FACEIT Season 9 launches on August 5 and brings a reworked Ban Policy. Bans for cheating, smurfing, and stream sniping get significantly longer, while FACEIT now allows more context around trash talk and banter. Here are the key changes in a compact overview.
What changes with Season 9
The core of the update: heavier enforcement on serious offences, and a more contextual approach for occasional ones. Instead of judging every statement against a fixed word list, FACEIT now weighs behaviour across three factors - the act itself, the context of the match, and the player's history. A one-off outburst after a lost round is no longer treated the same as the same behaviour every single round.
| Offence | Old | New (Season 9) |
|---|---|---|
| Cheating | 2 years | 5 years, +2 years per ban-evasion attempt escalating to permanent |
| Stream sniping | 30 days | 6 months, then scaling from 1 year up to permanent |
| Smurfing (main account; the smurf is permanently banned) | 30 days | 3 months, then scaling from 1 year up to permanent |
| Trash talk, banter, harmless backing of countries or teams, some profanity | 7 days / 1 month / 1 year / permanent | Generally permitted, as long as it doesn't turn into abuse. Where it does: bans from a minimum of 3 days |
| High-severity toxicity or griefing (slurs, doxing, threats of violence, deliberately ruining matches) | Zero tolerance: 7 days / 1 month / 1 year / permanent | Zero tolerance stays. First penalty from 7 days upward depending on severity, repeat offenders scale faster up to permanent |
More room for banter, hard penalties for real toxicity
Toxicity has long been one of the community's most-raised issues, so the bar was set high and enforced hard. With Season 9, FACEIT differentiates more: trash talk, banter, harmlessly backing your country or team, and some profanity are now generally permitted, as long as they don't turn into targeted abuse. The heaviest enforcement stays reserved for players who genuinely ruin matches.
The three factors behind the new approach:
- ✓The act: what was done, and how severe is it on its own?
- ✓The context: what happened in the match, was there provocation, was it once or every round?
- ✓The history: what does the track record look like, is it isolated or a pattern?
What it means for streamers
For creators, the stream-sniping rule is the big one: the penalty jumps from 30 days to 6 months and scales up to a permanent ban on repeat offences. If you play live, that's far more protection against snipers. At the same time, the new contextual approach to trash talk and profanity gives more room for authentic in-match reactions, so a single outburst after a lost clutch won't instantly get you banned - as long as it stays respectful and doesn't tip into abuse.
Tip for streamers:
A perfect fit for the tougher stream-sniping rule: FACEITSync's streamsniper detection (Premium) spots in real time when players from your FACEIT lobby are watching your Twitch stream at the same time, and posts a heads-up in your chat. With configurable cooldowns, minimum watchtime, and queue-sniper detection, you catch suspicious viewers instantly, before the match even starts. More on streamsniper detection
Bottom line
Season 9 clearly shifts the focus onto the serious offences: cheaters, smurfers, and stream snipers get hit harder, while the normal heat of competition gets more tolerance. The full rules live in the updated Code of Conduct and Ban Policy on the FACEIT support portal. Want to see which accounts already got caught? Current cheater, smurf, and ban data is in our FACEIT Ban Tracker.
