"I wasn't even cheating, how did I get banned?" It is the most common message support gets, and the answer is usually that the ban was never on the account in the first place. It was on the machine. Once a game has your hardware on a list, every new account you make from that PC is flagged before you finish loading in, which is why buying a fresh account changes nothing and people conclude the ban is unfair.
What a hardware ban actually reads
Every component in your PC carries a unique serial number. When a game issues a hardware ban it logs the whole set: motherboard, disks, RAM, network adapters, GPU, and in some cases things you would never think of, like your monitor and your USB devices. That collection becomes a fingerprint, and the fingerprint is what gets blacklisted.
So the account you lost is not really the problem. The problem is that your machine is now recognisable, and it will stay recognisable to that game until the serials it reads are different.
Which anti-cheat each game runs
This matters because bans, and the fix for them, are handled per anti-cheat rather than per game. If you are banned in one game, you are dealing with that anti-cheat's list, not a universal one.
| Anti-cheat | Games |
|---|---|
| Easy Anti-Cheat | Fortnite, Rust, Arc Raiders and many others |
| BattlEye | Rainbow Six Siege, DayZ and others |
| Ricochet | Call of Duty only, across BO6, BO7 and Warzone |
| Vanguard | Valorant |
| EA anti-cheat | Battlefield 6, including Redsec |
| FiveGuard | FiveM |
| Anti-Cheat Expert | NetEase titles |
A spoofer worth buying carries a profile per anti-cheat rather than one generic mode, because they do not all read the same components. Some are satisfied by disk and motherboard serials; others go as far as your monitor. Picking the wrong profile is a common reason a spoof appears to work and the ban persists.
How the fix works
A spoofer sits between the game and Windows. When the anti-cheat asks for the serial number of your drive, the spoofer answers with a different one. The fingerprint the game builds no longer matches the blacklisted set, so you look like a machine it has never seen. Run the spoofer, then launch the game, then make a new account, and you are back in.
Two things people get wrong here. The spoofer does not unban the account you lost; that account stays gone. And the order matters: spoof first, launch second. Starting the game before the spoofer means the real serials are the ones it reads.
Cleaners are the other half
Changing serials handles what the anti-cheat reads from your hardware. It does not handle traces the game itself left on your system from the banned session. That is what per-game cleaners are for, and skipping them is a reason a technically successful spoof still ends with a fast re-ban.
Do you actually need a spoofer?
Not always. If your ban was account-only, a new account is enough and a spoofer is money you did not need to spend. The test is simple: make a fresh account and try to play. If it is banned or blocked before you get into a match, the ban reached your hardware. If it works normally, it did not.
Worth knowing too: several of our game cheats include a spoofer that runs automatically, so check the product page before buying a standalone one.
Which one to run
Trace 2.0 covers the anti-cheats above with one-click spoofing on Windows 10 and 11, Intel and AMD, and it is temporary, meaning your serials return to their originals when you restart. Verse is the permanent option if you would rather set it once. Both are on the HWID spoofers page, with live status on the status board.
If you want the mechanics in more depth, we covered them in how HWID spoofers actually work, and the click-by-click version is in how to fix a HWID ban.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know if I am hardware banned?
Make a new account. If it is blocked immediately, the ban is on your machine. If it plays normally, the ban was account-only and you do not need a spoofer.
Does one spoofer cover every game?
A good one does, because it carries a profile per anti-cheat. What it cannot do is unban the accounts you already lost.
Can a game ban my monitor?
Some anti-cheats read monitor and USB serials, yes. It is a reason to use a spoofer that covers more than the obvious motherboard and disk serials.
Prefer to watch: the short version is on our YouTube channel.
