What is a shadow ban in CoD?

Getting shadow banned isn't quite the same as being banned. Players who are shadow banned can still open the game and play, seemingly like normal. What shadow banning does, however, is take accounts that are cheating and group them into a separate player pool, away from the normal servers of players who aren’t suspected of cheating. The logic is simple: make the cheaters play against other cheaters, instead of ruining the game for players who are legitimate. The game does not tell you if you're shadow banned to keep cheaters playing the shadow ban version of the game for as long as possible.

A recent update to Warzone 2.0's anti-cheat system added the detection of kills per game. If you have more than 10 kills in a game, then the system will most likely determine that you are cheating and kick you out of the game and get shadow banned.

There have been plenty of cases of players who weren't cheating but still managed to get shadow banned. If you think you might've been shadow banned, here are the signs to look for to confirm it and how to get rid of the shadow ban.

How to tell if you're shadow-banned in Call of Duty?

Here's how you'll know you have been shadow banned:

• A large number of CoD cheaters in your games
• You'll have a high ping all the time
• Long queue times consistently

How to fix shadow-banned?

You can contact Activision and appeal against your ban

Then fill in your relevant information in the appeal page and submit.