I still remember the exact moment I realized a regular ban wasn't what happened to me. I'd gotten flagged in a game, shrugged it off, made a fresh account, redownloaded everything — and got kicked within 30 seconds of loading in. That's when the panic set in.
Turns out, I'd run into something way more serious than a standard account suspension. I'd hit an HWID ban — and my hardware itself was now the problem.
If you're here because you're trying to understand which games that use HWID bans are actually out there, or you just want to know what this type of ban even means, I've spent a serious amount of time digging through this. Let me break it all down — the definition, the mechanics, and a game-by-game list of every major title confirmed to use hardware-level bans as of 2026.
What Is an HWID Ban?
HWID stands for Hardware ID — a unique fingerprint your computer generates from its physical components. We're talking your motherboard serial number, CPU ID, GPU identifier, hard drive or SSD serial, MAC address, and sometimes even your BIOS UUID.
When a game's anti-cheat system issues an HWID ban, it records all of those identifiers and blocks any future connection attempt that matches them. It doesn't matter if you create a brand new account, reinstall Windows, or even reformat your entire drive. Your hardware is flagged — and the game knows it's you.
Think of it like this: a regular account ban is like changing your name. An HWID ban is like changing your face — and the door still recognizes your fingerprints.
HWID Ban vs. Account Ban — The Key Difference
This distinction is super important, and I don't think enough people understand it before it's too late.
An account ban means you lose your progress, your skins, your rank. That stings. But an HWID ban means you can't play at all on that machine — even on a fresh account you've never touched. That's a completely different level of punishment.
Honestly? Most players don't find out the difference until they've already tried the "make a new account" trick and failed.
Why Do Games Use HWID Bans?
The logic is pretty straightforward from a developer's perspective. Cheaters are persistent. A player who's willing to cheat is usually willing to just make another account after a ban — it takes maybe 5 minutes. That's especially true in free-to-play games where there's zero financial barrier to re-entry.
HWID bans raise the cost of cheating dramatically. Now you're not just losing an account — you're potentially looking at buying new hardware or doing complex technical workarounds. For the majority of casual cheaters, that's enough of a deterrent.
Free-to-play games like Valorant, Fortnite, and Apex Legends are especially reliant on hardware bans for this reason. If account bans were the only deterrent, the same cheaters would just cycle through free accounts endlessly. The economics only work in the developer's favor when the punishment actually costs something.
Which Anti-Cheat Systems Actually Enforce HWID Bans?
Not every anti-cheat tool operates the same way. Here's a quick rundown of the major systems and their relationship to hardware bans:
Vanguard (Riot Games) — This is probably the most aggressive anti-cheat on this list. It runs at the kernel level, meaning it operates with deep system access. Vanguard is confirmed to issue HWID bans, and Riot is pretty upfront about it.
Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) — Used in a huge number of games including Apex Legends, Fortnite, Rust, and Dead by Daylight. EAC absolutely supports HWID bans, though the implementation varies by developer.
BattlEye — Used in Rainbow Six Siege, PUBG, and several others. BattlEye is known for issuing hardware bans for confirmed cheating cases.
RICOCHET (Activision) — Call of Duty's proprietary system. Ricochet has evolved significantly since its 2021 launch and now includes hardware ban capabilities for severe violations.
VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) — Here's where it gets interesting. VAC bans are largely account-level bans, not hardware bans. I'll cover this more in the "games that don't" section.
The Full List: 20 Games That Use HWID Bans
1. Valorant
Anti-cheat: Vanguard | Ban severity: Permanent
Valorant is probably the most well-known example of aggressive HWID banning. Riot's Vanguard system runs at the kernel level — it starts with your PC, not just the game — and it's designed specifically to make hardware bans stick. If you're caught cheating in Valorant, you're not just losing your account. You're losing access on that entire machine.
Riot has publicly acknowledged their HWID ban policy, and they're not shy about it. The best part? It's actually worked — Valorant's competitive integrity reputation is significantly stronger than most shooters of its era.
2. Apex Legends
Anti-cheat: Easy Anti-Cheat | Ban severity: Permanent
Apex Legends uses EAC and has a confirmed HWID ban policy for cheaters. EA's enforcement here has gotten noticeably stricter since 2023. I've seen community reports of players getting flagged within a single session of using third-party software — and the hardware ban follows the account ban almost immediately.
Here's the catch: Apex is free-to-play, which makes HWID bans especially critical. Without them, the same cheaters would just cycle back in endlessly.
3. Fortnite
Anti-cheat: Easy Anti-Cheat | Ban severity: Permanent
Epic Games has been issuing HWID bans in Fortnite for years. EAC handles the detection, and Epic handles the enforcement — and they've been pretty aggressive about it since the game exploded in popularity. Given that Fortnite is free-to-play and has a massive younger player base, keeping cheaters out at the hardware level is super important to the experience.
4. Call of Duty: Warzone (and Modern Warfare III)
Anti-cheat: RICOCHET | Ban severity: Permanent
Activision's RICOCHET anti-cheat system now includes hardware banning capabilities. Warzone has been one of the most heavily cheated battle royales since launch, and Activision has escalated their response accordingly. RICOCHET uses kernel-level drivers similar to Vanguard, and confirmed cheaters face hardware-level bans rather than just account suspensions.
Shadow banning (where cheaters are matched only with other cheaters) was the first step — HWID bans are the escalation for repeat or severe offenders.
5. PUBG: Battlegrounds
Anti-cheat: BattlEye | Ban severity: Permanent
PUBG was one of the earlier mainstream games to widely implement HWID bans, partly because it launched into a cheating crisis — particularly from regions with high third-party software usage. BattlEye handles detection, and Krafton has confirmed hardware bans for serious violations. PUBG's ban waves are famous in the community; they tend to come in large batches rather than individual bans.
6. Rainbow Six Siege
Anti-cheat: BattlEye | Ban severity: Permanent
Siege is a super competitive tactical shooter where cheating is especially damaging — one aimbot in a ranked match can ruin an entire team's experience. Ubisoft uses BattlEye and has confirmed HWID bans for cheating. Siege also has a separate toxicity reporting system, but HWID bans are specifically tied to cheat detection rather than behavior violations.
7. Rust
Anti-cheat: Easy Anti-Cheat | Ban severity: Permanent
Rust has a particularly brutal reputation for cheating — and for its ban enforcement. Facepunch Studios uses EAC and has been issuing HWID bans for years. What makes Rust interesting is that server owners can also issue their own hardware bans through certain plugins, independent of EAC. So you might face a developer-level HWID ban and server-level hardware bans — two separate systems.
8. Escape from Tarkov
Anti-cheat: BattleEye + proprietary system | Ban severity: Permanent
Battlestate Games is notoriously aggressive with bans. Escape from Tarkov uses BattlEye alongside their own detection systems, and HWID bans are confirmed. What's particularly notable here is the speed — community reports suggest Tarkov's system can flag and ban hardware within seconds of detection. The game's hardcore nature means cheating has an outsized impact, which explains the aggressive enforcement.
9. Overwatch 2
Anti-cheat: Warden (Blizzard proprietary) | Ban severity: Permanent
Blizzard's Warden system has been around for decades, but it's evolved significantly. Overwatch 2 uses hardware bans for confirmed cheaters, and Blizzard has issued ban waves that specifically target HWID-level enforcement. Given that Overwatch 2 went free-to-play in 2022, the need for hardware bans became even more pressing — and Blizzard responded accordingly.
10. CS2 (Counter-Strike 2)
Anti-cheat: VAC + VAC Live | Ban severity: Complicated**
Here's where it gets nuanced. Traditional VAC bans are account-level, not hardware bans. However, Valve introduced VAC Live in 2023 alongside CS2's launch, and there are credible community reports suggesting VAC Live has some hardware-tracking capabilities for the most severe cases. The consensus as of 2026 is that standard VAC bans don't HWID ban, but repeat offenders or those using particularly aggressive cheats may face hardware-level action. I'd call this "confirmed but inconsistent."
11. Dead by Daylight
Anti-cheat: Easy Anti-Cheat | Ban severity: Permanent
Dead by Daylight's developer, Behaviour Interactive, has confirmed HWID bans through their official forums. EAC handles detection, and the bans are permanent. The DbD community has actually discussed this extensively — there are forum threads from Behaviour staff explicitly acknowledging hardware-level enforcement for cheaters.
12. H1Z1 / Z1 Battle Royale
Anti-cheat: BattlEye | Ban severity: Permanent
H1Z1 was one of the original battle royales, and it's been dealing with cheating since its early days. BattlEye is in place, and HWID bans are confirmed for cheat users. The game's population has shrunk significantly since its peak, but the anti-cheat infrastructure remains.
13. Minecraft (Server-Level)
Anti-cheat: Server-dependent | Ban severity: Varies by server
This one's a bit different. Vanilla Minecraft itself doesn't issue HWID bans — but large competitive servers absolutely do. Networks like Hypixel use their own anti-cheat plugins that can issue hardware bans to prevent banned players from rejoining on new accounts. If you're playing on a major competitive Minecraft server, HWID bans are very much a reality.
14. ARK: Survival Evolved / ARK: Survival Ascended
Anti-cheat: EAC + server-level | Ban severity: Permanent (developer) / Variable (server)
Similar to Rust, ARK has two layers. EAC handles game-level detection for the most severe cheating, and developer-level HWID bans apply. But ARK server owners also have the ability to issue their own hardware bans through admin tools — so community server bans and developer bans are two distinct things. Worth knowing if you're playing on a private server.
15. GTA FiveM (Community Servers)
Anti-cheat: Server/framework dependent | Ban severity: Varies
GTA V itself on Rockstar's official servers doesn't issue HWID bans — Rockstar's enforcement is account-level. But FiveM, the popular community multiplayer framework, is a completely different story. FiveM server operators can and do issue HWID bans through their frameworks. If you're cheating on a popular FiveM roleplay server, expect hardware-level consequences from the server admins.
16. Dauntless
Anti-cheat: Easy Anti-Cheat | Ban severity: Permanent
Phoenix Labs uses EAC in Dauntless, and HWID bans are confirmed for cheating violations. Dauntless is free-to-play, which makes hardware bans especially important — without them, banned cheaters would simply re-download and start fresh.
17. Battlefield V / Battlefield 2042
Anti-cheat: Easy Anti-Cheat | Ban severity: Permanent
EA's Battlefield series uses EAC, and HWID bans are part of the enforcement toolkit. Battlefield V was particularly notorious for cheating during its peak years, and EA escalated to hardware-level bans as part of their response. Battlefield 2042 carries the same enforcement policy.
18. Paladins
Anti-cheat: Easy Anti-Cheat | Ban severity: Permanent
Hi-Rez Studios' Paladins uses EAC and has confirmed HWID bans. As a free-to-play hero shooter competing in the same space as Overwatch, keeping cheaters out at the hardware level is essential to the game's viability. Ban enforcement in Paladins tends to come in waves rather than real-time detection.
19. Team Fortress 2
Anti-cheat: VAC + Valve enforcement | Ban severity: Complicated**
TF2 is similar to CS2 in that standard VAC bans are account-level. However, TF2 has a significant bot crisis, and Valve has at various points issued more aggressive enforcement actions that the community believes include hardware-level components. The official policy is VAC bans, but the bot crisis has pushed Valve toward more aggressive measures. As of 2026, this remains somewhat murky.
20. Robocraft
Anti-cheat: Easy Anti-Cheat | Ban severity: Permanent
Robocraft uses EAC and has confirmed HWID bans for cheating. It's a smaller title than most on this list, but it's worth including because it's a confirmed case that often gets overlooked in discussions about games that use HWID bans.
Special Scenarios: Used PCs, Shared Hardware, False Positives
This section doesn't get nearly enough attention, and honestly? It's where things get genuinely unfair.
Buying a used PC: If the previous owner was HWID banned from a game, you might get flagged the moment you try to play that game — even though you've never cheated. This is a real problem. Before buying a used gaming PC, it's worth downloading and launching any competitive games you care about to test if the hardware is clean. There's no official registry to check.
Shared PCs and family computers: If your sibling got HWID banned from Valorant on the family desktop, you can't play Valorant on that machine either. I've seen forum threads from genuinely innocent players who got caught in this exact situation — and appeals are notoriously difficult to win.
Internet cafés and dorm networks: If someone cheated on a shared machine at a gaming café, every subsequent user of that machine faces the same ban. Some anti-cheat systems also track MAC addresses, which can theoretically flag entire network segments in extreme cases.
False positives — They happen. Anti-cheat systems aren't perfect, and there are documented cases of legitimate players receiving HWID bans due to software conflicts, VPNs, or overly aggressive detection. The appeals process varies wildly by developer — Riot's support is generally responsive, while some smaller studios are nearly impossible to reach.
Can You Remove or Bypass an HWID Ban?
Let me be straightforward here: I'm not going to walk you through cheating. But I will give you accurate information about what does and doesn't work, because a lot of the information out there is just wrong.
Reinstalling Windows: No. This doesn't work. HWID bans track physical hardware serial numbers — your motherboard, CPU, GPU, drives. Reinstalling your OS doesn't change those identifiers. This is probably the most common misconception I see.
Creating a new account: No. That's the whole point of an HWID ban. New accounts on flagged hardware get detected almost immediately — sometimes within seconds of launching the game.
HWID Spoofing: This is the technical workaround that actually has some effect — software that spoofs or masks your hardware identifiers to make your machine appear as a different device. I'm not going to recommend specific tools, but HWID spoofing exists and is widely discussed. Here's the catch: anti-cheat developers are actively working to detect spoofers, and using spoofing software is itself a bannable offense. It's an arms race.
Replacing hardware: This is the legitimate (if expensive) option. Replacing your motherboard — the primary identifier most systems track — effectively gives you a new hardware fingerprint. Some developers track enough identifiers that you'd need to replace multiple components. The community rule of thumb is "if you changed the motherboard, you're probably clear," but there's no guarantee.
Appealing the ban: Always worth trying before anything else. Go through official support channels. If it was a false positive or a shared-machine situation, document everything and be specific. It won't always work — but it's the only legitimate path.