What you need to know
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2023), Modern Warfare 2 (2022), and Warzone joined the cloud streaming NVIDIA GeForce Now service on November 30.
- The arrangement to add Call of Duty to GeForce Now cloud streaming was signed as part of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard King to appease regulators.
- Just 24 hours after the launch to cloud streaming, players are reporting on Reddit that their accounts have been banned.
- Call of Duty games use a proprietary anti-cheat software known as RICOCHET, which may be confusing the cloud streaming service as a means of cheating.
Update: The official Call of Duty Updates Twitter account acknowledged the unwarranted bans on Friday in a tweet that declared the issue with NVIDIA GeForce Now as resolved.
📢 #MW3 #MW2 #Warzone An issue has been resolved in which Players who accessed the game through cloud services received improper account enforcements. We have identified a small number of accounts impacted by this issue and are working to rollback unwarranted account…December 1, 2023
The accounts that were impacted by the enforcement issue have all been properly reinstated.
The Call of Duty HQ, a hub that houses the two most recent Modern Warfare games alongside Warzone, was added to NVIDIA's GeForce NOW service on November 30. The launch into cloud streaming doesn't seem to be going quite as well as many had hoped. Players have taken to Reddit and Twitter to share that their Activision accounts are being banned after playing Call of Duty titles via the cloud.
Microsoft signed an agreement with NVIDIA to add the Call of Duty franchise to their cloud streaming service to appease regulators concerned about the nascent market during the acquisition of Activision Blizzard King. The addition of the COD HQ to the cloud streaming service was the beginning of that agreement coming to fruition, with recent COD titles becoming available to play now via the cloud and Legacy COD titles coming later.
However, Call of Duty's modern titles utilize a proprietary anti-cheat software called RICOCHET AntiCheat. RICOCHET has had problems with misconstruing software applications, including RGB controller software, as software that could be used to cheat in online multiplayer matches. When RICOCHET detects problematic software, anti-cheat mitigation measures are activated, which may result in a ban on the Activision account the player was using.
Some players have reported that they've appealed the bans received in the last 24 hours for playing the game via GeForce Now, but these bans have not been overturned in many cases. Neither NVIDIA, Activision, Microsoft, nor the developers behind Call of Duty have acknowledged concerns with RICOCHET or false bans through NVIDIA GeForce Now at the time of writing this.
