Activision’s blind faith in the infallibility of their RICOCHET anti-cheat software, combined with a buggy and unstable Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II release, has resulted in faulty, permanent, and unappealable player account bans that prevent users from starting even the single-player game. These bans leave wrongly accused users who paid $70+ (USD) with no explanation, recourse, or ability to communicate with Activision about their issue. The message is: you’ve been banned for doing something, we can’t tell you what you did, please don’t do it again (or we might ban you from our other games), and oh, thanks for the money.
Because actual in-game cheating is so rampant, attempts to raise this issue meet with predictable “shut up and go away, cheater”-style responses on Twitter and Reddit. And moderators of popular forums like r/ModernWarfareII refuse to allow posts that try to increase awareness of the issue, again, likely assuming we’re all a bunch of whining cheaters. I don’t think they’re aware of the disservice they’re doing to their community by actively suppressing these reports (or conspiratorially, they’re influenced by Activision itself).
The top-rated review on Steam for Modern Warfare II includes comments from many banned users, and the r/Activision subreddit also contains several posts. Players are so frustrated that they’re organizing themselves in places like Discord – COD False Ban Class Action Lawsuit (500+ current members) where they’re filing reports with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), among others. An Activision Anti-Consumer Practices site has also been setup to coordinate efforts.
Even Activision Blizzard’s own support staff are aware of the issue, responding:
We understand that bans can be frustrating and sometimes can be raised by Activision for no reason, and we have had several complaints about the same matter. (boldface mine)
Yet all attempts to get Activision to recognize, respond to, or address this issue have fallen on deaf ears.
I’m a casual player, and while I’ve completed the single-player campaign on PC and fought automated bots in custom/private matches, I’ve never once played online multiplayer (a quick check of my logs would easily confirm this). I’ve also never cheated, nor have I downloaded or used any cheat software. In fact, I wasn’t aware of cheat software until I researched this issue.
Anyone who’s played (at least the PC version of) Modern Warfare II is fully aware of the instability and bugginess of the release. A brief review of the MWII subreddit will reveal users complaining about the constant crashes. A few nights ago, I was trying to start a custom match, and each of my ~8 attempts resulted in a crash (like “DEV ERROR 292”, “DEV ERROR 11642”, or messages about corrupted files). I gave up for the evening, and when I launched Battle.net the next morning, I saw an “account banned” message, and I am now prevented from launching the game.
Activision’s “appeal” process seems to result in the same automated response for everyone, including me:
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.
Complaints to the BBB by others have resulted in responses from Activision like:
Activision has reviewed your case and confirmed your account has been banned. Any specifics regarding the ban will not be released in order to help maintain the integrity and security of the game, this is company policy that will not be changing. Please be aware that the Enforcement team runs a thorough investigation before taking these actions on the account, therefore, our position remains unchanged.” (boldface mine)
Yes, that’s right. 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) behavior.
As a developer, my personal theory is that 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. 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.
For completeness, users have also suspected that RICOCHET may be incorrectly detecting RGB control software, GPU software like MSI Afterburner or NVIDIA GeForce Experience, or programs like Discord. Additionally, console players are being permanently banned with the same “unauthorized software and manipulation of game data” message, causing many to wonder how it’s even possible for console players to perform those actions. Again, with no communication from Activision, we’re left completely in the dark.
If—after all of this—you still think I’m a cheater who deserves to be banned, there’s probably nothing I can do to convince you otherwise, and in that case, I sincerely hope that this never happens to you.
If, however, you think that it’s unfair to pay $70+ for a game, play it for a few hours, and be permanently banned from ever playing it again (for no reason and with no recourse), I’d appreciate if you can help us spread the word by sharing this post and any of the resources I’ve referenced.
It’s my hope that Activision recognizes that this is an actual issue and addresses/fixes it accordingly.
Thank you for your time!
Update on 12/6/2022: This post made it to #1 on Hacker News, and the comments are worth reading. Also, as predicted, the post on r/ModernWarfareII was deleted by the mods shortly after submission.
Update on 12/8/2022: A YouTube video from @ItsHapa about this issue along with some good comments.
Update on 12/13/2022: A YouTube video from @BadBoyBeaman that references @ItsHapa’s post. Includes more relevant comments from falsely banned players.
Update on 12/15/2022: An article from PC Gamer: It looks like Call of Duty’s anti-cheat is permabanning innocent players. Thanks for helping to raise the visibility of this issue, Ted!
Update on 12/2/2023: I detail everything that’s happened over the past year: My Year-Long Struggle Against a Call of Duty False Permanent Ban.
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