Sledgehammer to ban reverse boosters from Call of Duty

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare studio Sledgehammer Games is to start banning players who are killing themselves on purpose in order to get ahead faster.

Reverse boosting is when players typically throw a grenade at their own feet repeatedly throughout a match. The result is that in subsequent matches they'll get put with weaker players who they can then clean up against, therefore advancing faster than they would have had they played the game properly.

In a blogpost by Sledgehammer's Michael Condrey, the studio's position and reasoning was outlined:

"Playing at home, I've been randomly matched with players doing this and it's incredibly frustrating to lose based largely on my team being down a contributing teammate. We've also had a lot of players bring up their same concern about playing in matches with these players. No one wants to lose an objective based match by effectively being outnumbered while their teammate shoots grenades into their own forehead 100 times in the corner.

"It's not right, and it hurts you and your team's online experience... and we have increased our focus on reverse boost banning to combat the growing issue. No one is trying to restrict the fun factor of playing Advanced Warfare with this policy, nor are we actively banning against particular styles of play, like trick shots. However, we have a low tolerance approach to people who ruin the experience for others through cheating, boosting, reverse boosting or being caught with toxic emblems in game."