Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 players on social media have been reporting being falsely perma-banned for no reason. It seems like the issue is being caused by Activision’s Riccochet anti-cheat system, but no word has been given from Activision on the situation.
Many players are now looking for legal aid, as they have been falsely banned from playing a game they paid anywhere from $70 to $100 to play.
A former Microsoft employee, Mike Swanson, took to his blog to explain the situation and what he dealt from it. He describes himself as a casual Modern Warfare 2 player.
“Activision’s blind faith in the infallibility of their Ricochet anti-cheat software combined with a buggy and unstable Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 release, has resulted in faulty, permanent, and unappealable player account bans that prevent users from starting even the single-player game.”
The official Modern Warfare 2 subreddit has started even restricting posts about the perma-bans, but a Discord group that is now over 1,000 members since it opened is full of people who are in the process of filing reports with the BBB and the FTC, as well as potential class-action lawsuits regarding the unfairness of Activision’s business practices.
Swanson continued, writing, “These bans leave wrongly accused players who paid £70 with no explanation, recourse, or ability to communicate with Activision about their issue.”
Swanson was actually banned for supposedly using “unauthorised software and manipulation of game data.” He denied using any form of cheating software.
“Conveniently, they can’t tell me what caused the ban, and their decision is final. They helpfully recommend that I ‘avoid any of these types of violations’ to keep my account in good standing. As I don’t know what to avoid and did nothing in the first place, I’ve not installed any other Activision software just to be safe.
“Activision can permanently ban your account for any reason, never tell you why, provide no recourse, and keep your money. This is absolutely user-hostile (if not fraudulent) behaviour.”
Many users on the Activison subreddit have spoken about this issue, saying that they were banned permanently after trying to appeal despite not using cheating software either. Steam reviews also appear to be mentioning crashes leading to perma-bans.
Swanson said that Activision support staff said that “bans can be frustrating and sometimes can be raised by Activision for no reason.” They did admit later that they had received “several complaints about the same matter.” Nothing has been done to resolve the issue yet.
Swanson believes that the buggy state of the game may be leading to the bans.
“The frequent crashes and accompanying errors about corrupted files are being incorrectly flagged by the Ricochet anti-cheat software as intentional manipulations made by players. I can imagine the logic that would need to be implemented to avoid false positives like this, and given the number of game crashes, I suspect they have issues with Ricochet that they’re unwilling to review,” Swanson said. “I have offered to allow Activision developers to connect remotely to my PC to debug this issue, but as of this post, I have received no response.”
Many are suspecting that PC peripheral software, such as Razer Synapse and more that allow users to edit their hardware and RGB may be getting false-flagged as cheating software.
Whatever the reason is, this is a serious situation that Activision should address immediately. The state of Modern Warfare 2 is quite saddening. False shadowbans and perma-bans have been ongoing for well over a week now, with no resolution seemingly in sight.
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Zainah Yousef
Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.
