"Just make a new account" is a common reaction to a ban. It treats a ban as a minor inconvenience. Adding up what a ban actually costs shows it is anything but.
The account itself
The smallest part of the loss is the account as a login. But even that is not nothing — it is the identity other players knew you by, the friends list, the reputation, the standing. A new account starts at zero on all of it.
The library and the money
This is where the cost grows. Games, downloadable content and in-game purchases are usually tied to the account, under a licence. If a ban locks the account, it can lock everything bought through it. Years of purchases — a whole library — can be on the wrong side of a ban. The money spent did not buy transferable property; it bought access for that account.
The progress and the time
Then there is everything that cannot be repurchased at all: levels, ranks, achievements, unlocks, the hundreds of hours behind them. A new account cannot buy back time. For a long-played game, this is often the largest loss, and the one no amount of money fixes.
The hardware-ban multiplier
If the ban reached the hardware, the cost multiplies again. A hardware ban does not just close one account — it can prevent a new account on the same machine from working at all. Now the price is not "a new account" but the whole problem of the machine itself carrying the ban. This is exactly why hardware bans are treated as the serious tier.
The takeaway
A ban costs far more than a login. It can take the game library, the money spent, and the irreplaceable progress and time with it — and a hardware ban extends the problem to the machine. "Just make a new one" understates all of it. The real lesson is preventive: the cheapest ban is the one never earned, because nothing about replacing what a ban takes is actually cheap.