Cheating in multiplayer videogames is a fact of life. Developers do what they can, but there's always a portion of a game's audience that would rather dick around than play on a level field. It sucks, frankly, and not just for players, but for developers as well. In a recent interview with VGC, Raven Software associate creative director Amos Hodge expressed some serious frustration with Call of Duty: Warzone players who "ruin the game" for everyone else.
"No one hates the cheaters more than we do," Hodge said. "We make this content for the players and while you’re upset that it ruined your game, I’m upset that it’s ruining some of the best work that I’ve done in my life."
"I made this content for players and I know that everyone around the team feels that way. We put our hearts into this content, we have 100 million players, it’s been out a year, this is a huge stage and some of the best work we’ve ever done, and to have cheaters come in and ruin the game bothers us more than anyone."
Hodge said Raven and co-developer Infinity Ward "ban a ton of people," and that its security team is "continually going to make updates" to stay on top of the problem. And so it has: Developers dropped the hammer on 60,000 cheaters in a February ban wave and 30,000 more in March, and earlier this month Activision announced that it's banned more than 475,000 cheaters in total since Warzone went live.
But those numbers also speak to the scale of the problem. There are a lot of people who want to cheat, and as we said in our most recent report on Warzone bans, unless Activision cracks down hard on cheat developers and distributors, or implements an effective, CS:GO-style detection tool, it's not likely going to make meaningful headway against them.
If you're a Warzone player and think you might be suffering the effects of unfair play, be sure to check out our guide for spotting cheaters and hacks.
