat.. but got rejected as we have different experiences with such users), we realized that the system used was prone to false positive bans that accumulate during periods of lowered AC Team manpower. Even when manpower went up, it was a huge leap to catch up with the growing so-called technical debt to fix up on false positives, leading to, as I must admit, a bunch of unfairly banned people with appeals that wouldn't be attended to. This is the compassionate move.
- Those that know what they did to get banned, should know that this is their final chance, and that should you draw AC team's attention again you are done for. You are certainly one of those that fully realize the strength of our anti-ban evade measures to which point you can't do anything to evade bans, as when you get such a manual ban not even spoofers will work to evade.. so, don't make the same mistake again, don't put yourself in the same situation of being defeated, AC team will really come after you if you repeat. You can consider the ban amnesty as a peace offering, as long you are willing to be a normal user from now on. Not a toxic cheat developer, hacker, DDoS attacker or so on, whatever behavior got you banned. Redeem yourself, learn from your past mistakes, and make a fresh start.
- Those that know they are innocent and were caught in the crossfire of their appeals not being handled in a timely manner or at all, we extend our deepest apologies to you, and reassure you that 99% of all measures (intended for other banned users) which could lead to such a false positive ban are now removed along with the Ban Amnesty. You are cleared and very much welcome back to play MTA: San Andreas. I am well aware how many dreams of past players were ruined by unfortunate mistakes.
Disclaimer:
Anyone that notices they are still banned after today, is one of the up to 20 people in the list of exceptions, and shouldn't bother to appeal. It has been double checked that only intended remaining bans still exist, there is no such thing as a 'mistake' to be reconsidered. Community bans (Discord/Forums) are also not included other than on a case by case basis such as through the use of our Discord Ban Appeals board, unless otherwise stated in the near future.
At last, if you have any friends that are permanently banned, please inform them about the good news, but caution them to behave this time, because like I wrote at the top, this is an extremely rare event that won't occur in MTA's future, as it has never done so in the past 15 years.