‘EngineOwning’ cheats reportedly return in Warzone

Nicholas Sakadelis

The “EngineOwning” PC cheat for Modern Warfare went from “Detected” status to “Undetected” earlier this week.

Cheating in video games on the PC platform remains to be one of the largest issues for competitive integrity in games. It’s an unfortunate reality: where there is competition, there will always be those who go above and beyond to create unfair advantages for themselves.

In the case of gaming, we’re referring to cheats that people create, including aim bots & wall hacks, for games to turn a quick profit.

Specifically for Warzone, one of the major cheats is called “Engine Owning”.

Since the early months of Warzone, EngineOwning users have plagued Warzone with obvious wall hacks, aim bots, and ESP (extra-sensory perception, like an unlimited UAV). Since cheats can be tuned, some players opt to use less aim bots with a lower setting to appear like a legitimate user, and there also have been reports of a feature where people can stream the game without the cheat showing for viewers.

This was until in late September, Infinity Ward finally detected the cheat in-game, then deploying a massive ban wave resulting in the removal of thousands of Warzone accounts. Since then, the cheating issue in Warzone has reduced drastically (although not completely). CharlieIntel was first to report that a popular streamer was part of the ban wave for being detected by EngineOwning, followed by VICE News.

Forwarding to the present, it appears EngineOwning has made a return, as stated on their website. The cheat appears as “Undetected”, where it was previously “detected” for a month after the ban wave/original detection occurred.

The EngineOwning ban wave resulted in over 20,000 banned accounts, so it’s safe to say that the cheat was a very popular one among the cheating community. This comes after an announcement in April that Infinity Ward has banned over 70,000 total accounts, and now as of October 1st, they have banned over 200,000 accounts.

There may be a resurgence of cheaters in Warzone in the coming weeks, so be sure to report any players in-game you see that you believe are cheating.

Hopefully, there is another ban wave coming soon, now that we know for sure this specific cheat is on Infinity Ward’s radar.