Stake Bans Entire Site From Claiming Bonus Drops

Stake.com gave its users a special New Year’s gift – a ban on all code drops – but quickly reverted it.

The nightmare of every player came true on the night of January 2nd, European time. That’s when you could’ve found an email with a menacing subject line in your inbox: ‘[UserName], an update to your account.’

The message informs you that over the next 7 days, you’ll be locked out from claiming any bonus drops across Stake’s social channels – the main Telegram channel, Daily Drops, and High Rollers Telegram. And to add insult to injury, they assure you that everything else with your account will work just fine.

For anyone curious who didn’t get this email, here’s the full text:

Hi [UserName],
We’re writing to inform you that we’ve made an update to your account.

Your account will no longer be eligible for Stake bonus drops posted on Telegram or through any of Stake’s official Social Media accounts for the next 7 days.

You are still able to wager, deposit and withdraw as normal. You will also be able to claim bonuses such as Rakeback, Reloads, Promotions & Boosts. However, you won’t be eligible to claim bonus drops that you would regularly see on our official Social Media accounts such as Telegram and X (formerly known as Twitter).

Don’t worry though, after 7 days has passed, you will be able to claim bonus drops again.

Regards,

Stake

This happened right before Eddie’s weekly stream, where he hands out loads of codes. And if the drops ban hits you, there’s a chance they’ll enable a restriction on your weekly bonus too – right at the last minute – cutting the payout down to just a few percent of normal.

Who Was Affected

People freaked out in the chats, on the forum, and Reddit. Almost everyone got the email. Even chat moderators were banned, and they’re supposed to be immune to that kind of stuff. That’s the moment it became obvious something had gone terribly wrong.

The Apology

There were no drops happening at the time, so players couldn’t actually test if the ban was real. Unless they knew this one trick. Just type any random combo into the drop claim field, and it’ll tell you – either codes are unavailable to you, or the code is just wrong.

Initially, the system displayed the first error – confirming the ban was active. However, after refreshing the page some time later, it switched to the second one. That’s when support also started checking accounts and telling people there was no ban in fact.

An official apology email from Stake followed. Justice triumphed, but the stain remained.

Reasons and Aftermath

The reason might be all the bonuses given out in a short time. Within a week, they did the second December monthly, plus weekly and January pre-monthly.

Stake’s system watches your bonus-to-wager ratio, and if it gets skewed, the ban hammer drops. But that doesn’t explain the obvious bugs like mods getting banned. Maybe someone just partied too hard for New Year’s.

This also doesn’t change the fact that Stake keeps tightening its bonus policy and lowering ban limits. These days, nobody can be sure whether the next ‘Update to your account’ notification will be a glitch or an actual ban.