Games

‘Call of Duty: Warzone’ Bans More than 60,000 Cheaters

The wave of bans is one of the largest-ever for the popular competitive online game Warzone.
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Image: Activision
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The makers of the popular online video game Call of Duty: Warzone have banned tens of thousands of alleged cheaters in one of the largest waves of bans in the game's history. 

On Tuesday, Activision banned more than 60,000 accounts for using cheating, according to three sources familiar with the company. The bans come just a day after a popular Call of Duty player and streamer announced he quit Warzone because the game is "saturated by hackers."  

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"The game is in the worst state it's ever been. Activision really isn't being addressing how many hackers there are in the game," the player, known as Vikkstar123, said in a YouTube video. "They never seem to go away and there's always more and more hackers [...] this needs to be fixed otherwise it truly will be the death of the game."

Another popular streamer called Jackfrags also denounced the game’s “cheating problem” last week.

This is the third large wave of bans that Activision does against Warzone cheaters since the game was released in 2020. In April of last year, the company banned more than 70,000 accounts. Then in September it banned around 20,000 accounts, most of which were using EngineOwning, a popular cheat app. 

This time, it looks like the ban wave hit EngineOwning customers once again.

"Anyone that used EngineOwning since the last banwave was wiped out," said one of the sources with knowledge of the bans, who asked to remain anonymous.

Do you develop cheats for games or reverse engineer anti-cheat software? Or do you work on anti-cheat software? We’d love to hear from you. You can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, OTR chat at lorenzofb@jabber.ccc.de, or email lorenzofb@vice.com

On EngineOwning’s official site, the cheat developers indicated that they are "updating" the cheat. In a Discord channel, cheaters complained that their accounts were getting banned. 

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"[EngineOwning] detected. RIP," one user wrote.

"I lost 4 accounts, and all my boys lost thiers [sic] as well," another user wrote. 

In another Discord of EngineOwning customer, a user said that “everyone is banned.”

After this story was published, Activision confirmed news of the bans.

“We have zero tolerance for cheaters across Call of Duty and Call of Duty: Warzone,” the company wrote in a blog. “Our focus is to combat both cheaters and cheat providers. Today we banned 60,000 accounts for confirmed cases of using cheat software in Warzone, bringing our total to date of more than 300,000 permabans worldwide since launch.”

The administrators of EngineOwning did not respond to a request for comment.