How Infinity Ward Really Plans To Stop Cheaters

Infinity Ward's Call of Duty: Warzone has proven to be an extremely fun battle royale game, but it's not entirely without issues. Players have been finding various little exploits to sneakily dispatch their enemies, like shooting down players who haven't even entered the match yet. The game has also drawn the ire of streamers like Dr Disrespect, who feels that the game's hit detection is hilariously flawed. More than anything else, however, the game is suffering from an overabundance of cheaters.

The folks behind Warzone seem to be acutely aware of this. In a blog post on Activision's website, Infinity Ward explained the steps its taking to ensure that Warzone cheaters get what's coming to them.

Infinity Ward joins several other gaming companies who have made it a priority to tackle cheating in the last few years. Some companies have approached this in a much more diplomatic sense, while others seem to take significantly more "scorched earth" tactics. Sometimes it's completely obvious when someone is cheating and they are rightfully banned. However, it's occasionally not quite so cut and dried.

Last year, Respawn Entertainment went after Apex Legends cheaters. The company announced to fans on Reddit that it was developing a way to "create behavior models that detect and auto ban cheaters." As a rep from Respawn explained at the time, "the war against cheaters will be ongoing and remains a high priority for us."

Rockstar Games has also been attempting to crack down on cheaters in recent years. Rockstar actually some hilarious ways of punishing cheaters in the Grand Theft Auto games, including blowing up cars that have been hacked into Grand Theft Auto Online. Recently, Rockstar's efforts have been extended to the hacker-infested Red Dead Online. Rockstar is one of many companies attempting to send a message that cheating will not be tolerated.

Naturally, not all bans turn out to be justified, as mistakes and glitches can happen. Even the previously-mentioned Respawn Entertainment has had to reinstate an account or two because of this. But the fact that developers like Respawn and Infinity Ward are attempting to curb the amount of cheating happening in their games is a big deal. Cheating kind of ruins a game for everyone but the cheater.

In fact, according to the blog post from the Call of Duty team, a dedicated group has been focused on catching and tossing out cheaters since the game was launched. Supposedly, Call of Duty: Warzone's security team has issued more than 50,000 permanent bans worldwide, which is a shocking figure.

In case you're wondering why this hasn't been mentioned before, apparently that has been Infinity Ward and Activision's stance on discussing cheaters up until this point. However, it appears that may be about to change.

"We take all forms of cheating very seriously, maintaining a level and fair playing field for everyone is among our highest priorities," reads the blog post. "This is an area we have been working on heavily, but it isn't always something we discuss publicly ... Moving forward, we will aim to provide a regular count on the latest number of bans issued, as needed."

Infinity Ward will also reportedly be making it much easier for players to report any untoward shenanigans to its security team. "We're working to improve our in-game system for reporting potential cheating. Plans are underway to streamline the UI for a more seamless reporting experience."

Just this week, Kotaku reported that the single force making Call of Duty: Warzone less fun to play was the amount of cheaters and hackers in the game. Players have discovered a wide array of exploits, like clipping through walls and even under the map, that have given them an unfair advantage in the game. Meanwhile, hackers have already gone wild adding aimbots to their games, allowing them to pick off other players without even properly aiming. In fact, one hacker was even bold enough to upload a TikTok video of themselves taking out their opponents with an aimbot and offering to help others do the same. Hopefully this hacker in particular is one of the 50,000 banned accounts.

According to Kotaku, the hacking has gotten so widespread that some console gamers have asked Infinity Ward to add an option to Warzone that allows players to disable the game's cross-play function. The theory there is that removing PC gamers from the equation could help some console gamers not even have to worry about hackers. You know it's gotten bad when gamers are calling for an entire platform to be sequestered like that.

Hopefully Infinity Ward's anti-cheating team is up to the task. If 50,000 cheaters have already gotten the boot, then that's encouraging. Maybe someday soon, we'll be able to completely enjoy Warzone without worrying about any unscrupulous players manipulating the outcome.