27,000 'Call of Duty' accounts banned with more to come

Call of Duty publisher Activision says over 27,000 Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone accounts were banned this weekend. Team Ricochet, those using the Ricochet anti-cheat system to catch bad actors, says it anticipates “more ban waves to come.”

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In a statement given to CharlieIntel, Team Ricochet said it “identified and banned over 27,000 accounts over the weekend through a series of upgraded detection systems. The team is progressing on a new set of security updates and anticipates more ban waves to come.”

This ban wave comes just after season three of MW3 and Warzone kicks off. Some streamers, such as BAMS, claimed they were falsely permanently banned, but Activision is not confirming specific bans, CharlieIntel says.

Some people in the replies to CharlieIntel‘s tweet are also claiming that this ban wave has wrongly affected many innocent people.

Activision says over 27,000 accounts were banned in Call of Duty, across Warzone and MW3, over the weekend.

Statement from Team RICOCHET:

“#TeamRICOCHET identified and banned over 27,000 accounts over the weekend through a series of upgraded detection systems. The team is… pic.twitter.com/PPMXbsuEH7

— CharlieIntel (@charlieINTEL) April 8, 2024

Recently, the Longbow sniper rifle was nerfed in MW3 to combat it being used at close ranges as opposed to long ranges, as a sniper is intended for.

Cheating can be a problem in any competitive online game, and sometimes players get frustrated with bans taking too long, or only coming in large waves like this, rather than being issued constantly.

Often, anti-cheat teams will spend time figuring out what loophole or weakness in a game’s security is being exploited and will then ban everyone using the exploit at the same time. This is done to prevent cheaters simply figuring out a new method as soon as the first few get banned, and hopefully keeps them all out of a game’s ecosystem for a while.

In other news, GAME staff have reportedly been told to expect redundancies as many non-management staff get moved to zero hour contracts.