Activision explains that weird spike in Call of Duty cheaters last week

Activision has given some explanation as to why fans were noticing more cheaters than normal in Call of Duty recently, saying on the “Call of Duty Updates” X account that its anti-cheat system had an issue which has since been resolved. Players started posting about an increase in cheating after the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 season 5, and its simultaneous launch on Game Pass, on July 24. 

“RICOCHET Anti-Cheat resolved an issue with a detection system over the weekend, which resulted in a spike in cheater reports,” it said.

That’s not much to go on, but in short: Activision has just nabbed a bunch of cheaters. Game developer reports on cheating methods and cheaters are often deliberately obfuscated, vague, or unclear in order to keep cheat developers in the dark about the countermeasures being deployed against them.

Much of the current discussion around cheating in Call of Duty has focused on the recently-released Windows Store and Game Pass version of Modern Warfare 3. Players have noticed that some people are able to appear as though they are on Xbox even if they’re playing from a PC, and some have speculated that the Game Pass launch was the cause of the increased cheating The Call of Duty Updates post said that Activision’s anti-cheat team is able to see what platform people are on “despite how they may appear in-game.”

Activision did stress the importance of in-game reports to help identify cheaters. 

“If you suspect a player in your lobby is cheating, regardless of platform, we recommend you submit a report in-game for further investigation,” it said.

Cheating is, as always, a hot-button topic in the competitive world of first person shooters. Activision won a $14.5M court case against a cheat maker earlier this year, and just yesterday another folded under legal threats without a fight.

Perhaps the only more consistent topic in Call of Duty land is the ever present discourse on skill-based matchmaking, which also had an interesting revelation this week: A secret experiment run by Activision on 50% of Call of Duty players found that people probably like it a lot more than they think.