Activision quells player fears over false Call of Duty bans with fix for anti-cheat exploit

Sometimes, the Call of Duty rumor mill has some truth to it. Unfortunately for players, in this case, it was a rumor about something that makes Activision look very, very bad.

In the past few days, social media has been abuzz around an apparent exploit that allowed hackers to somehow circumvent CoD’s RICOCHET Anti-Cheat system to falsely ban innocent players, such as streamers like BobbyPoff. Today, Activision says the issue has been fixed, and affected accounts have been unbanned.

“RICOCHET Anti-Cheat identified and disabled a workaround to a detection system in Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty: Warzone that impacted a small number of legitimate player accounts,” Activision said today on Twitter/X. “We have restored all accounts that were impacted. An examination of our systems was conducted for safety and monitoring will continue.”

Several streamers and players, most notably BobbyPoff, spoke out on social media about being banned from games like Warzone and having no idea why. This is a normal reaction for anyone who gets banned, innocent or not, but it appears the issue has a lot to do with whatever hackers were exploiting.

“Public apology would go a long way,” the streamer replied. “Imagine having your name drug through the mud for two weeks for something you never did and being offered zero explanation. Oh wait, that was ME the past two weeks!”

A Twitter/X user named @zebleerpro started the discussion last night, posting they would be sharing full details “on the simple exploit that allows you to falsely remotely perma ban anyone from Call of Duty (by reason of cheating) even if you are not in their lobby.” So, it seems like either Activision reached out for help with the fix, or found it on their own after being alerted. Either way, it’s not a good look for RICOCHET or the company behind it.

Today, Zebleer claimed several streamers including BobbyPoff, Parasite, Censor, and more were banned by someone using this exploit, also saying the individual “randomly banned several thousand random people going back months.”

Maybe, just maybe, all of the players complaining of false bans this year were right. Activision says to expect more from RICOCHET in a Road to Launch Progress Report blog coming tomorrow.