Activision is continuing its campaign against cheaters in Call of Duty: Warzone. In an anti-cheat progress report released today, the publisher announced that more than 475,000 Warzone accounts have been permanently banned since the game's release in March 2020. This translates to an average of about 36,500 bans per month, or about 1,200 bans every day.

Just yesterday, Raven Software completed a new wave of BANs penalizing over 30,000 Warzone accounts; according to Activision, this was the "seventh mass ban" (in the 15,000, 30,000 and 60,000 range) since February For reference, Warzone has been banned from the Internet since February. For reference, Warzone surpassed 80 million total players across all platforms in October 2020.

The progress report also reveals that in addition to daily individual bans and future waves, Activision has its sights set on repeat offenders - those who are banned for cheating and immediately return to the game with a new account. over 45,000 "black market, used by rogue, habitual offenders accounts" were recently banned, but it is unclear whether this number is part of the latest ban wave or a separate effort.

"Removing cheaters and taking away their ability to migrate to alternative accounts is an important focus for security teams. To permanently lock habitual cheaters out of Warzone, Activision will issue hardware BANs that target unique IDs associated with PC components.

Hardware bans are more difficult to circumvent than simple IP or account sanctions, but according to one cheat distributor, the most popular cheat programs get around this hurdle by automatically spoofing a machine's hardware ID while the software is running. This makes it all the more important for Activision to pursue cheat developers and distributors as well as players; in August 2020, the publisher successfully shut down one cheat site after threatening a lawsuit, but players looking for cheats and hacks for "Warzone" need not look far.

Unless there is a major crackdown on distribution or comprehensive detection tools like those Valve employs in CS:GO, Activision is likely to continue this whack-a-mole war against cheaters indefinitely. Our top priority is to provide a fair and enjoyable experience for all our players. We will not rest, and we thank you all for your patience."