BULKHEAD has publicly acknowledged that a wave of bans issued around the Early Access launch was incorrect. On 10 September 2026 developer G_Medlin posted an announcement on the official Steam discussions confirming that "some users are reporting incorrect bans", and the official WARDOGS account posted the same day: "Hang tight. Resolving this as soon as possible."
If you were banned at launch without cheating, the developer position is that this is being worked through from their side. There is no form to fill in and no appeal step described in the announcements.
What the official posts actually say
The Steam announcement is short and has been updated since posting. Its substance is an acknowledgement that incorrect bans occurred, a statement that the team is "continuing to work through and resolve incorrect bans", and a request that affected players wait.
The official X account carried the same message on the same day, phrased as a heads-up that the team is aware of reports of incorrect bans and is resolving them as soon as possible.
Neither post gives a number of accounts affected, a cause, or a completion estimate. What they do establish is that the bans are recognised as erroneous rather than disputed.
Why this happened alongside everything else at launch
Early Access opened with the login queue saturated, servers kicking players mid-match and a kernel-level anti-cheat that had only just replaced the one used throughout the beta. Elytra shipped into an environment under extreme load.
This wiki will not guess at the mechanism. BULKHEAD has not said whether the incorrect bans came from anti-cheat detection, from the account service under load, or from something else, and the difference matters too much to speculate about.
What can be said is that the timing coincides with the anti-cheat change and with the launch stability problems the team was already hotfixing.
What to do if you were banned
Wait before doing anything drastic. The developer has said the incorrect bans are being resolved centrally, which means the resolution arrives without action from you.
Do not reinstall, do not create a second account, and do not use any workaround to get back in. A second account after a ban is a separate policy problem, and the launch-parameter workarounds circulating for Linux carry their own stated ban risk.
Keep the evidence you already have. The ban message and its timestamp are what a support ticket would be built on if the central resolution does not reach your account.
No appeal process is described in the official announcements. Steam Support cannot reverse a developer-issued game ban, so the route is BULKHEAD rather than Valve.
What BULKHEAD has not published
There is no published cause. The announcements acknowledge the problem without attributing it to a specific system, and no post-mortem has followed.
There is no stated timeline for reversals, and no confirmation that every affected account has been restored. The wording is ongoing rather than complete.
There is also no published appeals process, no ban-length schedule and no documentation of what Elytra treats as a bannable detection.
Ban questions answered
Short answers to the most common ban questions.
- Has BULKHEAD admitted the bans were wrong? — Yes. An official Steam announcement on 10 September acknowledges incorrect bans and says they are being resolved.
- Do I need to appeal? — No appeal process is described. The developer says the incorrect bans are being worked through centrally.
- Can Steam Support unban me? — No. A developer-issued game ban is not something Valve reverses; the route is BULKHEAD.
- Should I make a new account? — No. That is a separate policy problem and does nothing to resolve the original ban.
- What caused the incorrect bans? — BULKHEAD has not said. The timing coincides with the Elytra anti-cheat change and the launch stability problems.
- How long will reversals take? — No timeline has been published. The official wording describes the work as ongoing.