70,000 hardware bans before day one: Call of Duty’s new war on MW4 cheaters

Some cheaters won’t even make it into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

Team RICOCHET, Call of Duty’s anti-cheat team, has confirmed that more than 70,000 new hardware bans are already in place. Those bans will carry straight into the game when it launches on October 23.

Why hardware bans matter

An account ban can be dodged with a new account. A hardware ban can’t.

“Recent enforcement updates helped Team RICOCHET issue more than 70,000 new hardware bans,” the Call of Duty team said in posts on September 25. “Those hardware bans carry into launch.”

In practice, players caught in the latest wave can’t simply buy MW4 and start fresh on the same banned hardware.

Cronus Zen and XIM Matrix in the crosshairs

Team RICOCHET is also targeting input-modifying devices such as Cronus Zen and XIM Matrix. These tools translate or alter inputs between controllers, mice and keyboards.

Around 5,000 accounts have already been banned for using them to cheat.

Owning one isn’t automatically an offense, though. Some are sold as accessibility tools, and Activision says it judges them by what they do in a match, not by how they’re marketed. Players who use them to cheat face account and console bans.

Going after the sellers too

Activision isn’t stopping at players. The publisher says it tracked down Cronus’ North American distributor to a hotel in Southeast Asia last year and served him with a cease-and-desist.

PC players: check your settings

MW4 on PC comes with two requirements for online play:

1. TPM 2.0 must be enabled
2. Secure Boot must be enabled

Both give RICOCHET a more trusted environment to confirm a PC hasn’t been tampered with. Activision is urging players to check their systems now rather than find out on launch day.

Launch details

Whether 70,000 bans are enough to keep launch lobbies clean remains to be seen. But the message to cheaters is clear before the game is even out.