After a strange spike in Call of Duty cheaters, Activision is going all-in on account bans, first targeting Warzone cheaters and boosters and now going after Modern Warfare 3, both ranked and non-ranked, to rake up an impressive 65,000 account bans in the last week.
“Team Ricochet has accelerated cheat vendor enforcements resulting in over 65,000 account bans across Ranked Play and non-Ranked modes in Warzone and MW3 this week,” the Call of Duty update Twitter account says. “The team will continue to monitor and issue enforcements to anyone cheating or boosting in all game modes.”
Activision has been pretty vocal about combatting cheaters in the last couple of weeks. Starting off with a ban wave targeting Warzone, the studio promised that Ricochet (its anti-cheat software) would be making some larger moves in weeks to come, which it now has.
Boosting is a problem in most competitive games, but Call of Duty players have seen a sizable spike in these activities recently. Some players even go as far to create entire lobbies dedicated to boosting their SR, as they just play against bots allowing them to kill thousands per match. It’s actually pretty efficient, so much so that an account actually hit second place in the Warzone leaderboards by doing it..
But even with over 65,000 accounts banned, most players don’t seem too confident that this will actually change anything. “And 65,000 cheaters created new accounts immediately after being banned,” one player says. “Solved absolutely nothing!”
Call of Duty: Warzone is a free-to-play game, so it costs nothing to make a new account. The only barrier to entry is needing a phone number to set one up. This requirement was added pretty recently to Battle.et in an effort to reduce smurf accounts and make it harder for cheaters with banned accounts to return, but all you need to do is set up a burner phone. That’s usually enough hassle to put off most people, but some will go the extra mile.
Others are just angry at Ricochet (as usual). “Respectfully, this type of mass banning in waves you’re currently doing is the same as what you did in Warzone 1 (without Ricochet),” another player says. “There seems to be little to no automation from Ricochet, and it needs upgrading immediately.”
One of the main issues most players have with Ricochet is how it hasn’t helped ease the number of players getting wrongly accused of cheating and shadowbanned for up to two weeks. If you get more than a couple of reports from other players it’s likely that your account will be unable to queue for games for days. One player was so infuriated with getting banned twice that they even showed up at Activision’s studio to complain (please don’t do this).