136,000 Call of Duty accounts have gotten banned since ranked launched for Black Ops 6: "We’re not slowing down in our mission to shut down cheaters"

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is barreling towards the launch of Season 2, and ahead of that the devs are taking a moment to update the community on what's going on with anti-cheat. In short, well over 100,000 accounts have been banned since ranked mode was introduced, and the devs are working to make further anti-cheat improvements in Season 2 and beyond.

There have been "over 136,000 Ranked Play account bans since the mode launched," according to a new blog post. Notably, these are indeed account bans - the devs say they're not making use of IP bans "because they tend to take action against entire groups within a range that aren’t problematic. For example, a college campus or internet café would be swept up in an IP-based ban wave when only a single machine was targeted."

The devs note that they've implemented "new detection and warning systems for Spam Reporting," but say that spam reports don't actually work against targeted users because "our system does not consider more than one single report from a player versus another." That is, of course, "despite what cheat developers are telling players when they try to sell their illegal software."

In Season 2, which launches January 28, the devs are planning a "major" update to the kernel-level anti-cheat driver that's already live in-game. This will come alongside improvements to "detections and systems" both client-side and server-side. Sometime past the release of Season 3, the devs also plan to launch a "multitude of new tech" including a "brand-new system" aimed at separating legit players from cheaters.

"We’re not slowing down in our mission to shut down cheaters whose only mission is to ruin the fun for everyone else," the blog continues, "and we’re confident that the combination of the updates above, as well as ongoing improvements to our detection systems and Activision’s continued legal actions against illegal cheat sellers, will provide a demonstrably healthier gameplay experience going forward."

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