Live spectating a match a friend is in not working, then getting permanently rate limited

[Tianes]

While trying to spectate a friend's live game (MatchID 38569442) the connection wouldn't fully form & I'd be left staring at this dialog box.




After a few attempts, and a sanity check of spectating a different random match successfully, attempting to spectate this or any other match would send me this message, which would not go away after a minute.


Pasting a few of the relevant console prints related to this error:

[GCClient] Recv msg 523 (k_EMsgGCCompressedMsgToClient_Legacy), 28703 bytes
[GCClient] Send msg 9024 (k_EMsgClientToGCGetProfileCard), 27 bytes
[GCClient] Send msg 9024 (k_EMsgClientToGCGetProfileCard), 27 bytes
[GCClient] Send msg 9024 (k_EMsgClientToGCGetProfileCard), 27 bytes
[GCClient] Send msg 9109 (k_EMsgClientToGCSpectateLobby), 37 bytes
[GCClient] Recv msg 9025 (k_EMsgClientToGCGetProfileCardResponse), 37 bytes
[GCClient] Recv msg 9025 (k_EMsgClientToGCGetProfileCardResponse), 37 bytes
[GCClient] Recv msg 9025 (k_EMsgClientToGCGetProfileCardResponse), 37 bytes
[GCClient] Recv msg 9110 (k_EMsgClientToGCSpectateLobbyResponse), 21 bytes
Failed to spectate user: k_eRateLimited

Once the match ended I was able to download and spectate the game, but the rate limit persists.

Update: A little over an hour after writing this post I am still rate limited, and completely unable to spectate any live matches anymore

 

[An Unoriginal Name]

I'm in the same position now, going on about 3 hours of being rate limited. Same console output. The only thing I noticed is that I was unable to connect to a match to spectate it (same "connecting to match" hang, which from memory usually produces a 404 connection error in the console) and then was no longer allowed to connect to any match to spectate.

I checked to see if it was connection-based, but using multiple nodes with my VPN did not resolve the issue. I can't test now to be sure, but I'm assuming there is some VPN detection occurring and tripping the rate limit unless this is happening for non-VPN connections as well.