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Gears 5 players who consistently leave matches are being faced with some hefty bans for their habitual quitting. Like any punishment, these bans can vary in length with some players getting off a bit easier than others. Those who have the most egregious leaver tendencies have been receiving bans that prevent them from playing the game for nearly two years. These bans came after more than one warning from The Coalition when the developer advised players to stop leaving games so much.

The Coalition tweeted about the impending bans earlier in the week by telling players that it would be distributing bans ranging form a month to a year depending on how severe players’ quitting behavior was. It said that impacted users would be unsuspended in an apparent attempt to give them one more shot, but they’d be one quit away from being suspended.

Quitters have been receiving month to year long suspensions for prior behavior. This is how long you can be suspended for being a rampant quitter. Take heed. Over the next few hours, impacted users will be un-suspended, but 1 quit away from suspension. You have been warned. — The Coalition Studio (@CoalitionGears) October 10, 2019

As players soon found out, the warning was no joke. A day prior to The Coalition’s tweet, Dana Sissons, Microsoft’s director of communications for Gears of War, told players the quitter penalties were active. People sounded off on Twitter to say that they had received lengthy bans personally or that others had with the most severe bans being a 640-day suspension from Gears 5.

A ban that big would likely raise suspicions that there was something amiss and that the ban wouldn’t stick, but it seems like that’s not the case here. Sissons responded to some of the reports of the bans on Twitter to give specific examples about players’ accounts and say why that individual had been banned. In the two examples found below, the offending players quit 18 out of 21 matches they played.

We looked into this person's account and, in the last day alone, he has played 21 escalation matches and quit 18 of them. — Dana Sissons (@danasissons) October 9, 2019

We investigated this person's account and he is a chronic quitter - in fact, he quit 18 of 21 matches today alone. His quitting ruins the game for the other 9 people he was playing with. — Dana Sissons (@danasissons) October 9, 2019

Dealing with quitters is something every multiplayer game has to do and is in no way exclusive to Gears 5, but The Coalition seems pretty serious about its quitters. The penalties become more severe the more players quit, so it’s probably not a smart idea to test your leaver luck in this game unless you want to be banned until the next Gears of War game comes out.