Cheats have long been a billion-dollar business.
Not only can cheaters ruin your gaming experience, but there’s now an astonishingly lucrative business behind them. Ahead of the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Activision has released new figures on the cheat market. According to these figures, cheats and related services generate an estimated $8.5 billion in revenue each year.
The figure comes from an analysis by Intorqa, a company specializing in game security, as cited by Activision’s anti-cheat team, Ricochet. According to the analysis, subscriptions for cheats in the 15 games examined alone are said to generate around $3.5 billion per year. When you add in the sale of hacked accounts, boosting services, and so-called spoofer tools, among other things, it becomes a billion-dollar business.
Some cheaters pay more than $1,000 a year
According to Activision, the infrastructure behind the market alone demonstrates just how professionally organized it has become. Cheat developers often sell their software via subscription, while resellers, account dealers, and providers of additional tools have built an entire ecosystem around the actual cheats.
This pleasure doesn’t necessarily come cheap. According to Activision, high-priced cheat subscriptions can cost more than $100. On top of that, there may be ongoing fees for spoofing software designed to mask hardware IDs, for example. Those who also use specialized DMA hardware can spend several hundred or even more than $1,000 in a single year just to cheat in online games.
As a result, Activision has long since moved beyond simply banning individual cheaters from Call of Duty. Team Ricochet is also taking action against the cheat providers themselves. According to the company, the team has so far taken action against more than 375 resellers, sent out over 80 cease-and-desist letters, and helped shut down 31 major cheat providers. By the end of 2025, Activision had already reported nearly 300 such actions within a single year.
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 take down Elocarry.
That’s not an isolated case… pic.twitter.com/IP69qlGgDD
— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) August 28, 2026
Pressure on cheat providers is set to increase
It’s interesting to note how some providers explain prolonged downtime to their customers. According to Activision, cheat developers sometimes prefer to blame such downtime on illnesses, surgeries, or car accidents rather than admit that their software has been exposed and is no longer working for the time being.
At the same time, the technical effort required is expected to increase. Ricochet uses, among other things, server-side analysis, a kernel driver on the PC, and security mechanisms such as Secure Boot and device verification. In recent months, Activision has also expanded its systems to better detect unauthorized input devices and other methods.
Cheating is therefore unlikely to disappear, of course. There is simply too much money at stake. However, the $8.5 billion figure mentioned is only an estimate: Intorqa itself points out that a black market of this magnitude is difficult to quantify precisely and that the actual revenue could be significantly higher or lower.
