Developer Crema Games is taking an aggressive stance on cheaters in its Pokémon-like MMO, Temtem: no second chances. The developer announced a massive ban wave — “almost 900 players” — on Monday, originally stating it wouldn’t consider appealing the bans.

“We’ve made 100% sure that every banned user is either a cheater or has abused exploits intentionally,” Crema wrote on Twitter. It continued in a second tweet: “And we’re not done with this, we will keep detecting and banning. There’s no place in the Archipelago for cheaters.”

Hours later, the developer backed down on part of that statement. It will indeed review ban appeals — despite believing the bans issued are legitimate. Crema also reassured players that they won’t get banned for “casually finding a bug or an exploit.” Only players that do this intentionally and are “repeatedly abusing” exploits will be banned.

We just completed our first batch of banned users. Almost 900 players have been permanently banned from Temtem.



Bans are final, we won't answer or review any ban appeal. We've made 100% sure that every banned user is either a cheater or has abused exploits intentionally. — Temtem (@PlayTemtem) February 3, 2020

Temtem players were initially upset about the announcement — specifically, the language that it won’t review any ban appeals. With a ban wave as large as 900 players, it’s likely hard to assure that all of these are legitimate bans. That’s why people were relieved when, hours later, Crema repealed that initiative. Crema is asking players that want to appeal their bans to email its support team with “Ban appeal” in the subject.

We’ve reached out to Crema for more information.

Temtem went live on Steam Early Access for PC players in January. A console release is expected in the future.

Update: A Crema representative told Polygon that the developer has “extreme confidence” in its ban process, but has since created “an appeals process double-check for those that believe they were wrongfully banned.”

“Initially, we were hesitant about instituting a ban appeal process as oftentimes hackers use it as a way to get more information to circumvent our anti-cheat,” the representative added. “We only ban players that have been caught using cheats to exploit the game. Players will not get banned for running into bugs. It’s very easy for us to tell the difference.”