Call Of Duty Developer Warns Of Spike In Cheating Reports, Bans

Cheating in Call of Duty has always been a risky business, but it's gotten especially fraught in late February. A recent update from Activision's official CoD X account said that the game's anti-cheat team have been monitoring a spike in cheating within the community, which resulted in over 6,000 accounts being banned in a four-day span.

According to the post, the developers are currently testing additional security updates, but the team already pushed one that disabled game code that cheaters were using to gain illegal advantages, like super speed. The update also says that some cheat developers claimed that Ricochet--Call of Duty's anti-cheat system--was offline over the weekend, but Activision clarified that only a "single telemetry system" had been temporarily taken offline. The over 6,000 suspended accounts occurred from February 16 to February 20.

Call of Duty's developers have deployed a number of creative ways of dealing with cheaters in the past. Earlier in 2024, the official CoD X account said that Ricochet will simply close the game client if it detects aim assist cheats like aimbots. Prior to that, Activision indicated that the team behind CoD is experimenting with machine learning tools to better detect cheaters. The developer also introduced a new anti-cheat measure to Warzone called "splat," where cheaters lose their parachutes and automatically crash to the ground during the battle royale mode's opening stages.

In other Call of Duty news, Activision recently reduced the price of what would've been the most expensive bundle in the game's history, saying that it was an error.