Activision finally explained how Shadowban lobbies work and dispelled rumors about how much of an impact spam reporting has.

Shadowbans have been a part of Warzone for years, but the process has never been fully explained to players. As we understood, in 2021, Shadowbans were given to players if their account was associated with illegitimate activity.

From there, all the punished players are put in one lobby, forcing them to play together instead of against unsuspecting others. Some players feared that they were put into these lobbies full of cheaters, even if they didn’t do anything wrong.

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This ties in with spam reporting because hackers claimed that they could mass-report players to get them shadow-banned without the need for multiple user reports.

Activision stepped forward to put the rumors to bed for good.

How do Shadowbans and spam reports work?

Activision

The Call of Duty Ricochet team revealed a plan to crack down on cheating in Season 3. Part of the blog details how Shadowban lobbies work, otherwise known as Limited Matchmaking.

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“Limited Matchmaking is a necessary part of the system as an immediate reaction to the detection of suspicious activity. LMM allows accounts to continue to play matches online in a separate pool from standard matchmaking as our team examines and collects all evidence necessary for further action – if needed,” Activision said.

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“Being placed in Limited Matchmaking doesn’t signal someone is a confirmed cheater but an alarm was raised that requires examination. There are several ways an alarm could be tripped, including a major change in an account’s behavior or if a brand-new account is dropping improbable stats, to name a few.”

The anti-cheat team reassured players that accounts in Limited Matchmaking only make up less than 0.15% of the entire player population in BO6 and Warzone.

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Activision

In addition, Activision’s anti-cheat team revealed that Season 2 introduced a new update that expedites the review process to reduce the time accounts are in Limited Matchmaking.

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In response to a community question asking if spam reporting impacts a player’s account status, Activision said, “Whether it’s in-game or if a cheat developer creates a hack to submit 10,000 reports, spam reporting does nothing. Subsequent reports provide no additional information.”

This comes after a hacker claimed in November 2024 that they exploited an issue in Call of Duty’s RICOCHET anti-cheat that resulted in the wrongful banning of “thousands upon thousands” of Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone players.

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At the time, players questioned why they should trust the development team about spam reporting, but this report helped clarify that confusion.