If you’ve played Warzone in the last couple of weeks, you’ll have probably noticed something different. There are a lot of blatant hackers and cheats being used, with little to no fixes coming. The worst part is that it’s not like Warzone doesn’t have an anti-cheat system in place. Contrary to popular belief, Warzone does have an anti-cheat, although is does rely partly on AI and human interaction to work.
AI helps pick up some blatant hackers and cheaters, while actual human enforcement teams review player-submitted reports about cheats, exploits, glitches, and more. While it worked at the beginning, this way of handling cheats and hackers is clearly not working as Warzone becomes more massive.
Players found cheating or hacking are never given IP or hardware bans by Activision, so they are free to create another account (because Warzone is free to play), run hacks that unlock everything for them, and continue their hacking spree with almost no downtime.
However, it looks like Raven Software and Activision might finally be implementing a proper anti-cheat not only in the next Call of Duty title, but in Warzone as well. On August 11, Raven tweeted out that they had banned another 50,000 accounts and that there is some behind-the-scenes work being done with more information to come.
🚫 Today we banned over 50,000 accounts in #Warzone.
— Raven Software (@RavenSoftware) August 11, 2021
More importantly, we are listening and hard at work behind the scenes.
We will have more info for you soon.
Well-known video game information leaker, Tom Henderson, also tweeted out afterward claiming that a proper anti-cheat has been in the works for over a year and that it will launch with the next Call of Duty title and Warzone.
A new anti-cheat system for the next Call of Duty title has been in development for over a year. The same system will be implemented into Warzone.
— Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) August 11, 2021
This is amazing news for anyone who plays Warzone regularly. This is the first bit of news, outside of their ban waves tweets, that is acknowledging the hacking and cheating issue. Activision doesn’t normally discuss internal projects until its ready for release, so having Raven acknowledge a better anti-cheat is coming means they are more serious about turning this around.
Warzone has seen a massive shift of their player base moving to other games because of these hackers. Many pros, creators, and gamers alike have moved to Fortnite and Apex Legends for their battle royale fix in the recent weeks.
Some of Warzone’s largest creators like Nickmercs and TimtheTatman, who account for a gigantic percent of Warzone viewership on Twitch, find themselves on Apex Legends now. This has dropped Warzone’s viewership from around 300,000 viewers to just above 70,000 on average. While still a huge chunk of viewers, it is clear that Warzone is seeing a burnout that could jeopardize its growth and success moving into the next Call of Duty title.
It is hard for players to deal with blatant cheaters and hackers while Activision continues to rake in millions of dollars in microtransactions on skins and weapons. With the supposed launch of information regarding the next Call of Duty coming next week, it will be interesting to see how Activision handles this issue and how they plan on targeting repeat offenders. Will they wait until November to drop this anti-cheat? Or will players begin seeing a rollout around the launch of the beta?
We believe most players hope for the later.
