Call of Duty professional player Dylan ‘Nero’ Koch has been banned from Call of Duty Black Ops 7 ranked, the player revealed in a post on X.
The 24-year-old CoD pro has played professionally for eight years, most recently playing in the Call of Duty League with Vancouver Surge from April to August 2026.
Nero shares ban confusion to mocking social media users amid boosting discussion
While there is no official confirmation on the reason for the ban, several social media users directly pointed to Nero’s Black Ops 7 boosting service as the direct reason for the ban.
An advertisement for the boosting service remains on Nero’s X, offering to boost a player’s rank in exchange for differing monetary amounts depending on the service.
Transferring, selling, renting, or leasing your Activision account directly violates Activision’s ToS, with boosting also specifically violating the Activision Terms of Service.
Section 3. C. i states that users “agree that you will not, under any circumstances: i. use, develop, host or distribute cheats, automation software (bots), modded lobbies, hacks, mods or any other unauthorized third-party software in connection with the Product, or engage in any form of cheating, boosting, or booting.”
Call of Duty’s own Security and Enforcement Policy also explicitly banned the practice of Boosting.
Therefore, Nero’s “wrong guy” comment was met with equal levels of confusion and derision on social media, as the CoD community quickly identified his boosting service as the likely reason for the ban.
One X user stated, “Genuinely curious how you can or plan to openly sell boosts (a bannable offense) on Twitter lol the same platform you tag cod on to get unbanned from what you expect is a false ban.”
Another user pointed out that the CoD player’s post offering boosting is still up, giving CoD’s devs plenty of evidence of the player’s guilt on the matter.
On Reddit, the tone was more of a mocking one. One user posted, “They got the wrong guy! I was the one actually selling boosting services, I just hacked Neros account so he could take the fall.”
Other users pointed out boosting as a less egregious form of cheating as opposed to wallhacking or aimbots; nevertheless, others pointed out that it is still against ToS and therefore bannable.
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Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.
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