Activision last night banned 60,000 accounts for cheating in Call of Duty Warzone amid an ongoing furore over hacking.
In a blog post, Activision said it had issued more than 300,000 permabans worldwide to accounts since Warzone launched in March 2020.
The news follows increasing pressure from the Call of Duty community, and comes after two high-profile Call of Duty streamers announced they had quit the game over cheating.
Warzone’s anti-cheat has come under intense scrutiny from players, particularly on PC, with the issue exacerbated by radio silence from its publisher and developer. Some console players disable crossplay in a bid to avoid PC hackers.
One of the problems has to do with the free-to-download nature of Warzone. The perception at least is that cheaters do not feel threatened by the prospect of being banned because they can simply create a new account to cheat again. Even with a two-factor authentication system, which Activision said has invalidated over 180,000 suspect accounts since launch, there are simple workarounds available to determined cheaters.