Games giant Activision banned around 20,000 cheaters from its popular Call of Duty: Warzone mode earlier this week.

That's according to Motherboard, which reports that the publisher booted people using a popular cheat called EngineOwning on Monday (September 28th).

The folks who made this hack have updated their website to make it clear the following day that their exploit is now "detected," meaning that Activision is catching out people who are using it. EngineOwning was funded by a user subscription.

"It’s rare that any one particular cheat will last long term without getting detected at some point," a former Activision employee said.

"It’s always a game of cat and mouse, people that actively use cheats should understand it’s highly likely you’ll be banned at some point and you’ll just have yourself to blame."

This round of bans follows developer Infinity Ward saying at the start of April that over 50,000 users have been banned from Warzone for cheating. Later that month, that figure rose to 70,000. The popular battle royale mode was launched in March 2020 and attracted 30m players in its first 10 days.