Activision has announced major anti-cheating measures, moving in to ban 60,000 cheaters. Problems have plagued Warzone for months, a game still struggling under the weight of its success, and its recent integration with Black Ops Cold War. After copping immense criticism from fans and critics alike, the developers have announced major changes to how Warzone will deal with cheating, and banned a huge number of players in a major show of strength from the previously silent publisher.
In almost every Warzone lobby you could find a cheater. It was blatant, and often not even hidden by streamers who would self-aggrandize with arrogant displays of unfair in-game behavior. The problem became so big that cheaters even made it into tournaments with high prize money, causing more and more big streamers to turn their backs on Warzone.
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Nickmercs is now not the only popular streamer to give up on Warzone, with streamer and YouTuber Vikkstar also recently posting a video explaining that Warzone is in the worst state since its release, and Activision hasn't done anything about the cheating problem (until this point), which is why he won't be playing Warzone again for the foreseeable future.
What Has Been Done So Far?
To cut the long story short: Not much, actually! Warzone still doesn't have an anti-cheating system. The only way to do something against cheaters was to report them, and hope that Activision would ban them. However, since cheats are very cheap to have, are constantly updated, and Warzone is Free2Play, most cheaters simply have multiple accounts that they switch between once they are banned. On top of that, most bans were only so-called shadow bans that expired after seven days – permanent bans were rather the exception. You can think of Warzone's anti-cheat program something like this:
How Is Activision Responding Now?
In a recent Twitter post, they announced that they had banned over 60,000 accounts again, and would tighten the reins a bit in the future.
We have zero tolerance for cheaters across Call of Duty and Warzone.60,000+ accounts have been banned today. Follow @RavenSoftware for more #Warzone updates.Details here: https://t.co/d6De7tY3AB pic.twitter.com/fOGTJ43b8U
— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) February 2, 2021
“We have zero tolerance for cheaters in Call of Duty and Call of Duty: Warzone ™. Our focus is on fighting both cheaters and cheat providers. Today, we banned 60,000 accounts for confirmed instances of cheat software use in Warzone, bringing our total permabans worldwide to more than 300,000 since launch."
They also listed what measures have been taken so far:
- Weekly security updates
- Improving reporting mechanics
- Implemented two-factor authentication, which confirmed over 180,000 suspicious accounts
- Various cheat providers eliminated
- Increased teams and resources in Software Development, Engineering, Data Science, Legal and Monitoring dedicated solely to the fight against cheaters.
Sounds pretty good at first, but we know how well these measures have worked in the past... That's right, pretty much not at all! So, what should happen in the future?
Activision Has Given an Answer to That as Well!
Here's what's coming in the future:
- Improvements to the internal anti-cheat software
- Additional detection technologies
- More resources to monitor and enforce the measures
- More frequent updates on progress; better communication
- Zero tolerance for cheat providers
- Consistent and timely bans
It is also further emphasized that all of these measures apply to the entire franchise – not just Warzone, but Black Ops Cold War as well! For Warzone in particular, Raven Software will be responsible for updates and communication in the future.
Let's hope that the new measures will take effect and cheaters will be left behind in the future. Honestly, how can a successful franchise like Call of Duty still not have a working anti-cheat system in 2021? CS:GO has VAC, Valorant has Vanguard, Fortnite has EAC, and so on...
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