Scump blasts Call of Duty cheating crisis as Season 3 frustrations boil over

Seth “Scump” Abner has dragged Call of Duty’s cheating problem back into the spotlight, and the reaction around the clip makes one thing clear: this is no longer a noisy complaint from the edge of the community, it is a trust problem sitting right on top of Season 03. Scump, one of the most recognized names in the game, said cheating is spiraling out of control and ruining the game, a message that hit especially hard as players have kept stacking up complaints about aimbots, wallhacks and repeat offenders in Ranked Play in Verdansk.

That frustration landed just weeks after Team RICOCHET rolled out a major Season 03 anti-cheat update on April 2, 2026. The update expanded device detections for unauthorized input hardware such as Cronus Zen and XIM Matrix, added SMS two-factor authentication for new Activision accounts used by free-to-play PC players, and pushed new in-game warnings for players who do not meet TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot requirements. RICOCHET has been trying to make it harder for bad actors to get into matches or keep burning through accounts, but Scump’s public stance shows many players still feel the problem is outpacing the fixes.

Activision says the fight is being handled both on the PC and server side. RICOCHET uses a kernel-level driver on PC, server-side tools to detect cheating, and remote attestation through Microsoft Azure, with those security features set to launch on day one of Black Ops 7. The company has also leaned hard on enforcement numbers, saying it shut down five more cheat makers during Season 03, bringing the total to more than 20 since Black Ops 6 launched, and disrupted more than 150 cheat resellers over the same stretch. Between Season 02 and Season 03, Activision said new cheating accounts were banned within an average of four matches.

Those numbers matter because Call of Duty’s cheating fight has become part technical arms race, part credibility test. Activision also said it protected more than 10,000 accounts from suspicious account-linking attempts in its Season 03 recap, another sign that cheaters are still looking for ways back in after bans. Scump’s criticism gives that reality a face players immediately recognize, and that puts fresh pressure on Activision to prove that RICOCHET is keeping pace with the scale of the problem, not just reacting to it.