Another crackdown on cheaters and hackers in Call of Duty: Warzone has been kicked off this week. Activision has announced that a major ban on those using third-party cheats has taken place. And with this banwave, more than 60,000 accounts have been banned from the game’s multiplayer section. The latest banwave targeted a bunch of different cheating apps, with a focus on hitting those confirmed cheaters.
The team behind the game took to the interwebs, announcing the bans on the Call of Duty blog, as they revealed that more than 300,000 accounts have been banned for various hacking and cheating offenses. The developer has struggled to get a handle on this since launch, but they look to be making headway. The effort to combat cheating in the multiplayer modes of both Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is ongoing, but looking solid.
And that’s not all they’re doing. The company is preparing an offensive against cheat makers as well. “We are also continuing our efforts to identify and address cheat providers at the source who distribute unauthorized third party software for modding or hacking,” they added. The company has pursued numerous third-party software providers since its launch for making cheats. These efforts were met with consternation by fans. Many streamers and players complain loudly and often over rampant cheating. It’s possible that’s what prompted this banwave.
Other updates for the banwave included plans and ongoing refinements to the in-game reporting features. The team also detailed security updates that will be more frequent. This will be aimed at detecting to methods of cheating on the client-side. The servers will also get regular patches for any vulnerabilities and exploits.
Activision isn’t done either, as they are planning more to come. A big push is coming for better internal anti-cheat software and additional detection technology. This will enable a faster turnaround on future bans. When combined with a better reporting system, the company can combine reports with client-side logs much faster. There is also an ongoing effort to improve server stability and communication. The team is working on backend improvements that enable the game and servers to better verify data coming back and forth. This would have the impact of both detecting cheaters and catching network issues as they happen.
To aid in all of this, main duties for the game are being handed over to Raven Software. Call of Duty: Warzone development was handed from Infinity Ward to Raven after the launch of the game, mostly to help deal with development across multiple Call of Duty titles.
Raven has stated it now has the ability to identify when a player is using unauthorized applications to “manipulate game data or memory,” which means the likes of wallhacks and aimbots will be much harder to get away with.
Call of Duty: Warzone is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and PC.
