The German YouTuber “Haptic” can only play against cheaters in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and a friend of his is to blame.
Who is it about? It is about the German YouTuber and CoD expert Cem Gülken aka Haptic/ HapticRush.
- Haptic has over 889,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel HapticRush and regularly achieves over 250,000 views with his videos.
- On HapticRush, he primarily discusses Call of Duty, most recently of course Black Ops 6.
- Haptic has been playing Call of Duty since Black Ops 1 and regularly shows in his videos and streams that he has become an expert over the years, playing the shooter at a high level.
In a video on his YouTube channel, Haptic explains that he can only play against cheaters in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 since he lent his account to a friend.
Haptic in a lobby with spoilsports
Why can he only play against cheaters? Haptic tells in a video that he received a so-called shadow ban in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. However, this ban only affects the main account of the YouTuber, so he can still play normally on other accounts.
A shadow ban differs from a regular ban. After a shadow ban, you can continue to play Black Ops 6 – but only against other players who also have a shadow ban.
These are primarily cheaters and players who were mistakenly banned for cheating. So, in Black Ops 6, he only encounters players who are considered cheaters and spoilsports.
A friend is to blame for the ban – not the nephew
Why was he banned? According to the YouTuber, he bears no responsibility for his ban. He lent his account to a friend to play. However, the friend is much better than the YouTuber, which is why the anti-cheat system thought he was cheating when a performance boost was suddenly noticed on the account.
In the video, Haptic also explains that the friend is banned on his own account as well. He had earned camos (weapon skins) and therefore performed below his level for a while. When he had all the skins, his performance increased, and the system thought he was using cheats – just like with Haptic’s account now.
Furthermore, Haptic emphasizes that he was not banned for reverse boosting / for nephew accounts – that is, for influencing matchmaking by playing poorly on an account to get into lobbies with worse players.
You can watch Haptic’s video here. We have included a timestamp for the explanation of the ban:
Can’t he ask Activision to unban him? The ban shows that even Haptic, as a big CoD YouTuber, is not protected from penalties. He himself says in the video that he has contacted Activision, but there is no “whitelist” – that is, a ban can really hit anyone. So he remains banned for the time being.
Overall, false bans are currently a major topic in the Black Ops 6 community, which is being widely discussed on social networks. A post on Reddit collected over 800 upvotes and about 400 comments, for example. Many players write in the comments that they received a shadow ban without cheating.
Just in October 2024, an exploit was fixed that caused a lot of false bans in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone. To provoke a ban, malicious players only needed to type a few simple words: Call of Duty fixes exploit that banned you when malicious players typed 2 words in the chat.
