This is a problem affecting thousands of people. It's widespread enough it's being picked up by non-gaming media, and there's a plague of reports in both the steam reviews and @ warzone twitter support. I've seen people say they've been banned after the game crashed, for having router issues, for using Razer or Logitech software to manage their peripherals - being accused of "Unauthorised software and manipulation of game data" just seems like an umbrella term for any arbitrary problem the anti-cheat has with your machine. And once you're banned you're locked out of the entire game, regardless of how much money you've spent, and are given extremely limited ability to appeal.

Firstly, and this feels important to mention; it's easy to assume that the people complaining about being banned in Warzone 2 are actual cheaters and deserved it. All I can say is that I hope you're never falsely banned and have to deal with that yourself, because it sucks. I think there's a pretty strong precedent for these ban waves hitting innocent players from the previous warzone, where many players quietly had their bans overturned after several months even though Activision never admitted to doing anything wrong. While there are obviously some legitimate cheaters, Activision does not have a history of nailing these bans every time and definitely do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. Beyond that there should be a more thorough review/appeal process, especially when people are spending money on the campaign or on battle passes.

Secondly, it's not my account that's been banned, but one of my regular squadmates. His inability to join us means our quad is now a trio. For a game that's so heavily focused on teamwork, having a friend blocked from joining kills my own enthusiasm to play the game, because Warzone for me has always been primarily a social experience. I don't want to invest a bunch of time in a game which my friends aren't able to play, and I'm now nervous of spending any money on the game in case my own account is hit with an arbitrary ban.

He appealed the ban and it was denied so quickly that there's obviously nobody checking the appeals and it's just an automated system. He tried to post about it on the warzone subreddit and the post was automatically deleted by a blanket rule which removes any thread that includes the word "ban". He's an older dude, several kids, just plays casually in the evenings after the kids have gone to bed. Quite a timid player, will often end a game with no kills but we like having him in the squad because he's just a nice person to have around. Now he's been blocked from even playing the campaign because of his false ban so he's effectively lost $110. Even if his ban is eventually overturned he could be locked out of the game for months, during the launch window when the game is most popular.

Unless this is fixed soon I'll probably stop playing myself. I don't want to give my time or money to a game or company which obviously has no respect for either. Beyond that, this kind of business practice is completely unacceptable and I'm pretty fucking upset about it.

Is it just Warzone where it's easy to get banned or does this apply to the other multiplayer modes too? I'd assume they all use the same rulesets, but maybe they're stricter in the free mode.

I've been really enjoying the regular multiplayer, but this makes me a little wary.

If I get banned I would hope that one look at my statistics would show that I am definitely not cheating

Activision/any AAA-level game publisher should NEVER be given benefit of the doubt.

That's MY blanket rule.

That's kind of my point - they definitely do not do this and do not take this into account.

I've seen reports of people who have been banned while only playing the campaign, only playing multiplayer, or only playing warzone. Because of the "always online" nature of the game, and the fact that Ricochet (their anti-cheat) is constantly monitoring your PC, if it deems something shady to be happening in the background it will automatically issue a ban regardless of which aspect of the game you seem to be playing, from what I can tell.

Oh I've also seen a lot of reports of console players receiving these same bans too. I'm not sure how you could conceivably be accused of "Unauthorised software and manipulation of game data" on a PS5, which I guess is another indication that these bans aren't justified.

Unfortunately, yes.