The woe of someone who cheats will typically fall on deaf ears around here: no one enjoys being stomped by someone who couldn’t be bothered with learning how to play, instead only seeking a shallow dopamine rush of trouncing players far better than them in titles.
It’s why developers put so much work into anti-cheats on their platforms, it’s why anti-cheats are intrusive, and can directly correlate with how well a game plays after the initial hype dies down.
Counter-Strike players are begging for more intrusive anti-cheats, Valorant players hate the intrusive anti-cheat, and players stuck against someone blatantly spin-botting hate existing.
Yet an interesting development has come from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare players that state that Activision has unfairly banned them. Granted, these claims surface every time a ban wave inevitably swings around and shows its face, with hundreds of forums posts popping up with ‘but I wasn’t cheating’.
https://twitter.com/ZerinaX/status/1275503655601369088
What makes this one interesting is that the player that has been banned appears to be one of the worst cheaters in the world, if he is cheating. Describing himself on Reddit as ‘bullet-fodder’ with a KD ratio of 0.8, with 24 wins and 70 losses, it’s actually difficult to presume that this player would have been cheating, unless this is the most elaborate set-up ever to cast doubt onto an anti-cheat.
Yet Activision/Blizzard has had more than a few issues in the past with bans, and more than once it has generated controversy.
Savjz was blacklisted by Blizzard because his wife made comments about Blizzard. There was also the Blitzchung controversy that allegedly had Blizzard obfuscate the ability for players to delete their accounts, Disguised Toast showed them an exploit and they banned another player with ‘Toast’ in their name.
https://twitter.com/DisguisedToast/status/873253016442372096
There’s more than enough history from unjust bans occurring that could point that the most recent ban-wave went a bit too far and simply started knocking everyone it could; alternatively, it could have scoured users PCs and found applications that have been used in other games, such as the infallible Cheat Engine which works a treat to make grind-fest titles a bit more constrained.
No one is asking for developers to be more accommodating to cheaters; in fact, the resounding cry has been the opposite. Yet when Activision/Blizzard has clearly been struggling in the past to competently manage bans, and Activision support is obfuscated to the point that it’s worthless, there are few other avenues for players to attempt other than making another forum post.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare still receives multiple notices on forums about cheaters continuing to blatantly ruin matches for everyone else even after this ban wave. At least they got the guy who earns less than one kill per life though.
