How to block FDL Stats Bots
Operated by FTW Entertainment LLC. FDL Stats bot is used to generate analytical data around rocket league player information. The bot will attempt to crawl various platforms that provide player data that is publicly available to build stats about player participation.
How it identifies itself
FDL Stats Bot
robots.txt
What the agent asks to be told. It obeys this or it does not — nothing enforces it.
User-agent: FDL Disallow: /
nginx
In the server block, then reload.
# In the server block. 403 rather than 444: a closed connection tells the
# operator nothing, and an agent that gets a status code can log it.
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(FDL Stats Bot)") {
return 403;
}
Apache
In .htaccess or the vhost.
BrowserMatchNoCase "FDL Stats Bot" bad_bot
<RequireAll>
Require all granted
Require not env bad_bot
</RequireAll>
Cloudflare
Security → WAF → Custom rules.
# Security → WAF → Custom rules, action: Block (http.user_agent contains "FDL Stats Bot")
WordPress
A child theme's functions.php, or a small plugin.
// functions.php of a child theme, or a small plugin. Runs before WordPress
// builds the page, so a blocked agent costs one PHP process and no queries.
add_action('init', function () {
$agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
foreach (['FDL Stats Bot'] as $needle) {
if (stripos($agent, $needle) !== false) {
status_header(403);
exit('Blocked: FDL Stats Bots');
}
}
});
robots.txt is a request. The rules below it are the wall.
FDL Stats Bots publishes a token, so the directive above will work for as long as it keeps honouring it — and nothing except its own good manners makes it. The server rules match on a header the requester sets, which stops the agent that says who it is and not the one that copies somebody else's name. Botscope verifies identity against DNS and published address ranges, records which check decided each request, and shows you the ones that lied.