Call of Duty Hit With Huge Ban Wave

Activision has announced that over 58,000 accounts that used cheats in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 or Warzone have been banned. The publisher says that more ban waves targeting Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone violators are expected in the near future.

With the Call of Duty community continuing to highlight the franchise's cheating problem, Activision has announced various improvements to its Ricochet Anti-Cheat system over the last couple of months. Recently, Activision confirmed that over 27,000 accounts had been banned over the span of a weekend thanks to upgraded detection systems. Although cheating is certainly still an issue inCall of Duty, it seems that greener pastures might be on the horizon.

In a statement from an Activision representative given to Call of Duty news Twitter account CharlieIntel, it was revealed that nearly 60,000 accounts were banned in one day, presumably due to another improvement in Ricochet's detection methods. It seems that the bans were applied to more than just traditional cheaters, as those who used third-party tools to unlock paid skins for free were also targeted, including a professional CDL player. It's unclear what proportion of the 58,000 Call of Duty accounts were using gameplay-affecting cheats like wallhacks or aimbots, but hopefully it was quite high.

Call of Duty's more exclusive cheating software seems to be pretty sophisticated and can easily counter Ricochet, as of February of this year at least. Like in other games, it's often difficult for anti-cheat systems to stay ahead of new cheating software due to an anti-cheat's reactive nature. However, fans hope that Activision's massive pool of resources can eventually fix the issue. Activision has repeatedly stated that it's focusing on Call of Duty's cheating problem and will continue to do so, although many players are still understandably frustrated.

Following the recent ban wave, some affected users claimed on social media they were incorrectly suspended.