"Last Wednesday, I spent 5 long hours chatting with the organizer of an ambitious group working to bring professional Call of Duty competitions back to PC. He was a nice guy and was obviously very motivated. They wanted our help promoting a big contest this weekend.

We both agreed cheating was the #1 problem preventing competitive play on PC. I scanned his group and friends and noticed many banned players. Since many don't notice these, I showed him some of the tools TM8 uses to manage our groups (1000+ no bans). And I explained that TM8 cannot support banned players. Reluctantly, he promised "No second chance for hackers or any hack." With that, we announced his contest and helped them find another 12 teams.

After their first day of contests, they spotted 1 obvious cheater in a video and banned that specific team. That's great! We haven't heard if the clan's other two teams are still allowed to compete. But more importantly, I noticed that several competitors in the video had permantant bans on their profiles. FAIL!

We sincerely do hope to see competitive Call of Duty return to PC. We look forward to that day. But before that can happen, we all need to learn the tools to manage our associations including clans, friends, and competitions. Here's a good place to start...

SteamRep[steamrep.com] - quick scan of anyone's friends list
VacStat_us[vacstat.us] - keeps track of anyone you suspect or associate with, send email alerts
BanChecker[chrome.google.com] - highlights banned players, friends and now groups * (Chrome browser extension)
VacBanChecker[github.com] bookmarklet version (any browser)

* The developer of BanChecker for Chrome, Ge-ku, allowed me to add code to his extension. So it now supports group members allowing quick and easy group management. :)

"