CoD devs reveals how many cheaters have been banned since November

Call of Duty has suffered with cheaters since its first-ever multiplayer mode was released and that's certainly no different in 2023.

While MW3 and Warzone's RICOCHET anti-cheat is more advanced than ever, so is the third-party software being sold online.

This means the devs are in a constant battle to combat these bad actors and provide fair matches to the playerbase.

Well, to demonstrate their recent progress in the war against cheaters, Call of Duty has revealed how many hackers have been banned since mid-November, and it's an impressive number.

CoD's anti-cheat has banned 23,000 hackers since mid-November

Taking to Twitter on December 22, Call of Duty Updates revealed how much of an impact RICOCHET has been having in the lead-up to Christmas.

According to them, 23,000 accounts have been banned for cheating since mid-November. This is an impressive number, and the team puts a lot of its success down to the "new machine learning detections" that have been deployed.

Joking that the only gift hackers will get from CoD this year is a "lump of coal," it's clear eradicating as many cheaters as possible is the goal for the dev team.

Of course, tracking down those using third-party software often means innocent players can get caught in the crossfire. Recently, a few too many shadowbans have been handed out for the community's liking.

MW3 & Warzone players are still angry about Shadowbans

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While you would expect the comments of this post to be filled with praise for RICOCHET, that's far from the truth. Shadowbans are the main topic of discussion, with fans frustrated that false suspensions are being dished out too often.

"Your new machine learning still has some learning to do because I got banned," said one user, with another claiming "Falsely banning people or shadowing them is something you are very good at."

Stepping up the fight against hackers is all well and good, but if legitimate competitors are being punished for no reason, there's a serious problem. With FPS titles like The FINALS taking off and Apex Legends being a solid alternative, it's easy to see some CoD players jumping ship if this carries on.

However, at the very least, 23,000 fewer hackers is a huge win for the devs.