After a bizarre surge of "Call of Duty" cheaters, Activision is going all out with account banning, first targeting Warzone cheaters and boosters, and now targeting both ranked and unranked players in Modern Warfare 3, with 65,. 000 account bans in the past week.

"Team Ricochet has accelerated its crackdown on cheat vendors, banning over 65,000 accounts in Warzone and MW3 ranked and unranked modes this week," said the Call of Duty update Twitter account The team will continue to monitor and take enforcement action against anyone cheating or boosting in all game modes."

Activision has been quite vocal about cheater eradication in recent weeks, starting with a wave of BANs targeting Warzone, and the studio promised that Ricochet (its anti-cheat software) would make some big moves in the coming weeks, which now realized.

Boosting is a problem in most competitive games, and Call of Duty players have recently seen a significant spike in such behavior. Some players have created entire lobbies dedicated to boosting SR and playing against bots capable of thousands of kills per match. It's actually quite efficient, so much so that one account even took second place on the Warzone leaderboard this way.

But even with over 65,000 accounts banned, most players don't seem too confident that this will actually change anything. Says one player, "And 65,000 cheaters created new accounts right after they were banned." Nothing has been resolved at all!"

Call of Duty: Warzone is a free-to-play base game, so it doesn't cost money to create a new account. The only barrier to entry is that it requires a phone number to set up. This requirement was added very recently to Battle.et to reduce smurf accounts and make it harder for cheaters with banned accounts to get back in, but all you need to do is set up a burner phone. Usually, that is enough hassle for most people, but some people go the extra mile.

Some people also resent Ricochet (as usual)." Another player says, "With all due respect, this kind of mass ban in the wave you are currently doing is the same as what you were doing with Warzone 1 (without Ricochet)." There seems to be very little automation with Ricochet and it needs to be upgraded soon."

One of the main problems most players have with Ricochet is that it has not helped alleviate the number of players who are accused of cheating and shadow-banned for up to two weeks. If you receive more than a few reports from other players, your account could be out of the game queue for several days. One player was so furious about being banned twice that he even went to Activision's studios to complain (please don't ever do that).