Preface

I want to clarify that this blog is just to share my experience. The “important” part you are likely after is in the “Legal” section of this post.

Any contact information can be found here.

This is NOT legal advice!!! Everyone’s experience may have different outcomes.

TL;DR

I have been fighting this ban placed on my Activision and Steam account for just over 2 years. On December 11th, 2024, during my second court case, it was ruled that I should have my suspension removed from the Call of Duty Franchise and all court fees paid. There were a few factors that led to this decision which I will go into more detail later on in this post. Key points include the hours played on my Steam account, other titles played with zero issues and most importantly, the lack of evidence that I broke the TOS on Activision Blizzard’s (AB) side.

Introduction

For over 2 years (763 days as of writing) I was wrongly accused of cheating and false banned from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2022. As of 08/01/2025, this has been officially lifted on all platforms.

It has taken countless support chats, emails and phone calls to get this resolution so if you decide to take similar measures then be prepared to be in for a long and stressful journey. Here are a few resources I found very useful and may be of use to you, in case you haven’t seen them:

Mike Swanson’s Blog is written by a former Microsoft employee of 12 years who has shared his story with Activision. A good chunk of the pages I submitted to the courts were this blog (with Mike’s consent). It was extremely helpful to be able to refer to someone with credentials to get my point across.

AntivisionBlizzard is another website that was of use and was one of the cases I had read that made me consider legal action. Also a good example of someone from the US taking the legal route.

COD False Ban Community is a Discord server that I had joined when it had hundreds of members. Being here from the start, I have seen so many stories of innocent players being banned and referred to this community in court. This is where I obtained most if not all the resources above from.

About Me

Hi, I’m b00lin! A name you likely have never seen before until now which is partly why this entire process was incredibly difficult. Activision tend to cater to those with a following; unfortunately I am not one of those people. I hold a degree in Computer Science and work in IT. While I may not know much about the law, I do have a good idea how computers work! I also play a lot of games (205 games in my Steam library).

I have sunk a lot of hours (and money) into gaming on Steam which is why this matter was so important to me.

I also play a lot of games that are not on Steam, Valorant being a good example. This is particularly important as Riot Games’ anti-cheat (Vanguard) is much-more-aggressive than Activision Blizzard’s anti-cheat (Ricochet). Riots anti-cheat will go as far as blocking certain files from loading on the machine (even if it does not manipulate Valorant files or game data).

The Ban

On 30th June 2022, I pre-ordered Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022) after playing the previous instalment of Modern Warfare II. This gave me access to play the game early (beta version of the game meaning bugs and issues are possible).

After 36.2 hours of gameplay, on the 11th November 2022, I opened my Steam profile to be greeted with a ban message. It stated that I was permanently banned from Modern Warfare II (2022), resulting in a marker being displayed on my Steam profile. Naturally, I attempt to find out why I was banned and appealed the ban. I received the dreaded email that most of you reading received.

My ban was “reviewed” and permanently banned for using “unauthorized software and manipulation of game data”.

Appeals

Naturally, I am annoyed about this and the appeals to get this reversed begin. Returning back to Activision’s website you will find nothing of use. I tried to appeal via the website however it was denied (yet to see one get accepted). Activision does not let you appeal more than once which starts the process of trying other places to plead your case.

To keep it short, I did what most people have done.

• Contact Activision support numerous via their ticket system
• Open multiple bbb.org tickets
• Attempt to phone Activision support (not possible)
• Contact anyone from Activision via LinkedIn
• Sending a letter AND email

Doing all of this I was told that my account would remain banned and that the decision was final. When appealing these bans, I would often ask if there was any proof of the “unauthorized software” used. The answer I always received was that they are unable to due to it being a security risk and could expose how the anti-cheat works.

There were multiple issues I had with this:

• Knowing information such as the name of the software, IP address that was used and how the software manipulated game data would all be known to a cheat developer. Not even this harmless information is provided.
• How can I prove that I didn’t cheat when no information has been provided? Was it Logitech G Hub? iCUE? OBS? To date I still don’t know what caused the false ban.
• Allegedly the anti-cheat driver kernel was leaked around 3 years ago, meaning cheat developers already have a good idea how the anti-cheat works.
• Just like anti-cheat’s, cheating has become a multi-million-dollar industry, and where there’s a will, there’s always a way. Fighting against cheaters is a cat and mouse game, no game will have zero cheaters. Even simple games like Muck and WEBFISHING will spawn in cheaters.

EULA/TOS

Before I get into the legal side, the EULA is something I want to touch on. From the start I have strongly recommended people to NOT ban evade and NOT use HWID (Hardware Identification) spoofers of any kind. This kind of activity might be seen as a violation of the TOS, even if the ban was invalid. You could argue that the original ban reason is for a totally different reason if Activision were ever to try and bring that up. I’m not a lawyer though, just speculating what could be a possibility (if they even care to get the evidence of that).

Activision’s EULA I am very familiar with at this point, most of it I found being irrelevant except Section 3. The legal team will also often refer to this. There is a noteworthy clause in the EULA that in layman’s terms, states that Activision can terminate your licence without a reason/for whatever they want.

In my experience, this clause did not work for Activision when they tried to use this in court because on numerous occasions had stated the “unauthorized software” reason multiple times, meaning they should be prepared to argue/defend that reason.

Legal

After so many attempts of trying to come to a resolution, taking it to the legal system was the only option. Offering to sign NDA’s and use an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR, which is required before to do before UK courts) was not enough. ADR is simply a way of trying to come to an agreement before going to court.

Again, I DO NOT know the law. I would do it differently if I had to do it again (hopefully I don’t) however, this is just how it played out based on what I was advised.

I started off by filing a Money Claim Online (MCOL) in January 2024 to the courts in the UK. I paid the fee, and claimed for the cost of the game + the fee to file the claim. Weirdly enough, I had no answer from Activision which resulted in me winning by default. This meant I had won and it is over right? Right?

When giving my bank details to be paid out, I requested that they also remove the ban from my account and gave notice that I would go back to the courts if they failed to remove the suspension. Activision paid me out but still refused to remove the suspension placed on my account. Their reasoning was that the courts did not order them to do so therefore they wouldn’t. I am sure they wish they had done so because it ended up costing them in the long run.

Annoyed that I still had my ban, I followed up and started getting advice as to how I can file for something that isn’t money related. After many phone calls with Citizens Advice and the courts, I found that I had to issue a non-money claim. The downside to this is that it gets expensive very quickly, paying £365/$462 just to file the claim and roughly another £360/$454 to pay the for the actual hearing.

Eventually I managed to get it filed with the courts and the legal nightmare continues. It is at this point that Activision decide to pass the case to a law firm and no longer wish to deal with it themselves, something I have seen them do with other cases.

Dealing with lawyers

I’ll admit, this isn’t fun and can be incredibly intimidating to someone who doesn’t know the law. I’ll skip past all of the boring filings that have to be done and get straight to the main points.

Their defence throughout the entire 2 years has been the exact same, that I cheated and they have the right to permanently suspend my account. The lawyers they hired also parrot the same thing that I have been told by Activision countless times.

I decided to try one last time to try and come to an agreement with Activision (UK courts encourage this). I phoned the law firm acting on behalf of Activision and was willing to settle under the following terms:

• Request that the suspension be removed on my Activision account and all accounts linked to it. 
• In return, I would waive all monetary claims related to this new claim (the filing and hearing fee) AND return the £94.99 that was paid when I did the Money Claim Online.
• Not pursue any further action towards Activision Blizzard regarding this matter
• Sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding the terms of the agreement as well as being open to terms being changed as they see fit.

The law firm reported this information back to Activision but they declined once again. They believed that they were in the right and that the ban should remain. It was at this point the law firm suggested I should withdraw my claim because it was an abuse of the Court’s process, meaning my case would be dismissed immediately and thrown out. The email also noted that if I were to continue the claim, it would be struck out immediately by the Judge. As a result, they would also recover legal costs meaning I would be in an insane amount of debt.

As someone who is not a lawyer, I wanted to back down and trust the lawyer who knows the law. Looking back, I assume that this is what they wanted me to think. They wanted to intimidate so I didn’t show up, I am very glad that I didn’t.

Court Day!

Since neither parties could come to an agreement, it actually ended going all the way to the courts. I assume Activision wouldn’t expect me to take it this far but here we are!

In the UK court small claims court system, both parties have to submit the evidence they intend to use to the court AND the other party. When they submitted the evidence they intended to use, I noticed straight away there was zero evidence of what they are accusing me of.

??????

This meant that if I didn’t commit any abuse of process within the courts, my case would be heard and Activision would have no evidence to show what they are claiming. It would appear that Activision’s anti-cheat/security team is so strict that the people they hired to defend them were not allowed to see any “evidence” of the “unauthorized software or manipulation of game data”.

Knowing this information gave me a bit more confidence however there was an issue. In their defence, Activision explained that the burden of proof should be on me as “there is no requirement for Activision to prove that I had cheated” and “any burden rests on the Claimant” (me). The Judge agreed with this so I had the task of providing evidence that I didn’t cheat.

This was going to be difficult as I had to try and prove a negative. On top of this, I had nowhere to start as I was still unaware of what could have been flagged by the anti-cheat. The only way I could plead my case was by showing evidence that contradicted the claim being made. The points made were:

• I have played a lot of games over the course of 7 years with zero issues.
• Having 36.2 hours playtime and being banned makes no sense when my other games have 100’s or 1000’s of hours put into them.
• I would not be putting myself through a strenuous process of 2 years in an attempt to get this resolved.
• I was not suing for money and just wanted the suspension removed. Furthermore, I also noted that I wanted nothing to do with Activision after this.
• The game was in beta at the time of being banned meaning the product was incomplete. This means that it was susceptible to bugs because it was incomplete. (It can still be argued that the game still has a lot of bugs).

As part of the UK court process, the defendant was allowed to ask me a set of questions. These questions that they asked happened to work in my favour. Here are a few of those questions they asked (paraphrased):

• Do you believe cheaters are bad?
• How should companies deal with cheating?
• Have you ever played a game with so many cheaters that you have stopped playing that game?
• Do you agree that cheating on PC is much more of an issue than console?

Of course I believe cheating in games is bad. I also believe that companies should ban those who cheat in games. However, I made it very clear that an anti-cheat should ban those that are actually cheating, not innocent players. I mentioned that I had stopped playing a game because of cheaters (CS2) but picked it back up because of FACEIT where I made it clear that I had willingly opted into using an anti-cheat in order to combat those cheaters.

The final question asks if cheating on PC is more of an issue than it is on console is quite interesting. I never made these points in court but as it wasn’t relevant but think it deserved a mention here. The freedom PC users have over their hardware makes cheating much more of an issue. What doesn’t add up is that a large amount of console users are also getting banned by the anti-cheat. To my knowledge, there are no public/known exploits that can be done on the newer gen consoles to use unauthorised third party software or manipulate game data. If that is the case, how are so many people being banned on consoles for this? Someone can correct me on this if it is incorrect.

During the case, the lawyers also mentioned that the ban should remain because it had been “reviewed” and they could “confirm” that I had “broken” the EULA/TOS. This was an interesting point because it made both me and the Judge question, who actually reviews these complaints/appeals?

What kind of credentials do they have?

How rigorous are these reviews?

Does anyone even review these appeals?

I’m sure a few of you have been told that your case has been “reviewed” and possibly more than once. On numerous occasions, I have been told that my case was “reviewed” and that the decision was final. It was only until this was mentioned in the court that it was challenged.

Verdict

It was decided that I should have my suspension removed AND have the court filing and court hearing fee repaid by Activision. A combination of the evidence I submitted (a good chunk of it being Mike Swanson’s Blog) and lack of evidence submitted by Activision led to this decision. The Judge was also satisfied with the case that I had put forward and that I wouldn’t have cheated on their game. The Judge also found Activision to be the one in violation of the contract and with that, 2 years of phone calls, emails and reading pages of legal jargon had finally come to an end.

Why bother?

To me this ban mattered a lot. Having a Steam profiles reputation ruined after 7 years of ownership is what fuelled me to keep going and not give up. A ban for something I did not do on a profile I cherish and have spent 1000’s did not sit right. For games like Counter Strike 2, it takes into account the Steam profiles standing when matching you with players. Those with a poor standing can get put into lower quality matches.

This ban also ruined other games for me. If I ever did well in a game, someone would look at my profile to see how many hours I have and instantly see the red marker that shows “I am a cheater”.

Once people see that you have a game ban on record, in their mind it confirms you were cheating because “an anti-cheat would never be wrong”. A lot of these people will hopefully never have to go through this process which means they would never know it is an issue that exists.

Unbanning Process

Unfortunately I do not have a date of when I was unbanned on Activision’s end but the ban was lifted.

If I had to guess it was done within 14 days of the court hearing however, the ban was not removed from Steam at the same time. In my experience, it is very important to specify that Activision need to contact Steam in order to remove the ban as Steam themselves state they are unable to modify or remove game bans. Any attempt to contact Steam will result in them redirecting you to the game developer.

The Steam game ban was removed on the 8th January 2025.

Conclusion

After fighting this false ban for over two years, I am happy to say it is finally over. In my opinion, it was worth the effort just to see the account alert above. Hopefully I have highlighted that this is a serious issue that should be resolved. False permanent and shadow bans are still prevalent in the newer titles that use the Ricochet anti-cheat. This will likely continue to be an issue because it isn’t something being addressed on a larger scale.

I want to once again thank everyone who has helped throughout, especially those who documented their own experiences and provided resources that were useful in court.

Noteworthy Sources

University of Birmingham – A research paper was conducted to show that cheaters will commonly bypass Microsoft Windows kernel protections.

University of Birmingham – The research paper mentioned above. It discusses anti-cheat’s effectiveness.

Restera/Anti-Cheat Police Department – 3 years ago, showing the kernel driver for what was then the new anti-cheat “Ricochet” being leaked.

PCGamer – PCGamer’s article which raised the issue of innocent players in Call of Duty being banned.

Activision TOS – The amount of times I had to refer to this was scary. If you ever decide to go down the legal route, you will need this.

Call of Duty Security & Enforcement Policy – Was not used nearly as much as the TOS but it is still important.

Mike Swanson’s Blog – Mentioned in the introduction but I felt it was worthy of being mentioned again

HunterTV – A YouTuber who creates videos in an entertaining format whilst still highlighting issues with Call of Duty. He showcases that even after a long period of time, the game still has major bugs. Some videos also show