Activision banned 60,000 accounts last night for cheating on Call of Duty Warzone amid a continuing furor over hackers.
In a blog post, Activision said it had issued more than 300,000 Permabans worldwide for accounts since the launch of Warzone in March 2020.
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The news follows growing pressure from the Call of Duty community, and comes after two high-profile Call of Duty streamers announced that they had ended the game for cheating.
Warzone’s anti-cheat is under intense scrutiny by players, mainly on PC, with the problem exacerbated by the silence of the radio from its editor and developer. Some console players disable cross-play in an attempt to avoid PC hackers.
One of the problems has to do with the free download nature of Warzone. The perception, at least, is that cheaters do not feel threatened by the prospect of being banned, as they can simply create a new account to cheat again. Even with a two-factor authentication system, which Activision said has invalidated more than 180,000 suspicious accounts since launch, there are simple solutions available for certain cheaters.
Looking ahead, Activision said it is “increasing our efforts and resources” in a number of key areas, including its internal anti-cheat software. The company is working on additional detection technology, adding new features dedicated to monitoring and enforcement, and has promised regular communication updates on the progress, with yet another two-way dialogue between Warzone developer Raven Software and players.
“Security and enforcement teams have additional measures coming in – preventive and supervisory – throughout this year to eradicate cheaters and fraudsters,” said Activision.
“We know that cheaters are constantly looking for vulnerabilities and we continue to dedicate resources 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to identify and combat fraud, including aimbots, wallhacks, trainers, stat hacks, texture hacks, leaderboard hacks, injectors, hexadecimal editors and any third party software that is used to manipulate game data or memory.
“There is no place to cheat. We are committed to this cause. We are listening and we will not stop in our efforts.”
Activision faces an uphill battle against war zone cheaters – and it’s a war that spans many games. His anti-cheat effort is underway with Warzone, Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare and will undoubtedly continue with the launch of subsequent games in the Call of Duty series.