As Call of Duty: Warzone Cheating Complaints Ramp Up Following the Return of Verdansk, Activision Insists It’s Caused ‘Chaos’ in the Cheat Marketplace by ‘Disrupting’ Over 150 Cheat Resellers
Following the euphoric reception to the return of Verdansk to Call of Duty battle royale Warzone, familiar complaints have begun to resurface, chief among them cheating.
Call of Duty has a reputation for cheating (it comes with the territory of being such a hugely popular shooter and having a free-to-download battle royale). Cheating is more prevalent on PC (Activision recently confirmed as much, to the point where it said if you believe you’ve died unfairly to a console player, it’s much more likely that they’ve used ‘intel advantage’ than cheats). So, some console players head straight into Call of Duty’s settings to turn off crossplay across the board, just to take the potential for PC cheaters ruining their day out of the equation. With the launch of Season 3, Activision even added new console-only crossplay options for regular multiplayer, although PC players who do not cheat said they were being unfairly punished.
Activision, as IGN has reported, has spent millions of dollars in the battle against Call of Duty cheat makers, cheat sellers, and cheat users, with a number of recent high-profile successes. In March, Phantom Overlay announced it was shutting down, with fans reacting in disbelief that such a prominent Call of Duty cheat provider could fall by the wayside. Also in March, IGN reported on four cheat providers that were shut down ahead of the hotly anticipated return of Verdansk to Warzone.
It had been hoped that Warzone’s cheating problem would improve following Verdansk’s release, but the honeymoon period has well and truly come to an end, with players reporting that cheaters are back in force.
“Geegees Cheaters…it is your game now. Enjoy,” declared redditor Patient-Author-2960. “Big congrats to all the cheaters for finally conquering the game again and donkey punching Verdansk. You guys really stuck with it, grinding those walls and aimbots to perfection. It must feel amazing to dominate lobbies without any actual skill. Welcome back.”
Amid this fresh wave of negativity, Activision has published an anti-cheat update from its Ricochet team, recapping what’s gone on with Season 3. Activision failed to address this apparent rise in Warzone cheating, but did outline the work it has been doing to address the problem of cheating generally across Warzone and Black Ops 6.
“Our commitment is to keep cheaters out of the game and, for those who make it past our initial systems, identify and remove them as quickly as possible,” Activision said.
“The Ricochet Anti-Cheat team is hard at work taking on would-be cheaters throughout the game, including those looking to steal leaderboard glory.”
Activision said it had shut down five more cheat makers since its last progress report (this is on top of the 20+ it’s shut down since Black Ops 6 came out last year), and had “disrupted” over 150 cheat sellers in the same period.
It said it had protected over 10,000 accounts that had a potential suspicious account link in Season 03 (Activision recently forced players to verify they are in control of an account if someone attempts to link a new PC account to an Activision ID). It’s also added Replay Tech Preview, a new tech that helps examine replays for faster investigation, and added new elements to the Death Widget, making KillCams clearer for players.
“The Season 03 update has made a strong impact against cheat makers and resellers,” Activision insisted. “For example, as we announced recently, Ricochet Anti-Cheat quickly detected a cheat provider that came back online after weeks of downtime, resulting in a large-scale ban wave against its customer base, forcing it offline once again.
“We’ve continued to cause chaos in the cheat marketplace and have hit a milestone of disrupting over 150 cheat resellers – shutting them down or rendering their software ineffective. And we’re not slowing down.”
A message from #TeamRICOCHET:
Earlier this week, we detected a cheat vendor that was offline was attempting to return. Today, we shut them down (again) by issuing a large-scale ban wave against their customers.
We’ve shut down over 20 cheat makers…
— Call of Duty Updates (@CODUpdates) April 25, 2025
Activision highlighted new account creation, which is a tactic cheaters use when they get booted from Warzone. This, Activision said, is “a reality” for all free-to-play games like Warzone, but it’s targeting new accounts and is now seeing “strong” results. On average from the period between Season 02 through Season 03, new accounts are banned within four matches when they cheat, Activision said.
New anti-cheat systems and upgrades are coming throughout Season 03 Reloaded – specifically with Ranked Play online in Call of Duty: Warzone – as well as upcoming seasons, Activision continued.
“Our team’s commitment remains the same. While threats continue to exist, we’re focused on strengthening the barriers to make cheating in Call of Duty a fool’s errand, eliminating as many cheaters as possible before they can impact a match, and hunting down and removing any cheating account that makes its way into the game as quickly as possible.”
Meanwhile, Activision said it has issued cease and desist demands to several companies that create and sell third-party hardware used to cheat in Call of Duty games.
“We have already seen compliance from some of the companies we’ve contacted; however, we will continue to pursue other device makers in the market, globally, as well as people that create scripts to manipulate Call of Duty game code,” Activision warned.
“These devices and scripts used to cheat in our games are not welcome. Call of Duty does not endorse the use of these products. Any account that utilizes these devices on PC or console for the purpose of cheating will be permanently banned.”
“No anti-cheat system can eliminate all threats, but we continue to deliver updates to take the legs out from under cheat makers by banning their users, forcing them offline, and reducing the time to detection for accounts that make it into the game,” Activision concluded. “Today and into the future, the Ricochet Anti-Cheat roadmap continues, with new updates being developed and deployed on a regular basis.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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