Activision reportedly banned around 20,000 Call of Duty: Warzone players on Monday after it detected a popular cheat.
According toMotherboard,Activisiontook action against users of a specific cheat, called EngineOwning, including a prominent Twitch streamer who was banned mid-game.
Nick Wagner, a Twitch player who goes by the name Wagnificent, was banned in the middle of aWarzonematch on Monday. Following his first kill, Wagner’s computer froze and, after restarting, he’d been permanently banned from Warzone.
UPDATE 01/10/20:Infinity Wardsays over200,000 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone accounts have been bannedfor cheating since the games released in October 2019 and March 2020 respectively.
ORIGINAL STORY CONTINUES:Citing an anonymous former Activision employee, Motherboard reports that these waves of bans are now relatively frequent in Call of Duty.
“It’s rare that any one particular cheat will last long term without getting detected at some point,” the former employee reportedly said. “It’s always a game of cat and mouse, people that actively use cheats should understand it’s highly likely you’ll be banned at some point and you’ll just have yourself to blame.”
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In April Infinity Wardpledged to operate a “zero tolerance” policyon players who use aimbots, wallhacks and similar cheats with the deployment of dedicated security updates.
The issue of aim bots and similar cheats is made even more significant consideringPCplayers can play against those on consoles – and onlyPS4users can disable cross-platform matchmaking.
In an attempt to curb cheating on PC, new free-to-play players are required to authenticate their accounts using SMS.
Additionally, matchmaking was updated tomatch suspected cheaters together, and report-a-player functionality was added to the killcam and spectator screens.
Publisher Activision claimed earlier this year to have banned over 70,000 players forcheating in Call of Duty: Warzone.
“We take all forms of cheating very seriously, maintaining a level and fair playing field for everyone is among our highest priorities,” the publisher said. “We have been enforcing account bans since Day 1 of Warzone’s release.”
