What is shadow banning in Warzone? How to find out if you’ve been shadowbanned

❘ Published: 2021-07-05T09:43:43

Activision

Call of Duty: Warzone has been plagued by hackers and cheaters since its release, however they’ve implemented the ‘shadow ban’ system to solve this issue.

Despite Raven’s best efforts, Call of Duty’s online battle royale, Warzone, continues to be overrun by hackers and cheaters.

With a series of hacks seeing mischievous players crashing people’s games (especially streamers), the devs need to do something soon.

Enter shadow banning, the system that’s devised purely to stop rule breaking players in their tracks. Here’s everything you need to know about this type of punishment.

What is a shadow ban?
How to tell if you’ve been shadow banned
How to fix a shadow ban

Looks like Raven have implemented an interesting system to nail down misbehaving players.

What does shadow banned mean in Warzone?

If you’ve been hit with a shadow ban, Raven have decided that your account is associated with some form of illegitimate activity.

Read More: Warzone Season 4 review — Best gun meta yet & feels like an action movie

Shadow bans are given to Warzone players who have been hacking or cheating. Their main purpose is to group all of the punished players in the one lobby so that they’re forced to play together instead of against unsuspecting others.

As you can imagine, this is an absolute nightmare of a lobby to play in, so while you don’t want one of these bans on your own account, you can take some satisfaction from the fact that getting a shadow ban is hellish for cheaters.

Unlike with a permanent ban, there’s no clear warning regarding shadow bans.

How to tell if you’ve been shadow banned

While there’s no obvious way to tell if you’ve been shadow banned, here are a few of the things you should look out for if you’ve noticed some changes in your account.

High ping: If your ping goes from normal to being in 100 range, then t0 0ver 300, this could imply there’s a ban on your account.
Long queue times: If you’re waiting a long time to get into a game, this is likely due to Activision having placed you in a ‘heavy’ shadow ban queue while they review your case.

How to fix a Warzone shadow ban

Normally accidental bans are lifted after 7 to 14 days, but if you’re sick of getting thrown into the lion’s den you can dispute the matter with Activision using this link.

So that’s everything you need to know about shadow bans in Call of Duty: Warzone.

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