"Call of Duty" players are saying they were banned from the game due to false positives caused by Activision's proprietary "Ricochet" anti-cheat. That's an old story, and one that John Q. Aimbot might say with his hand in the cookie jar.

However, the sheer number of these complaints, and the common details among them, leads me to believe that there is something wrong, and that these paying customers are frustrated by Activision Blizzard's callous response so far Activision Blizzard has not responded to our request for comment. The company did not respond to our request for comment, but we will update this article when we hear back.

Former Microsoft employee and self-described casual player Mike Swanson (open in new tab) blogged about his experience with Modern Warfare 2 on December 5. The next day, he tried to play the game. The next day, when he tried to play the game, Swanson found that his account had been banned. It is also worth noting that Swanson, as well as many other claimants, stated that they only play Call of Duty in single-player.

His attempt to sue Activision resulted in Activision maintaining its ban on the review, claiming that it found "unauthorized software" use and "manipulation of game data."

Swanson also directed readers to a highly rated Steam review of MW2 by user Necron242 (opens in new tab), an account that shares many details with Swanson's. Necron also ended with a brief crash after a gameplay session, stating that he was banned for "manipulation of game data". Importantly, according to Necron's review, they were successful in getting a refund for MW2 despite the four hours of play time; Steam's refund window is within two hours of play and two weeks of purchase.

"I explained the situation to Steam and described my correspondence with Activision Blizzard," Necron elaborated in a later comment regarding his review. 'I found a similar plot in the stories I've heard from other players. Reddit threads by users Bender99342 (open in new tab) and jbop15 (open in new tab) reported similarly low play time for Swanson and Necron, with more users in the comments complaining of wrong banning and denied Activision Blizzard's Better Business Bureau (opens in new tab) page is full of complaints about false bans, and the Modern Warfare 2 and Activision subreddits have accounts dating back to the game's launch. There are accounts dating back to the game's launch.

The Bender and jbop posts have screenshots of in-game messages announcing the ban and stating the reason as "Caserma-Rhino."

There are several possible reasons why a player could be falsely flagged for using external cheats; Mike Swanson and Necron 242 both noted that peripherals such as GeForce Experience, MSI Afterburner, and Razer Synapse software, such as GeForce Experience, MSI Afterburner, and Razer Synapse, may have been incorrectly flagged by the Ricochet anti-cheat.

Modern Warfare 2's documented stability issues may also be a contributing factor, with Swanson stating, "My personal hypothesis as a developer is that frequent crashes (and the accompanying errors related to corrupted files) are a deliberate manipulation by the player of incorrectly flagged by the Ricochet anti-cheat software," writes Necron242 and several other users have reported attempting to repair or verify their MW2 installations just before they were banned.

With no official announcement from Activision Blizzard, the only recourse for players is to take extra care when checking their installations and using peripheral software, but this is hardly a guarantee. As for players already affected, those who purchased MW2 on Steam could request a refund from Valve after contacting Activision Blizzard, but Battle.net players have no such option. Meanwhile, Mike Swanson is attempting to organize class action claimants against Activision Blizzard via Discord (opens in new tab).