Call of Duty Named the Most Cheater-Riddled Game in New Study

Nobody who has spent time in Call of Duty lobbies will be particularly shocked by this. But now there is data to back it up.

A study published on 24 February by cybersecurity firm Surfshark confirmed what many players have suspected for years: Call of Duty leads the pack when it comes to cheat-related interest online. According to the findings, 66 out of every 1,000 players search for Call of Duty cheats. That puts it well ahead of the competition.

Surfshark did not measure confirmed cheaters or ban rates. Instead, it analysed global search data tied to high-intent cheating keywords such as "aimbot," "wallhack," "cheat," and "hack" across 15 popular competitive multiplayer PC titles. A "cheat interest ratio" was then calculated per 1,000 players, giving a community-level picture of demand for cheating tools.

Here is how all 15 games ranked:

Some will argue Call of Duty's sheer size skews the numbers. More players means more searches, in theory. Fair point. But the ratio accounts for player count, so the result is proportional, not just raw volume.

One genuinely interesting wrinkle from the study: games that use kernel-level anti-cheat programs showed a lower search interest in cheating keywords among players. Valorant's Vanguard, for instance, appears to be a strong deterrent. The game registered just one cheat-related search per 1,000 players. League of Legends and Overwatch sitting at the very bottom of the table tells a similar story.

On the flip side, MOBAs had the highest level of community integrity among gaming genres, averaging just 0.3 cheat-related searches per 1,000 players.

What Activision Is Doing About It

Timing is a funny thing. Just weeks before the Surfshark study dropped, Activision published a major update to its RICOCHET Anti-Cheat system tied to Black Ops 7's Season 2 launch.

For Season 2, Activision introduced a new suite of RICOCHET detections targeting illicit devices and the accounts that use them to cheat. Two specific pieces of hardware were in the crosshairs.

Cronus Zen and XIM Matrix are devices that run customised scripts and macros to reduce recoil and provide aim assistance. They have been a persistent headache for developers for years - available at major retailers, impossible to block by serial number alone because they are so configurable.

The Season 2 update took a different approach. Rather than searching for specific input devices, the new detection method focuses on player input behaviour, analysing input timing, consistency, and response patterns to distinguish natural human play from machine-modified input. If your aim precision and recoil control physically exceed what a human hand is capable of, the system flags it.

Alongside the Cronus Zen and XIM Matrix detections, Activision also introduced remote, cloud-based attestation with Microsoft for Ranked Play, blocking tampered systems before matches even begin.

Early results from those changes were promising. Following the introduction of cloud-based attestation, Ricochet Anti-Cheat claimed nearly 99% of Black Ops 7 Ranked Play matches were cheater-free. Warzone Ranked Play told a different story, with higher levels of cheating reported there due to Microsoft attestation not yet being fully enabled in the battle royale.

There was also a bit of collateral damage. During early Season 2 tuning, a limited number of legitimate players were inadvertently flagged, with Activision acknowledging the issue and making targeted adjustments to prevent it happening again.

Activision has been clear this is not a solved problem. The publisher described the anti-cheat effort as not a "one-and-done solution," with RICOCHET continuing to build on its detections until unapproved devices no longer function across Call of Duty.

Whether that promise holds up in practice is a different question entirely. The study is a reminder that demand for cheats in Call of Duty shows no sign of shrinking. The arms race continues.