Announced via their official Twitter profile, the Call of Duty co-developers stated that another 30,000 cheaters have been banned in a single day. This brings the grand total number of accounts ever banned from Warzone for cheating to over half a million - but sheer numbers don’t seem to be doing the trick.
— Raven Software (@RavenSoftware) May 14, 2021 The standalone free to play battle royale spin off already attracted cheaters in droves back in the Modern Warfare days, and the developers always seemed to be one step behind in the battle to keep the servers clean. Whatever anti-cheat software being used - many players doubted there even was one, but we have had official confirmation that there is - seemingly couldn’t reliably detect cheaters and manual reports too time to sift through. Being a free to play game also meant that bans wouldn’t stick. If a cheater was detected and their account banned, they’d just open up a new one. The implementation of mandatory phone verification helped cut down numbers somewhat, but this wasn’t enough as cheaters would often purchase sock-numbers in bulk for practically pennies online and just use those to verify alternate accounts.
Meanwhile another issue has compounded this hacking crisis - legitimate players are having their accounts hacked and used by cheaters, and then subsequently banned. What should have been a triumphant milestone in the march to get rid of the cheaters just highlighted how much of an issue hacking still is in Warzone all this time after release. To put things into perspective, Call of Duty: Warzone recently crossed the 100 million active players mark, which makes that 500,000 banned hacker count look tiny. While it is clear that efforts are being made, the developers will need to up their game if they are to finally win against the hackers sometime down the line.
