Completely blocking cheaters from multiplayer titles is an impossible task for game developers, but anti-cheating solutions work well enough to curb the problem in the vast majority of cases. Free-to-play games, however, have to also deal with cheaters that simply make new accounts to continue their exploits once a ban occurs.
Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward is now employing a fan-favorite method to make the lives of cheaters a little harder. Starting this week, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the free-to-play battle royale Warzone will send all suspected cheaters into a matchmaking pool of their own, letting script users play against each other without realizing it.
The move should provide more time to anti-cheat developers for identifying and building further defenses against the scripts being used. It should also slow down new account creation, as cheaters may take a while to recognize they are only meeting other script users and not normal players.
Moreover, if a suspected cheater is banned following a report, Modern Warfare and Warzone will now send an in-game cheater confirmation message to the player who sent the report. Infinity Ward has upped the backend tech, studio, and enforcement team resources as well, while other dedicated security updates have been deployed to the two games. Soon, the developer will be implementing a way to report suspected cheaters during kill cams and while spectating.
Over 50,000 accounts found to be using cheats were banned from Call of Duty: Warzone by April 1, and that number had risen to 70,000 by April 14. The free-to-play game has over 50 million players.