I'm 39. I've been playing Counter-Strike since 1.3 and I have exactly one account, the one I made two decades ago. 7,302 hours logged on it. Faceit level 10 for years, peak 26k in Premier. No smurfs, no shared logins, no third-party software, no VAC ban, no trade or community ban, nothing on the record before this.
Over the past weeks I've taken three cooldowns in a row, escalating each time: 24 hours, then 7 days, now 31. Each time it lands mid-session and that's the end of it.
The reason given on my Steam support page is, in full: "Unexpected error". That is the entire explanation I've been given for a month off the game a string that says nothing about what was detected.
The group I queue with got hit as well. Same friends I've played with for years, all long-standing accounts in the same situation. I know Valve treats those as affiliate cooldowns and doesn't review them, so none of them are writing in but the practical result is that five accounts with a combined century of playtime are locked out of Premier over something none of us can see.
I've emailed the address a Valve dev pointed to, with the exact subject line requested and nothing in the body beyond my profile URL, exactly as instructed. Whatever the outcome, that part is done properly.
My profile is public and my match history speaks for itself. But three escalating bans, on an account with 7,302 hours and not one sanction in twenty years, justified by the words "unexpected error", is a system failing in a way that's worth being visible.