Call of Duty: Warzone Anti-Cheat System – Everything You Need to Know

Call of Duty: Warzone is one of the most popular battle royale games out as of right now, so it’s understandable that the very last thing that you’d want to do is risk getting a ban. There’s nothing worse than being banned from your favourite shooter right now – even more so if you don’t know the reason why in the first place.

To try and avoid accidentally being caught out by the anti-cheat system in the game, it’s best to try and understand everything you can about the system. In this collective guide, you’ll be provided with all of the information you could ever need to ensure that you don’t get caught out by the anti-cheat system when playing Warzone!

What Gets You Banned?

A good place to start off is how exactly do you get a ban through playing Call of Duty: Warzone? It’s fairly simple: anything that Activision considers a ban-worthy offense is as follows:

• Cheats
• Hacks
• Auto-aim
• Wallhacks
• Anything that would provide an unfair advantage to the player

Simply put, any kind of cheating, hacking, or suspicious software that is installed and gives an unfair advantage to you as the player is a ban-worthy offence. Doesn’t matter what the cheat or hack is, the anti-cheat system will pick it up using a variety of player-submitted reports that the community provides to the game’s developers.

Warzone’s Security & Enforcement Policy

As previously covered, there are a number of reasons a player can be immediately shadow-banned, but a shadow-ban isn’t the only policy a reported player may come across. Activision has laid out several definitions/offences that link back to certain activities players should not be committing in their eyes.Here are all four of them:

• Minor Offence – “A minor offence is one in which no quantifiable damage has been done to another player or the game community at large”
• Temporary Suspension – “These can range from 48 hours to two weeks or longer, depending on the infraction.”
• Permanent Suspension – “These are lasting and final.”
• Extreme Offence – “An extreme offence is one in which a player has caused detriment to other players or has organised large groups of players to commit additional offences.”

All four examples are quoted from the Activision support website, in which they lay out the severity of some of their less lenient policies. With Warzone’s security and enforcement policy, there’s a wide-variety of examples that are bound to get certain players into very hot water if they aren’t abiding by the rules appropriately.

• Use of Unauthorised Third Party Software for Modding/Hacking – If any third-party software is used to gain unfair advantage, manipulate stats or game data, players will be immediately suspended from the game.
• Pirated Content – For those users that acquire content illegally will immediately be met with a suspension and reported to either the console manufacturer or Battle.net’s enforcement team.
• Unsupported Peripheral Devices & Applications – Any user that utilises an unsupported piece of hardware to interact with the game and used for cheating is subject to a temporary suspension on first offence. Extreme or repeat offences will be met with a permanent suspension. These are the devices Activision considers subject to penalty:
• Modded Controllers
• IP Flooders
• Lag Switches
• Boosting – Any player that works with another player to exploit the game for the purpose of gaining XP, prestige, game score, weapon level, or any in-game unlock is subject to a penalty. The penalties will be either a temporary or permanent suspension, along with a reset of their stats.
• Glitching – Any user that abuses an exploit in the game’s code or other established rule of play is subject to penalty. This can lead to a permanent or temporary suspension, with one example of glitching that can lead to that suspension is intentionally getting outside of the map.
• Griefing – A player that purposefully prevents another player from playing the game, either through an exploit or simple behaviour, like intentional friendly-fire. This will result in a temporary or permanent suspension.
• Offensive Behaviour – Using aggressive, offensive, derogatory, or culturally charged language, cyber-bullying, and other forms of harassment will end up in a suspension.
• Improperly Obtained Downloadable/Unlockable Content – Players that are found to have their inventories containing content that they have not legitimately obtained will be subject to penalty. The penalty will be either a permanent or temporary suspension, followed by a full inventory reset and wipe – no questions asked.
• Decompiling or Reverse Engineering of Game Data – Users that have be found decompiling or reverse engineering any of the game’s data will be subject to an immediate permanent suspension. Following on from this, they will also be reported to the console manufacturer or Battle.net enforcement team, depending on the system it occurred on.

Honestly, there is a lot to be mindful and to watch out for when it comes to the anti-cheat system in Warzone. As long as you’re playing fairly, though and aren’t subjecting your fellow teammates and players to harassment in any shape or form, you shouldn’t need to be concerned at all.

How Reporting Works

In Warzone, there are 2 types of reporting that you can be caught out by and that you should be mindful of:

• Player Reporting
• In-Game Reports by the Anti-Cheat System

Player Reporting

It’s the classic system of someone clicking on the report button on your profile, at which point they will claim that as a player you’ve done something wrong. This could be through harassment, in-game cheats or hacks, or any of the previously listed issues that the developers won’t allow.When it comes to player reports, these can be disputed and usually won’t amount to anything unless they are being reported by several players for similar reasons. In these cases, the reports will result in a temporary ban and will require a response from the management team to look over your case.The management team will analyse all of the reports and come to a decision on whether they are founded in truth or not. If they amount to nothing, the temporary ban will be lifted and you’ll be back to playing in no time. On the other hand, however, where they find out there’s some truth to these reports, the ban will either be extended or turned into a permanent one, with very little dispute allowed for a follow up.

In-Game Reports by the Anti-Cheat System

With the other side of the system we have the in-game reports that are done by Warzone’s automatic anti-cheat system. This system scans the user for any suspicious behaviour, such as making shots that physically couldn’t be done without some kind of mechanical help or surviving when they really shouldn’t have. Over the last couple of months, this system has gotten pretty good at detective cheats and hacks – something most hackers and cheats despise.By scanning any untoward software that’s located on the afflicted player’s system, the anti-cheat system can immediately ban them from play in Call of Duty: Warzone without the need for player reports. Usually, these cases are pretty cut and dry and will result in a permanent ban and cannot be easily disputed, but it isn’t necessarily impossible in the cases where the system may get it wrong – although it’s very rare.

Two-Factor Authentication

A rather new addition to the game that was added back in May of 2020, Infinity Ward added a necessary step to their games account authentication in the form of two-step SMS. What this entails is through the use of sending a confirmation message to your mobile number whenever you attempt to log-in.This is good for two reasons: the first being is that it protects your account even more against hackers and the like that wish to gain access to your account. Whereas the second reason is down to the fact that if a cheater is caught and shadow-banned, they’re going to need to recreate their account and provide a brand-new phone number.Through the process of having to gain access to a brand-new phone number is a painfully arduous step for most cheaters and banned players, meaning that they aren’t very likely to bother signing up for a new one.Sure, it’s a slight pain to have to authenticate your account every time you wish to log-in, but because of this somewhat recent change, it means you’re a lot less likely to come across players that have received multiple bans over several accounts. Now that is definitely a positive!In conclusion, there are a lot of little nuances and pieces of information to this system the average player should be knowledgeable on. Does that mean you should be concerned about it? No – absolutely not!This system is in place to ensure that everybody plays at a fair and level playing field and this in-game anti-cheat system merely ensures that it stays that way. Unless you’re one of the few people playing the game in an express way that you shouldn’t be, at which point you’re quite likely and very quickly going to be caught out.