In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and CoD Warzone, many players have apparently been banned. Many, however, disagree with this, and there are loud voices protesting against it or even calling for countermeasures.
What kind of ban is this? On Tuesday, July 7, 2020, there seems to have been a larger wave of permanent bans in both the Battle Royale Warzone and the multiplayer mode of Modern Warfare.
Cheaters have been a problem in Modern Warfare and Warzone for some time now, especially increasing on PS4 and Xbox One. However, it seems that cheaters were not the target of this ban wave.
What are the reasons for the bans? According to the Twitter account ModernWarzone, which often spreads leaks and information about the current Call of Duty, this wave has particularly removed toxic players.
It seems that the intention was to punish bad behavior. This includes among other things:
- Insults in voice and text chat
- generally toxic behavior
- apparently increased racist remarks
Steps against cheaters or users of exploits, such as the recent weapon exploit in Warzone, are not known in this ban wave. However, there has been no concrete statement from the developers regarding this.
Players claim they are innocent
According to several statements, including on Twitter, this ban wave has affected many players who consider themselves innocent. They claim they did not use cheats nor behaved toxically in any way:
Back in April, there was a ban wave in which apparently innocent players were banned. At that time, an explanation was demanded and even a petition was launched to unlock the accounts again.
Activision has previously stated that permanent bans are generally manually reviewed. However, players have the impression that an automated algorithm did not function correctly and that they were banned unfairly.
This is what the players say about it: Also at MeinMMO, messages from readers have arrived claiming that they have been banned unfairly. We spoke in detail with one of them.
In response to inquiries, the player confirmed that he had disabled voice chat to avoid toxic conversations in general. He never uses text chat anyway.
His player profile also shows no discrepancies. The values correspond to those of an average player, without being particularly strong or particularly weak.
Update (14:20): The player contacted us again. He has now been unbanned and can play again.
Players want to take countermeasures: In a thread on reddit, which received over 5,600 upvotes in less than half a day, players now want to take action against the bans. Although they have achieved nothing with support, they want to proceed differently now.
They are calling for payment cancellations or submitting complaints that Activision must respond to avoid sanctions from rating companies.
MeinMMO has requested a statement from Activision regarding the current bans. A response is still pending, and we will report it as soon as we receive it.
There is also significant criticism of the approach due to ongoing problems with cheaters in the game. It seems possible to create a new account for just $2 and to circumvent a ban, even if it is permanent. Apparently innocent players therefore feel unjustly treated.
