Warzone devs finally “purge” cheaters from leaderboards in ban wave
ActivisionWarzone Ranked Play‘s leaderboards have been dominated by cheaters since it went live, and the devs have finally used their anti-cheat system to ban accounts that have been boosting and cleanse the rankings.
On July 31, the official Call of Duty Updates X page confirmed that a wave of accounts found to be using hacks or boosting specifically in Ranked had been banned.
“The RICOCHET Anti-Cheat team has deployed new detections targeting Ranked Play cheaters and boosters in Call of Duty: Warzone,” said the devs in an X post. “TeamRICOCHET has banned accounts caught in this sweep and leaderboards have been purged.”
Although the competitive mode’s leaderboards are supposed to show off the very best players from around the world, they were often full of accounts that weren’t playing legitimately.
These could be spotted by their ridiculously high SR gains or impossible win record, seemingly winning hundreds of matches with barely any defeats.
There are a couple of ways that these players might have achieved such a high rank in Warzone Ranked Play. The first is using software like wall hacks to gain an unfair advantage over the rest of the lobby and make it much easier to score a win.
Another is using boosting lobbies, which are basically hacked matches that are entirely full of bots instead of real players. These fake enemies group in one location and don’t fight back, meaning you’re guaranteed the win and a boatload of kills, which translates to ridiculous SR gains.
Cheaters are also a major issue in MW3’s Ranked Play mode, but the devs confirmed they’re in the middle of tackling the problem in multiplayer too: “A similar set of detections is in flight to target Ranked Play cheaters in #MW3 Multiplayer.”
While these bans and purging of the leaderboards don’t necessarily put a stop to the issue, and they could easily return in the future, it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
The devs have been tackling cheaters head-on, after their successful lawsuit against EngineOwning before two more providers were closed down.