Well, who knew people love cheating.
According to recent reports, cheat subscriptions across only 15 games generate roughly 3.5 billion dollars annually. On top of it let us add account sales, boosting, spoofing and related services and the figure reaches about 8.5 billion.
This is a modelled estimate across 15 titles, not audited revenue, and Activision is citing it in a post about why its anti-cheat work matters.
Intorqa's framing is that cheat revenue exceeds the entire global esports market.
What cheating costs a cheater
So here it is subscriptions average around 40 dollars a month. Some high-end ones cost around 100. Also spoofers to dodge hardware bans, Direct Memory Access hardware built to get around kernel-level anti-cheat, and replacement accounts, and Activision says some users spend over 1,000 dollars a year.
The reports state that some sellers require users to disable security protections or hand over authentication data, which can reveal IP addresses, Discord accounts, hardware details, email addresses and payment information. The person selling you an aimbot now knows a great deal about you.
Ricochet's numbers
- More than 375 reseller operations disrupted
- More than 80 cease-and-desist demands issued
- 31 primary cheat vendors helped shut down
- Over 70,000 hardware bans last month
- Over 293,000 Call of Duty accounts banned in 2026, with detection to removal averaging around six minutes
So there is a leveling system. Shadow bans route suspected accounts into restricted lobbies with other cheaters, while evidence builds, escalating to ranked restrictions, suspensions, permanent bans or full hardware bans.
Some was sued, EngineOwning was ordered to pay Activision more than 14 million dollars in 2024.
Timing also matters, Modern Warfare 4 launches in October, and cheat developers are reportedly using generative AI to speed up development and obfuscation.
The survey, and a catch
Anybrain, which sells anti-cheat, commissioned Atomik Research to survey 250 US and UK developers who've launched competitive multiplayer games.
- 69% call cheating a significant or very significant problem
- Over half report measurable retention drops or revenue loss
- 76% have implemented anti-cheat, mostly several solutions at once
- 88% plan to increase anti-cheat investment in the next year
The survey also reports 93% have a dedicated in-house anti-cheat team.
CEO André Pimenta Ribeiro stated "No single tool can solve this anymore, which is why the studios seeing the best results are the ones treating security as part of their tech stack, not a silver bullet."
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