Call of Duty: Warzone bans 60,000 cheaters in one day, improves anti-cheat software

Call of Duty: Warzone publisher Activision on Tuesday announced that it has banned more than 60,000 accounts in a single day, and that it was making several improvements to the game’s anti-cheating programs.

In a blog post detailing the update, Activision said it had “zero tolerance for cheaters across Call of Duty and Call of Duty: Warzone” adding that over 3,00,000 gamers had been banned since the game was launched in March 2020. Cheaters usually employ techniques to make the game easier for them to win, but ruin the game experience for other players who do not have the same advantages.

Instead of simply targeting cheaters on the game, Activision is also focusing its efforts to zero in on those providing cheats and hacks, including those distributing mods of the game. Just like Valve, which ships its own Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) that bans players who try to manipulate its online games, Activision’s games also ship with their own anti-cheating software.

Also read: PUBG Mobile has banned 2 million players in one week for cheating

The company says that cheaters are known to use various techniques to quickly win games such as aimbots, wallhacks, trainers, stat hacks, texture hacks, leaderboard hacks, injectors, and hex editors. Other cheaters use more sophisticated software to manipulate the game data while it is running and loaded in the computer’s memory.

That software has now received noticeable enhancements, with security and enforcement teams gaining additional measures for prevention and enforcement - but these will roll out later this year. Activision said it will continue to share regular updates going forward - monthly updates at a minimum, and weekly updates where possible. “There’s no place for cheating. We’re committed to this cause. We are listening and will not stop in our efforts,” the company stated.