Activision warns Call of Duty players spam reporting hackers won’t result in bans

Reporting players in Call of Duty is the primary method of getting rid of hackers who have managed to infiltrate your matches. Whether it’s casual or ranked play, submitting reports against those performing suspicious actions during a match is a surefire way of getting Activision to take some form of action.

Since the launch of Black Ops 6 and its integration into Warzone, the number of cheaters bypassing Ricochet anti-cheat measures has skyrocketed. After admitting existing measures had missed the mark, players loading into multiplayer and the battle royale have grown tired of waiting resulting in spamming the report button to get a faster response. However, Call of Duty’s publisher has reiterated spam reporting won’t result in bans.

Spam reports put legitimate players at risk

On December 23, the CODUpdates X account updated fans by explaining why spam reporting will not lead to faster bans. The post reveals that Call of Duty’s anti-cheat only acknowledges the first report and deliberately throttles additional reports.

As a reminder, spam reporting of any kind does not impact a player's in-game standing.

Whether one player reports someone once or a thousand times, our system only considers the first report and throttles repeated reports.

Users that attempt to spam report will have their…

— Call of Duty Updates (@CODUpdates) December 23, 2024

Instead of reacting to the reports submitted by legitimate players against those suspected of cheating, Activision takes action against those submitting the spam reports. The publisher says it recently banned over 8,000 accounts for spam reporting.

Despite claims of spam reporting resulting in hackers being banned quickly, legitimate players being wrongly reported are still receiving shadowbans preventing them from loading into Black Ops 6 and Warzone matches. “So if I report someone 10 times for cheating after I see them walling me, I can get banned for malicious reporting? Just throw the game away, the cheaters won,” replies one frustrated fan.

Will the situation improve?

The issue of spam reporting in Call of Duty continues to frustrate players. With hackers armed with the ability to deploy 100 reports with a single press of a button, it’s no surprise that shadow bans continue to cause problems. Removing the ability to send multiple reports prevents this issue altogether, so why wouldn’t Activision consider the simple solution?

With further anti-cheat measures arriving as part of the Season 2 update in late January, there are still several weeks until the situation improves. Banning players for submitting reports isn’t the right solution and it’s only a matter of time before Activision shoots itself in the foot once again with measures doing more harm than good.

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