Sorry, but I have seen litterally thousands of people bitch about being wronged on bans or kicks, proclaiming innocence, in general a high percentage of those players are not innocent, not at all.

Additionally punkbuster doesnt just kick you for cheating, it can kick you for having an outdated client, modified files, modified system (even if the game itself is legit) and for being a pain in the ass and flaming other players too often.

You can filter games when connecting for games with punkbuster disabled of course, so do that, otherwise correct any of the above reasons to play on enabled servers.

I don't ever modify games I play online because I'm not an idiot.

This is one of several reasons I stopped playing any new PC games. PB issues. The alternative is even worse. Cheating is INSANE and rampant all throughout PC gaming, even when PB is used.  So many people claim they don't cheat, but when they are caught they have custom configs, mods, FOV enhancements, scripts, and what have you but claim "those are available to anyone and are simply enhancements".  I was a PC gamer for a long time, 10 or 15 years, but I can't stand it and don't support it starting 5 or so years ago.  If you weren't cheating I hope you can get it fixed, but it is highly unlikely you did absolutely nothing wrong.

It doesn't tell you why you're being kicked from games?

the fuck is punkbuster

A lot of times it just gives you a super generic statement.  99% of the time the people who are being global banned by the service know exactly why already, so it doesn't go into much detail.  It is also pretty hard to get them overturned as the service generally doesn't global ban you without proof.  It is extremely rare that PB bans are without some kind of merit.

It's basically a 3rd party hacking/cheating detection application, that many PC games use to police servers.  It's constantly updated, and when you're added to the master ban list, your IP is effectively fucked.

If you're getting PB issues and you haven't cheated, there's something you need to update, basically.  Personally, I love it.  I've never had an issue with PB that wasn't my fault.  For example, I used to frequent a Sniper's only server in CoD 2 that used a different UI and had wider angle scopes than what the game normally allows.  Whenever I went to the One X servers, I'd have to make a few alterations and turn PB off.  Whenever I wanted to go back, I'd have to revert the alterations back to normal, and turn PB back on.

It's a really helpful app, imo.  There're so many cheaters out there on PC (and console for that matter), since most MP games don't have client side admin tools (Another reason why the loss of admin tools, map making tools and stand alone server options is a big deal, btw), you have to wait for some asshole at EA/Ubisoft/Activision etc... to get off their asses and do it for you.  PB takes care of the 'known' hacks/transgressors, and also allows people to send 'issues' to PB, so they can update the service.

OP, need more info on the situation, have you been added to the Master Ban list, or are you just getting booted from games?  PB will tell you, so just read why it says you're getting booted and maybe we can work from there.

Something like what he described is the perfect example of how someone could get banned that isn't actually cheating, because they forgot to turn off server specific functionality when rejoining back to a vanilla server.  For every 1 occurence of this there are 750-1000 (just a guess) legitimate hacking bans that PB hands out.  Also, something like what he described would never get you a Global permaban stopping you from playing an entire game.

Right yeah sorry, you don't get added to the Master Ban list unless you really were doing something bad.  The One-X alterations to scopes and such would merely get you bumped off the vanilla servers until you reverted the altered files back to their original state.

And PB is absolutely vital, to PC gaming.  As you say for every instance of a person being bumped for non-cheating reasons, there are many many more getting bumped for actually cheating.  Really wish they'd give back admin tools though, Punkbuster catches most hacks, but it's updated by reports, which means if you have a cheater on the server you're playing on that isn't part of PB yet, you have to suffer through it.  Used to love nuking those cocksuckers on my CoD 2 servers.

I remember PB from rainbow six 3: raven shield days. shocked it still exists.