Infinity Ward isn’t a stranger to banning people and it looks like the team hasn’t been holding back with its ban hammer as of late. Judging by the game’s forums and social media accounts, there have been a ton of recent Call of Duty: Modern Warfare player bans. And, according to those newly banished players, these abrupt punishments are seemingly for no reason.
The Activision Support Twitter account is just one of the places being bombarded with replies of users saying they have been dishonorably discharged from Modern Warfare without any warning or clarification. In addition to not getting an explanation of their ban, most are also claiming that they did nothing wrong in the first place. Activision hasn’t responded to any of these people either, which, combined with the lack of reasoning in the first place, has resulted in many angry players in its mentions that don’t have any sort of closure. The subreddit hasn’t been as flooded with claims, but there are still similar posts floating around.
Of course, Modern Warfare‘s forums are also ablaze with similar topics as many of the threads are purely based upon these supposedly unfair bans. Like those exiled players over on Twitter and Reddit, some are insisting that they didn’t even use voice chat or cheating software, making the bans even more puzzling. One user even posted their less-than-ideal kill/death ratio as evidence that they haven’t been playing unfairly. Another went a step further and claimed to have submitted a ticket to the Better Business Bureau and Federal Trade Commission. This wave of bans has caused some to reintroduce an old petition that begs Activision to offer an explanation of why it kicks out certain players. The petition is currently closing in on 13,300 signatures at the time of this writing.
Even though Call of Duty has always had the reputation of having a toxic playerbase, the sheer volume of these bans seems a little off. However, it might be somewhat related to Infinity Ward’s recent clampdown. On June 3, the studio pledged to issue “thousands of bans” to those with racist usernames, add more in-game reporting systems to “increase the amount of bans by hour,” and boost the number of permanent bans to “root out repeat offenders.” Given the volume of recently banned players, it’s hard to say who rightfully deserves to be terminated from Call of Duty‘s battlefield and who is just an unfortunate soul caught in the crossfire.
