With Call of Duty: Warzone growing increasingly popular everyday, it was only a matter of a time before cheaters began to bleed into the game, and players have had enough. They are now demanding an overhaul of the report system meant to call out and punish those cheaters.
Since Call of Duty: Warzone released in March 2020, Activision has stated that the game has grown to over 100 million active players. Unfortunately, the title’s massive player count has brought in a large number of cheaters as well. Types of hacks used for cheating range from aim-bots that automatically aim for players to wall-hacks that show players where enemies are.
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A discussion taking place on the CODWarzone subreddit, led by user WavingBuddy, is claiming that not only are Call of Duty: Warzone cheaters increasing in numbers, but reports to stop them are no longer effective. In the past when reporting a cheater, players would receive a notification to indicate that the developers had banned them accordingly. Now, players can’t seem to recall the last time they have even seen one of these notifications, despite hacker numbers seemingly increasing.
Before, if 10 people reported a user, that player would be shadow-banned without any review being needed. This no longer seems to be the case. Raven Software, now the sole developers on Warzone, have claimed that they are still banning accounts and have banned another 50,000+ Call of Duty: Warzone hackers in their latest sweep. The game's community does not feel that is enough, however. Their proposed fix is to inform players when a player they’ve reported has been banned. This would tell players that there is something going on to combat these hackers.
One major detriment to being a free-to-play game is that players have easy access to make a new account if theirs gets banned. There is simply no real cost to them to create a new account as the game is free. Competitive games such as this always seem to struggle with cheaters the most, too. While Call of Duty: Warzone is not the only title on the market to be fighting a losing battle against hackers, it does seem to be one of the ones worst affected.
Transparency can go a long ways towards keeping the community happy. Players want to know information such as how many reports are being filed, and what exactly the development team is doing to stop cheaters. It is currently unknown how reports work behind the scenes and what the developers do with said reports. If Raven does not start communicating this information to the community, it seems like some Call of Duty: Warzone players may move on to a different title.
Call of Duty: Warzone is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.