ArenaNet has announced it has banned 1,516 Guild Wars 2 players for suspected cheating. The development studio used anti-cheat spyware to check which processes were running on the player's machine.

According to a recent announcement, the development studio was able to see which processes were running at the same time as Guild Wars 2 and banned those who ran programs the developer thinks could have given an unfair advantage.

The processes detected include CheatEngine, Nabster, GW2MHRexe, UNF and MMOMINION, the first of which is surprising because the memory analysis tool has many legitimate uses for those working in the computer security sector.

The spyware was found when a computer security analyst started to investigate why he was banned even though, he claims, he didn't cheat. He posted his findings on Reddit after which the development studio confirmed the existence of the spyware. Its developers also removed tweets about the ban wave on Twitter.

While the intent from the development studio may have been good, the ban wave even affected those who simply had both processes running at the same time, potentially resulting in various false positives. Development studio ArenaNet considers this to be unlikely because it only banned those who had been running the programs for a "significant number of hours".

While the development studio initially said it wouldn't allow these players to appeal their ban, the studio now states those affected are able to contact their customer support to ask questions.