Call of Duty Warzone devs Raven Software confirmed yesterday afternoon that more than 50,000 players were banned in the last week across two waves of bans hitting the popular online shooter.
In a tweet posted on July 16, Raven Software explained that most of the 50k players who got banned were repeat offenders. Raven said these ban waves were mainly focused on repeat offenders. The studio ominously said it also targeted “much more” than repeat offenders, whatever that means.
This is far from the first time Raven has banned thousands of players in a short amount of time. Back in February, Raven banned over 60,000 accounts in Warzone in one day. In May, Raven and Call of Duty publisher Activision reported that over 350k players had been banned in Warzone for racism and toxicity in just the past year. All of these add up to a lot. According to Raven, the studio has banned over 500k players in total. And that was back in May 2021! The number of banned players has surely grown since then.
Warzone has long had a problem with cheaters, basically since day one, when it launched in early 2020. Since then, Activision and Raven Software have continued to fight cheaters and hackers who keep causing problems for players across all platforms.
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Things have got really bad recently, with popular Twitch streamers getting hacked while playing the game. And it’s not just on PC where players are dealing with cheaters. Thanks to crossplay cheaters can interact with console gamers during matches. Things aren’t going to get better anytime soon either, as hackers and cheaters create better, harder-to-detect software and hardware that allows for near-undetectable aimbots to be used on all platforms.
Cheating has become so prevalent that some Twitch streamers are even facing accusations of cheating. An entire community of Youtubers and players have formed around catching and exposing Twitch streamers who are believed to be cheating.
All of this is to say that while it’s nice to see Raven fighting the good fight and banning 50,000 more hackers, it’s likely just the tip of a large, ever-growing iceberg.
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