EDIT:

I am very happy to report that a member of Psyonix just reached out to me with the following message:

Hey Caeru,

We've taken another look at your case and have determined that we will be reversing the decision to exclude your account from receiving the Season 8 rewards.

Keep in mind that when we're looking at an account, we look for multiple factors like forfeiting and collusion, among others, that give us the context needed to determine if an account was abusing the matchmaking system and breaking the Code of Conduct.

We're sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your patience!

So yeah. I'm honestly feeling incredibly relieved right now.

Thank you very much to everyone who showed support, and likewise thank you very much to all of Psyonix for investigating the issue and reversing the decision. <3

I want to make something clear up front: I love this game.

It's the reason I have taken the time to find and report serious, game breaking bugs to Psyonix. It's the reason I attempt to study this game's physics and share my findings with the community. It's the reason why I have over 5000 hours logged and have accumulated a ridiculous amount of stats simply from how much I obsess over this game.

But right now, I really don't know how to feel.

Season 9 rolled around, and I didn't have any of my season rewards. No boosts, no title, nothing. Naturally, I wanted to know why, so after giving it some time, I opened a support ticket.

Psyonix's response:

I checked your account's records in order to see what could have happened and I can confirm your account was involved in a mass action against players who were identified to be abusing the matchmaking system.

If you give us a little background on the situation I'll check what we can do from our side to review the action, though I cannot make any promises that you will receive the rewards.

While I was initially upset, I was at least happy to hear that, one, it was a "mass action"--implying that it was automated--and two, that they were willing to look into it.

So I detailed every little thing I could think of--every little possibility of my play that could have been interpreted as "abusing the matchmaking system".

I solo queue the majority of my matches, and rarely play with significantly better players, so I didn't expect that to be the issue. I will sometimes play with players below my rank, but will generally only do so with players that I feel can legitimately hold their own with me at my level--and thus not players that are unreasonably under ranked. What few players I do play with that have a much lower rank than mine are usually only for a match or two, simply because they've requested the opportunity to know what it's like to play against opponents of my skill level, and I've been willing to take the hit to my rank for a match or two to oblige.

I do realize I forfeit in 1v1s a lot, so I suspected that might have something to do with it. I get salty at 1v1s--really, really salty at them--yet I continue to insist on playing them, as despite how much they tilt me off the face of the planet, I still want to improve, and I feel 1v1s are a great way to do so. Likewise, I have some nights found myself against players whos playstyle I simply can not stand, and--regardless of if I felt I could win or not against them--would at times attempt to queue dodge them so that I wouldn't have to play through a match that I legitimately wouldn't enjoy. I brought up all of this because I wanted to be as open and transparent as I could be about the situation.

The only other possibility that I could think of was if it had to do with how quickly I managed to reach Grand Champ once I finally went for it. At the beginning of the season, I got my Champ rewards out of the way, but didn't bother with Grand Champ because I felt it would still be a struggle. The way I saw it, my time would be better spent improving as a player rather than simply chasing down a rank, because so long as I improved, the rank would come naturally. I took the occasional shot at Grand Champ in 2s here and there, but it wasn't until I felt I was playing well enough to actually legitimately "belong" at Grand Champ that I actually made a serious push; every time prior to that I simply backed off and went back to training. I don't know if that's what got my account flagged, but again, I wanted to provide as much information as possible, because I wanted to see the issue resolved.

With all that information sent off, I waited. Eventually, I received this response:

Thank you for getting back to us. After reviewing your account and Competitive match history, we have determined your account was involved in artificial account boosting, resulting in abuse of our matchmaking system. This means your account will not receive Competitive Season 8 Rewards. Your access to Competitive matches will not be affected at this time. This decision is final.

This bothered me for a lot of reasons.

For one, I can't help but feel like the information I provided was completely ignored. I tried to provide as much as I did in the way that I did to make it clear that while I was upset, I wanted to try to work with them, but instead, the response I received quite honestly left me wondering if there had been any point in providing that information in the first place.

Second, I couldn't help but feel borderline insulted; I specifically solo queue my matches because I want to feel like my rewards were properly earned, and anyone that knows me can tell you that if anything I'm almost a little bit too blunt about how I feel about smurfs carrying their friends. As I explained to Psyonix: "Not only does it cheapen the meaning of rewards for those of us who have earned them, but often it means that they will stomp all over random players in the process, creating completely unfair and entirely un-fun matches for them to suffer through."

And third, even if we ignore whether the punishment is deserved or not, I have absolutely no way of avoiding having the same thing happen next season. I legitimately don't know what I did that Psyonix feels was suspicious enough to warrant this decision, so I have no way of knowing what to change to avoid being accused of the same thing all over again at the end of Season 9.

And so I explained all this.

Their response:

After further review of your case and your ranked matches, I must confirm what my colleagues mentioned previously in that this decision was correct and therefore it is final. I'm afraid that we do not have anything else to add to this case.

And so here I am. I feel like I have not been given a proper explanation, nor do I feel like I have been given a chance to genuinely defend myself. I feel upset, I feel confused, I feel disappointed, I feel insulted, and I feel betrayed.

I want to state again that I love this game. Hell, I will often try to help defend Psyonix when players start giving them undeserved shit, because generally speaking, I have a lot of respect for what they do.

But right now, I really don't know how to feel, or have a clue what I should do.

And for those of you still reading, thank you for at least hearing me out.