Call of Duty’s fight against cheaters continues, and Activision has released a new blog to recap the effectiveness of the game’s anti-cheat since Season 3’s launch. Here are the anti-cheat results Activision provided, plus the new Ricochet improvements announced for Black Ops 6 and Warzone.
Activision has been shutting down cheat makers since Black Ops 6’s launch. Now, five more cheat makers have been put out of business since the anti-cheat report provided in March. Cheat makers aren’t the only ones in trouble. Activision is also targeting third-party hardware with scripts used to cheat, delivering cease and desist demands to several companies that create and sell these products.
“We have already seen compliance from some of the companies we’ve contacted,” Activision says. “However, we will continue to pursue other device makers in the market, globally, as well as people that create scripts to manipulate Call of Duty game code.” It also reminds players that any account using these devices on PC or console for the purpose of cheating will be permanently banned.
Another part of Call of Duty’s protection plan included the recent Account Linking policy change, which requires players to verify they are in control of an account when attempting to link a new PC account to an Activision ID. The publisher says this has already protected over 10,000 accounts that had a “potential suspicious account link” but were blocked by the new verification requirement.
Last week’s Season 3 Reloaded update included even more improvements from Call of Duty’s anti-cheat team. This added an expanded version of the Death Widget UI, which now provides players with even more detailed information about how they were eliminated, including if they were pinged by a heartbeat sensor, a Most Wanted contract, a proximity alarm, a Resurgence mark, or even by a teammate being used as a body shield. The Death Widget was recently added to Call of Duty in an attempt to cut down on false reports of cheaters.
Call of Duty’s Ricochet team also made updates to its advanced video replay technology to help better weed out wallhackers. Activision says this method uses clips captured by Call of Duty’s Replay Investigation Tool, which is an internal tool that watches completed matches to determine the probability of suspicious gameplay using machine learning. If a clip gets marked by the tool as being suspect, it will then be reviewed by a human.
The publisher says the Replay Investigation Tool captures tons of clips across Black Ops 6 and Warzone, but the tool is most focused on Ranked Play modes. “It’s unbelievably frustrating to be bumped off a leaderboard by a cheater, but RIT and its advancements are zeroed in on the Ranked Play experience,” Activision says.
Activision says new Ricochet anti-cheat updates are being developed and deployed on a regular basis, and more information will be provided in future blogs.
In addition to fighting cheaters, Call of Duty is embracing stoner culture with a 4/20 event themed around Seth Rogen, bundles for Jay and Silent Bob, and plenty of weed-related cosmetics to earn.
