Call of Duty Warzone 2 is still plagued by a multitude of bugs and exploits nearly two months after launch. The latest one seems to give you the power to shadow ban someone from the game altogether.
Spotted on the r/CODWarzone subreddit, user pubgisDEAD shared a video where they were continuously reporting an opponent in the game. Interestingly, this wasn’t because of any suspicion of the player being a hacker, but just so they could show how broken the game’s reporting is. They were spectating the opponent while simultaneously spam-reporting them, and all of a sudden the player was kicked from the lobby without a trace.
If you don't know what shadow banning is, it's not the same as a normal ban which stops you from playing altogether. Instead, you're placed into lobbies with others who have been shadow banned. This means that, if the glitch is real, unfair spam reporting could land you in games full of toxic players, cheaters, and griefers who have otherwise earned their place there. However, you won't be told you if you've been shadow banned, so you'll have to gauge it based on how many of these toxic players you encounter.
The reason this is concerning is that this allows players to have anyone kicked from the lobby for the pettiest of reasons. Sure, the argument is completely different in case the person is an actual hacker, but then most of the players would be reporting that person to get them a ban. Here, you can seemingly shadow ban anyone you pick by just spamming reports, which is a little unfair.
Most of the comments on the post agree that this is a problem, but some of them didn’t actually believe it to be possible. However, the video speaks for itself. One user even suggested that reporting should be limited to one per person, whereas another argued that despite spamming, it still only counts as one. Although, the video makes it seem like it does count as more than that.