Call of Duty: Warzone Embraces Cheat Ban Purgatory by Matching Cheaters Together

It didn't take long at all for Call of Duty: Warzone, the new free-to-play battle royale mode for 2019's Modern Warfare reboot, to become one of the most popular and talked-about shooters out there. With that tremendous popularity comes cheaters, thousands of which have already been banned from Warzone. Now, Warzone's developers are adding another anti-cheat measure: lobbies that match suspected cheaters together.

Infinity Ward confirmed the feature as one of a few new updates intended to address Warzone's cheating problems. A few days after Warzone crossed the 50 million player milestone, Infinity Ward announced that it had already issued over 70,000 bans for suspected cheating in Warzone.

For players who aren't cheating, the most noticeable change should be new notifications when someone they've reported for suspected cheating gets banned. "Additional dedicated security updates" have also been deployed and Infinity Ward says it has increased resources for the studio's anti-cheat endeavors. Soon, a "report-a-player" function will be added to killcam and spectator views.

Warzone's cheater-on-cheater matchmaking isn't a new idea. Respawn Entertainment implemented a version of it in its battle royale Apex Legends just last year, and in Titanfall before that. Even the Dark Souls series has a "softban" measure intended to only let cheaters interact with other cheaters.

Infinity Ward and co-developers Raven have been pretty active in their efforts to ensure Warzone's matches are as fair and fun as possible. Recently, an update removed armored trucks from Solos mode to prevent truck-only strategies that bordered on griefing. Many players still want Warzone to cool it with the playlist lineup changes, but hearing that cheaters are getting their just desserts should be welcome news for just about everybody in the community (except for, y'know, the ones who are cheating).