Shadowbans are an incessant issue in the Call of Duty community, but what if there was a way to ensure you never received one again?
Ever since the implementation of the RICOCHET anti-cheat software in Call of Duty, shadowbans have been a consistent problem facing the community. This year in Call of Duty: MW3 and Warzone has been no different, as innocent players are being given shadowbans for virtually no reason.
While the shadowban system is inherently flawed, one YouTuber believes they have come up with a way to completely stop them from happening. This method won't work for anyone who has been given a ban in the past for actually cheating but could give innocent players a chance to avoid the shadowban system altogether in MW3, Warzone, and eventually Black Ops 6.
TLDR:
- Shadowbans place players on a temporary ban with limited matchmaking
- They occur due to mass reporting of a player within a certain time
- Activision reviews shadowbans for a period of up to a week to determine if players should be reinstated or permanently banned
- You can potentially avoid shadowbans by changing three specific settings in your PC's BIOS and turning Core Isolation Memory Integrity on in Windows
- These fixes won't work if you've been previously permanently banned or if the settings were already enabled
What is a Shadowban in Call of Duty?
Before we start going over how to avoid shadowbans, it's important to understand exactly what they are and why you might have received one. A shadowban in Call of Duty is essentially when the RICOCHET anti-cheat software flags your account and puts it into review. This isn't a permanent ban that full-fledged cheaters usually receive, but instead a temporary ban that can either be turned permanent or lifted entirely.
After a period of review, which is usually around one week, if your account isn't found to be cheating, then the shadowban will be lifted. However, if cheats are discovered in any form, your account will be permanently banned. During the reviewer period of a shadowban, you can still find matches in multiplayer and battle royale. Unfortunately, you'll only play against other players who have received a shadowban in lobbies with extremely high latency.
While the shadowban system sounds good in theory, its implementation is flawed to the core. Players receive a shadowban after their account has been reported in-game a certain number of times simultaneously. This means that a full lobby in MW3 or Warzone could choose to report your account at the same time and give you a shadowban automatically, even if you're not cheating. The RICOCHET software doesn't dish out shadowbans unless accounts are reported en masse, meaning individual players decide who gets shadowbanned.
You'd think the shadowbans being lifted once would be the end of it in MW3 and Warzone, but that's not the case. Once you've received one shadowban, it takes fewer reports to shadowban your account again. This means if you're a good player who's not cheating, you could get stuck in an endless loop of being shadowbanned.
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How to avoid Shadowbans in MW3 and Warzone
If you happen to be caught in a shadowban loop or simply don't want to receive one in the future, a YouTuber by the name of Elvis COD might have you covered. The YouTuber seemingly discovered a series of PC settings you can change to fully avoid shadowbans from occurring on your account. As a disclaimer, these methods won't work if you've been permanently banned before or if you already had these PC settings changed.
It's worth noting that the methods seem to work for some players while other players are still getting shadowbanned. So take the methods with a grain of salt and know that you might get shadowbanned even after making the changes.
Below, we'll list the changes Elvis COD recommends and how to do them on your PC:
Change BIOS Settings
- First up, you need to make changes in your PC's BIOS. To enter the BIOS, restart your PC. As the PC is loading up, continually press the "Delete" key on your keyboard until the BIOS screen appears.
- In the BIOS, navigate to the "Advanced Mode" tab and search for an option called "TPM" for AMD users and "PTT" for Intel users.
- Enable this setting by clicking on it and switching it to "Enabled."
- Next, find the "Tweaker" tab and click on "Advanced CPU Settings." Find the option that says "SVM Mode" for AMD users and "VMX" for Intel users.
- Enable this setting by clicking on it and switching it to "Enabled."
- Finally, go to the "Boot" tab and disable an option called "CSM Support."
- After doing this, look for the Secure Boot option in the same tab. Click on Secure Boot and enable it.
- Save your changes in the BIOS and exit.
Change Memory Settings
- Once you're back in Windows, find your taskbar search icon and type in "Core Isolation."
- This brings you to a menu in your Windows Settings where you'll see an option called "Memory Integrity."
- Switch this to "On" and restart your PC.
- To enable Memory Integrity, you need up-to-date Windows drivers installed, so make sure you have the latest drivers by going to the "Windows Update" section of the Settings.
If you have enabled all of those settings on your PC and in the BIOS, you have the best chance of avoiding shadowbans in Call of Duty. However, as previously mentioned, this won't work for every player depending on your account's history or current PC settings. Some players have reported this works for them to adress shadowbans in MW3, while others say nothing changed. Enabling all of these settings won't hurt your PC or in-game performance, though, so it's worth giving them a go.
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