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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:
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 may 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 ofElvis CODmight 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
Change Memory 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.
