Activision says the commercial ecosystem around game cheating – account sales, boosting, and spoofing services – now generates roughly £6.3 billion ($8.5 billion) a year. The figure comes from Team RICOCHET, the publisher’s in-house anti-cheat unit, in a blog post breaking down the scale of the market it says it’s fighting.

It’s worth being clear about where this number comes from: it’s Activision’s own estimate, not an independently audited financial figure. But the publisher is putting real specifics behind it, and the breakdown is more granular than the usual vague warnings about cheaters ruining lobbies.

What the $8.5 Billion Actually Covers

Team RICOCHET says cheat subscriptions alone, tracked across 15 games, account for about £2.6 billion ($3.5 billion) of that total. The rest comes from the wider support economy: compromised or boosted accounts changing hands, and hardware ID spoofing tools that let banned players get back into matches under a new identity.

Cheat sellers, per Activision, operate as a global network rather than a handful of scattered forum posts, which is part of why the company frames this as an industry rather than a nuisance. It’s a similar integrity problem to what Riot has been managing in Valorant’s fight against rank manipulation, just with a much bigger price tag attached.

The Enforcement Numbers

Activision says it has paired technical detection with sustained legal action to destabilise sellers at every level of the market, and it’s put figures behind that claim too.

Enforcement Action Reported Total Reseller operations disrupted 375+ Cease-and-desist demands issued 80+ Primary cheat vendors shut down 31

Activision also claims cheat sellers routinely lie to their own customers when their products get detected, blaming outages on illness, surgery, or car accidents rather than admitting the anti-cheat caught up with them. It’s a small, slightly grim detail, but it fits the picture of an industry trying to protect subscription revenue at all costs.

The publisher argues its pressure is making cheating expensive as well as risky. Subscriptions can run upwards of £75 ($100), spoofing tools add recurring fees on top, and Activision says some players end up spending more than £750 ($1,000) a year just to stay in undetected. That’s a similar logic to the proactive stance Riot Games has taken with Riftbound’s pre-emptive ban policy ahead of its next set – get ahead of the problem before it embeds itself in the competitive scene.

Timed to Modern Warfare 4

The timing isn’t subtle. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches October 23 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch 2, and Activision is currently dangling $5 in store credit to encourage pre-orders. A public reminder that Ricochet is actively hunting cheat vendors, right as a new premium shooter hits shelves, reads less like coincidence and more like reassurance for anyone who’s had a launch week ruined by aimbots before.

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