Call of Duty is making massive changes to their anti-cheat in Warzone and Black Ops 6 after severe backlash

Modified Dec 17, 2024 12:00 GMT

An Operator in Black Ops 6 aiming down the sights of a silenced pistol — Ricochet anti-cheat to receive several improvements in Warzone and Black Ops 6 (Image via Activision)

After receiving severe backlash for the anti-cheat system in Warzone and Black Ops 6, Call of Duty is making significant changes to Ricochet. For those unaware, the Ricochet anti-cheat is Call of Duty's in-house anti-cheat solution. However, this system has miserably failed to prevent cheating issues in the games. Things have become so bleak that several professional players and popular content creators have called the developers out as cheaters keep dominating the in-game leaderboards.

Call of Duty has imposed multiple ban waves to eradicate cheaters but to no success. Instead, these ban waves ended up affecting several innocent players. This fiasco acted as further proof that their anti-cheat failed to recognize and punish cheaters.

Nevertheless, Call of Duty recently acknowledged the issues and in their latest COD blog post, revealed that they are updating their systems and making changes to curb cheating.

Ricochet anti-cheat to receive a major overhaul in Black Ops 6 and Warzone

Ricochet anti-cheat will receive significant changes in Black Ops 6 and Warzone. In the latest Call of Duty blog post titled, Ricochet anti-cheat update December - 2024, the developers addressed several community concerns and mentioned that they were making massive changes to their anti-cheat solution moving forward.

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They started by acknowledging that their anti-cheat system didn't hit the mark during Season 1 of Warzone and Black Ops 6. However, they are making changes to ensure that the competitive integrity of their games is maintained.

Also read: "Thought of loading up the game sounds frustrating" - Aydan shows disappointment in Warzone and Black Ops 6 after Season 1 update

Some of the significant changes that the Ricochet anti-cheat system will receive are an updated kernel-level driver and brand-new server-side protections. These will be making their way to the titles with the Season 2 and Season 3 updates.

The developers mentioned that the main goal of updating their anti-cheat system is not merely punishing cheaters, but preventing them from playing in the first place. Currently, they are ramping up their cheat detection system which consists of several factors, including human reviews, kernel driver detections, client-side and server-side detections, and AI systems.

The blog post also highlighted what the developers were doing to address rising concerns of cheating in Warzone Ranked Play. Here are all the changes regarding this mode:

They are ramping up the pace at which cheaters are being punished and accounts will be banned on an hourly basis.
They are cleaning up their in-game leaderboards and ensuring that the changes sync as quickly as possible.
They have expanded their "Replay Investigation render farm", which is essentially computers examining reported players to determine their authenticity. They have also increased the group size responsible for manual reviews.

Based on the commitment to improve security and competitive integrity in Warzone and Black Ops 6, it seems like the developers are on the right track. However, while these changes are decent, there's more to be done.

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Edited by Shraman Mitra