Activision shared an interesting warning about Call of Duty policies.
They shared this warning on the official Call of Duty Updates Twitter account:
“Account reselling is a violation of the Call of Duty terms of use. Any account that has been knowingly sold will be permanently banned. Selling of accounts threatens the integrity of our community and our games.
We’ll be sharing a dedicated blog from #TeamRICOCHET detailing new technology and account security updates coming to Season 03 ahead of launch.
Reminder: Keeping your Activision Account secure with strong passwords and two-factor authentication is important.”
They also shared links to the Call of Duty terms of use and security best practices.
This warning, as you can imagine, received a variety of responses, but one stood out to us. Apparently, some Streamer Mode Plus accounts are being sold around between players. To understand why that’s a concern, we’ll have to explain Streamer Mode and Streamer Mode Plus.
These modes were introduced in 2022 specifically for the benefit of content creators. In the original Streamer Mode, the names of the people playing with a streamer are removed from public view. In Steamer Mode Plus, the streamer’s in-game name also gets replaced with a random name. Both modes are intended to protect streamers from people who are watching their streams. Someone with a grudge, or just looking for kicks, could otherwise find the streamer’s game to come in and specifically target them.
So, if some of those content creators are now taking advantage of the protections that Activision provided them, there’s a huge opportunity for abuse. Those content creators should know that selling their Streamer Mode Plus accounts break Activision’s rules and can get them banned. Presumably, Activision gave this warning out because those players are disregarding those rules. It’s also possible they didn’t even bother reading the terms of use.
The other factor around this, of course, is the pending return of Verdansk. Activision anticipates a large influx of players in Call of Duty Warzone to return to Verdansk again. Subsequently, a lot of cheaters and other bad actors are hoping to take advantage of the opportunity it creates as well.
While many Call of Duty players continue to claim that Activision is understating the degree to which cheating, and their anti-cheat measures, have failed to protect players, this statement is at least an indication that they are paying attention. It may actually be the case that what’s good for Call of Duty isn’t necessarily what Call of Duty content creators want, but as with many things Microsoft related, this is one thing the developers still keep close to their chest.
