Activision is not only banning accounts this week. The official Call of Duty account posted bodycam-style footage of a process server walking up to a house in Ohio, ringing the doorbell, and handing over a cease-and-desist tied to cheat seller Elocarry.
The clip went up August 28. Faces are blurred. Names on the paperwork are redacted. Activision says it is an excerpt from a real recording taken during last weekend’s Modern Warfare 4 Early Access Beta. In the video the person at the door asks what the packet is. The server answers that it comes from attorneys for Activision and that it is a cease-and-desist, then tells them to call the office listed on the documents.
The company framed it like this: "RICOCHET Anti-Cheat doesn’t end when your match does. Cheat makers operate around the world. So do we. We’re taking the fight directly to cheat sellers. Last weekend during the Closed Beta, we went to Ohio to takedown Elocarry. That’s not an isolated case." Here is the video they posted:
The follow-up posts put numbers on that last line. Activision says it has disrupted more than 375 cheat reseller operations, served more than 80 cease-and-desist demands, and shut down more than 30 vendors. "And there’s more to come, including litigation when necessary. We’re prepared to take cheat developers and sellers to court to protect fair play." The all-caps closer was "BUILD CHEATS. SELL CHEATS. WE WILL FIND YOU."
A cease-and-desist demand is not a conviction and it is not a raid. It is a letter that says stop selling this or we sue. Activision has already taken that second step before. In 2024 a court ordered EngineOwning to pay more than $14 million after a lawsuit over Call of Duty cheats. The Ohio video is the public version of the first step, timed to a beta weekend when millions of people were already arguing about who was snapping heads through walls.
The same thread reported the closed beta itself. Activision said infection rates were lower across millions of matches, hardware bans were harder to evade, and time-to-action improved. New detections went in during the weekend. Open Access, weekend two of the Modern Warfare 4 beta, started later that Friday. Team RICOCHET was set to keep watching livestreams and swapping detections through the open period. The studio said it would share more after the beta, with launch still set for October 23.
PC players got the usual reminder in the same burst. TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are required to play Modern Warfare 4, sitting on top of hardware bans. Activision says it is still working with motherboard makers so more machines can clear that check.
Elocarry is the name they were willing to print. Other coverage has described it as a shop that advertised cheats across several multiplayer games, not only Call of Duty. Whether that shop is finished is a later story. The letter tells them to stop. The video tells everyone else Activision will show up at a door.
This is also advertising. RICOCHET has been the kernel-level wall since the Warzone years, and every new Call of Duty still ships with a cheat complaint attached to the Steam reviews. Posting a doorbell cam does not clean a lobby by itself. It does tell the people writing the menus that the company is collecting addresses, not only hardware IDs. For players who have watched acheaters eat ranked for a decade, that is the part that lands. For anyone who thinks a camera on a porch is theater, the EngineOwning judgment is the part that is not.
I want the sellers gone more than I want another trailer of a guy in a hoodie getting handed a folder. If the 80 demands turn into more EngineOwning-sized cases before October 23, the video was worth the eye roll. If Elocarry rebrands next week and the same menus are back in Discord, it was a beta-week ad. Either way, the open beta is the test players will actually feel. RICOCHET can post bodycam all month. The scoreboard in your match is still the review.
Weekend two is already running. Launch is October 23. If you are jumping back in on PC, check TPM and Secure Boot before you queue, because that requirement is not optional theater. It is the other half of the same campaign.
Does a doorstep letter change how you feel about cheating in Modern Warfare 4, or do you only care if the lobbies are clean in October? Let us know in the comments.