Call of Duty‘s RICOCHET Anti-Cheat Team released a detailed community update over the weekend addressing their ongoing battle against cheaters in Black Ops 6 and Warzone, along with their plans to bolster the integrity of the game throughout 2025.
The update highlights new security layers, improved detection systems, and significant progress in banning cheaters to enhance the gameplay experience for legitimate players.
Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of the latest measures and what they mean for the Call of Duty community.
RICOCHET implements new security measures, updated detection systems
The RICOCHET team emphasized their commitment to protecting the competitive integrity of the game, introducing new security layers and detection models.
Since the launch of Ranked Play, a whopping figure of over 136,000 accounts in BO6 Multiplayer and Warzone have been banned for cheating, signaling the team’s aggressive approach to maintaining fair competition.
Updated detection models focus on identifying cheaters using aim bot and other exploits. The team is also analyzing data points like account trust levels and hardware identifiers to pinpoint serial cheaters effectively.
To expedite actions against cheating accounts, the team has enhanced tools that reduce the time required for investigations.
New systems are now live to identify and warn against malicious reporting. As clarified by the RICOCHET team, spam reporting is against the game’s Security and Enforcement Policy.
“Our system does not consider more than one single report from a player versus another,” they stated, addressing misinformation spread by cheat developers who falsely claim otherwise.
A system is now in place to flag accounts that repeatedly party up with known cheaters. When a cheater is banned, the system identifies associated accounts for investigation, aiming to curb boosting and other exploitative behaviors.
Addressing community questions, the Ricochet team explained why they do not utilize IP-based banning. “IP-based bans tend to take action against entire groups within a range that aren’t problematic,” they noted, highlighting that such bans could unintentionally affect innocent users, such as those in college campuses or internet cafes, when only one machine is the issue.
More major anti-cheat updates coming in 2025
The update also outlined significant upgrades to CoD’s anti-cheat systems planned for early 2025, beginning with Season 2, which will launch on January 28.
The kernel-level driver, a critical component of the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat system, will receive a major update. These improvements will include:
- New client and server-side detection systems
- Enhanced driver security
- Reinforced encryption processes
- A tampering detection system to prevent cheat manipulation
As part of their long-term plan, the RICOCHET team is introducing new technologies to authenticate legitimate players while targeting cheaters. While specific details are being kept under wraps to avoid tipping off cheat developers, the team promised to share more as the updates approach.
“We’re not slowing down in our mission to shut down cheaters whose only mission is to ruin the fun for everyone else,” the team affirmed. “We’re confident that the combination of the updates above, as well as ongoing improvements to our detection systems and Activision’s continued legal actions against illegal cheat sellers, will provide a demonstrably healthier gameplay experience going forward.”
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