On September 18, 2026, the RICOCHET team, Call of Duty's anti-cheat system, published a post on the official blog about the market behind cheating in Modern Warfare 4 and Black Ops 7. The core idea is simple: a cheater is not just one player acting alone, but a customer of a whole business, with sellers, resellers, subscriptions and bought accounts. This article, written by the SequeLariCOD team in our own words, sums up what the post explains and why cheating is a terrible idea, even for cheaters. We teach nothing about cheats here: we only explain how the fight against them works.
A market, not a lone player
According to the post, cheating is sustained by an economy of sellers, renamed tools, illicit accounts and shops that collect data from their own customers. RICOCHET says it attacks that business on several levels at once: the technical infrastructure, distribution and the people running the sales. The tools it lists are in-game detections, account security, TPM 2.0 enforcement on PC, investigations and legal action.
To show the size of the problem, the post cites a February analysis by intelligence firm Intorqa, which estimated cheat subscriptions across 15 games at about 3.5 billion dollars a year, and about 8.5 billion when side services such as account sales are added. These are estimates from an outside company quoted in the post, not Activision figures.
How this market is organized
The post describes a pyramid. At the top are the cheat developers, who usually hide behind resellers and support teams. Below them come the primary vendors, who sell directly and supply resellers, and then layer after layer of resale pushing the same product through many shops at once. The RICOCHET team says it tracks hundreds of these vendors.
The results the post presents: more than 375 reseller operations disrupted, more than 80 cease-and-desist demands and help shutting down 31 primary vendors. Legal action targets the money, the payment channels and the partnerships of these businesses. For regular players, this shows up as cheats that stop working or a cheater who cannot get back into a match. The post notes, with some irony, that sellers often explain these outages to customers with excuses about illness or accidents.
The three pillars: cheats, accounts and ban evasion
RICOCHET splits the market into three parts that depend on each other:
- Cheats: programs that alter the game, unlock tools and even external devices connected to the PC or console. They are sold by monthly or weekly subscription and advertised as 'private' or 'exclusive'. RICOCHET uses technical detections to find unauthorized software and systems that analyze how someone plays over time.
- Accounts: anyone who gets banned needs another account, so there is a trade in stolen accounts, aged accounts and third-party leveling services. The post cites a survey of 10,000 players in which one in three said their account had been hacked in the previous two years. RICOCHET's answer is requiring two-factor authentication, which protects real accounts and shrinks the supply of stolen ones.
- Ban evasion: programs that try to hide the PC of someone already banned. The post says detections and security requirements, such as checking the PC before a match (TPM 2.0, Secure Boot and remote attestation), make these programs harder to use, and that hardware banning has improved: more than 70,000 new hardware bans in the month before the post.
False variety and scams among the sellers themselves
One curious point in the post is that many 'different' cheats are the same product under another name or brand. Resellers buy, reuse, modify or even steal each other's code and sell it again. This confuses customers, splits ban discussions across many communities and gives an impression of novelty where there is none.
That confusion also opens the door to scams. The post mentions the exit scam: the seller takes the payments, disappears, changes name and opens another shop. In other words, even inside this market whoever pays risks ending up with nothing.
What cheaters hand over without noticing
This is the most important part for young players who receive cheat offers. The post explains that, to use these programs, customers often have to turn off protections on their own computer, which leaves the machine exposed. Some selling communities demand checks that reveal the internet address, linked accounts, hardware data, email and payment details, and some sellers even ask for a photo ID. The post also says cheat developers hide malicious programs inside their own products.
In other words: besides risking the account, anyone who buys cheats hands personal data and their own computer to strangers. If someone offers cheats, a ready-made account or 'free items', the right move is not to click, not to pay, not to share data and to tell a trusted adult. SequeLariCOD's Play safe page gathers the official parental control and reporting links.
Cheating costs a lot, and more every time
The post says a cheat subscription costs about 40 dollars a month on average and can go past 100 for the priciest ones, and that ban evasion programs charge extra. Adding it all up, one person can spend more than a thousand dollars a year, and special devices raise the bill even further. RICOCHET's strategy is to raise that cost with several layers of protection so cheating stops being worth it. Each cheater removed takes their money out of the market, which weakens the sellers.
What this means for fair players
- Turn on two-factor authentication on your Activision account: it is the same protection RICOCHET uses against account theft.
- On PC, Modern Warfare 4 requires TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot; the site's requirements article explains what that means.
- Never buy, sell or lend accounts: besides breaking the rules, it is one of the most common paths to scams.
- Be suspicious of any offer of cheats, unlocks or free currency: the post shows these sellers collect data and spread malicious programs.
- Report cheaters using the game's own tools.
The post ends by saying this market keeps changing, and so does RICOCHET. To check the details, read the original text at the link below.