Letter to Activision

My Concerns with Warzone Shadow banning. False positives

Recently I posted here,

My link to that post is here https://www.reddit.com/r/Warzone/comments/t769is/shadowbanning_is_definitely_broken/

I have followed this up with a few emails to people inside Activision with the hope that maybe they would address or discuss something.

Here is the email that I sent, I would love to hear from others that have had the same problem or at least some upvote support to help raise the awareness.

Hello -----,

Love the games and the company.

I am reaching out because I have been negatively impacted by Activision and although this email wont change anything, I feel that at least if I reach out to you it may end up being discussed in planning meetings in the future.

Hacking/ Cracks and the use of exploits in Activision games are a unwanted and unfair distraction when playing games. I for one have been impacted by people using these tools. Obviously Activision has taken some steps to reduce this, but the problem with the broom being used is it hurts honest players.

I tend to spend my weekends playing Warzone and have done for the last 2ish years. I use it to relax as I tend to do 60 hour weeks. This weekend has caused me nothing but frustration as for some reason I was tagged as a cheater and put into lobbies with high ping. This makes the game unplayable and information on this "shadowbanning" technique used by Activision is not publicly discussed, nor are there any avenues for contesting.

Let me be clear, I don't use any exploits or have even added any new programs to my pc in the last 3 months. I am not sure what cause this shadowbanning nor can I provide feedback to Activision on items that maybe causing a false positive.

If I was banned, at least at that time I have a way to discuss this with Activision.

But instead of banning, Activision looks to have a process where, when some unknown cause will send a player into lobbies that are full of cheaters and has high ping ( I am not sure if this is artificial ping). It makes the game almost impossible to play.

From what I read on the internet, this ban may revert after some period of time, but there are some unknowns

1) What is the time

2) Do I need to continue to play?

3) If I don't need to play, what is the use of this system

4) What happens if the banning occurs again, as I am not doing anything wrong.

Now one item that I think could have triggered this type of false positive is that recently I have been using Excel a lot and while waiting in lobbies I would alt-tab into Excel. I am doing a lot of P&L/ margin and other work stuff where 1) I use a lot of macros and 2) I use VBA.

I am not sure if the change in focus and the type of program I am using causes a false positive, but then again we have no way to communicate this either to the developers or to Activision support.

Now I am well aware of the fact that all the abuses deny their actions and that you may paint me with the same brush, which I assure you again I am not.

Another point, is that if this isn't the cause, then maybe the heuristics used to determine accuracy or something has not been tuned properly to reflect the randomness or the chance involved when playing the game. I would have expected that Activision would have used machine learning or NN to solve these problems. I was hoping that Windows 11 and TPM2.0 would have been the saving grace for Cheating, maybe we have to wait a few more years.

So I am sitting here, while I would usually be playing Warzone asking myself what should I do. So what's better than communicating my frustrations about the shortfalls of the system to anyone who will listen and people who can communicate them internally at Activision.

Activision in an attempt to stop the rampant cheating in has used a carpet-bombing technique which has inflicted pain on honest players and the following are points which I believe need to be addressed by the company.

1) Why is there no system to address False positives?

2) Why hurt innocent players in the first place, when they are paid, loyal users who enjoy the game.

3) Why is there no way to flag to the developers possible causes of a false positive?

4) Why is there no official communication with the players of what happens through this process? I am very worried that if I don't play the game, then the ban wont be removed. Which my time is more valuable than that ( oh but I do love the game)

Hopefully you did take the time to read this email. I appreciate that you wont have much sway in any points here, but maybe you would be so kind to forward this internally to someone that cares?

Regards