Picture the scene: you’re enjoying the Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, joining your friends or other players for some co-op boss fights, or perhaps invading some unfortunate, unsuspecting individuals. Then out of nowhere you see the message: ‘Inappropriate activity detected.’ It can be a little scary, leaving you wondering whether you might be facing a ban or a block to your ability to play online. Fortunately, developer FromSoftware confirms that this may be erroneous, and offers a quick fix to help resolve the issue.
While this message is typically shown to players who fall foul of the Elden Ring cheat detection tools, or who are playing with Easy Anti-Cheat disabled, it can also occur if you’re using mods. Another common cause can be a discrepancy in your game files versus what’s expected, which can in some cases happen after an update installs. It appears to be somewhat prevalent in the new expansion for the open-world game, as FromSoftware has addressed the issue directly.
“An issue has been identified regarding the PC version of Elden Ring,” the developer writes via the game’s official X (Twitter) account. ‘The message ‘Inappropriate activity detected’ may appear without cheating.”
So don’t panic. Its appearance doesn’t mean you’ve been immediately put in the cheater box. It should be considered a warning, with a separate notification sent your way if you’ve been soft-banned from playing online.
“To fix this issue, please verify the integrity of the game’s files before restarting the game,” FromSoftware explains. You can do this from your Steam library by right-clicking on the game, selecting ‘properties,’ and navigating to the ‘installed files’ tab. There you’ll find a button to verify your installation.
If you’re still running into trouble, it’s also worth noting that certain items can cause this issue, in particular ones that you shouldn’t be able to access normally. If you’ve ever picked up an item that another player dropped, it’s worth double-checking that it doesn’t fall into this category. It can also be caused by some Elden Ring mods, so take that into consideration and you should be okay.
We’ve highlighted the best Elden Ring builds to help you smash through the DLC without any trouble, and you can look through our Elden Ring bosses list if you’re trying to find out anything about the big bads in the Land of Shadow.
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