BO6 & Warzone devs promise major anti-cheat changes but players don’t believe a word
ActivisionBlack Ops 6 suffered from an influx of cheaters shortly after the release of Ranked Play, causing Activision to acknowledge the issue publicly. The devs have now announced a series of changes to the RICOCHET anti-cheat system, although the reaction from players has been mixed, to say the least.
Hackers in competitive CoD have become a common issue in recent years, although the hacking issues in Black Ops 6 and Warzone Season 1 have been particularly infuriating. From wall hacks to aimbot, cheaters have been using a number of illegal tools to take over lobbies. Players and even CoD League pros have expressed their frustrations with the issue, causing Team RICOCHET to implement changes back in November.
Activision have now issued an official apology, stating “We did not hit the mark for the integration of RICOCHET Anti-Cheat at the launch of Season 01 – particularly for Ranked Play.”
They also announced a kernel-level driver and brand new server-side protections for RICOCHET, all set to arrive in Seasons 2 and 3. Other changes to the anti-cheat include:
- Upgrades & Accounts: Account bans are now happening hourly due to increased velocity from several RICOCHET Anti-Cheat systems, this in addition to the over 19,000 accounts removed recently. These updates to our systems mean enforcement response times are now quicker than they have ever been.
- Leaderboards: The cleanup process has been updated for faster synchronization of leaderboard changes.
- Investigations: We have significantly expanded our Replay Investigation render farm – the machines used to generate clips for examination. We’ve also ramped up the group dedicated to manually review clips (based on a priority order that favors detections). In the last several weeks, the Replay tool updates have been highly effective at validating detections and reports, providing further training for AI systems for the anti-cheat team, and removing cheaters.
All things considered, this looks to be a positive response from Activision, and a genuine effort to improve RICOCHET’s efficacy. The announcement of a kernel-level driver is particularly promising, as it should allow developers to detect malware and hacks directly on the computers running them.
Players are far from convinced, however, with some questioning RICOCHET’s effectiveness at a base level. “Fool me once shame on me. Fool me twice shame on me. Fool me three times shame on me. Fool me four times shame on me. Fool me five times shame on me. I don’t believe anything they say regarding the anti-cheat,” said one user.
Another stated, “Ricochet anti-cheat ‘team’. You cannot convince me there is an actual team working on this. I wonder if anyone on this ‘team’ would ever dare put that on a resume.”
One user even called out the upcoming kernel-level driver updates, “They aren’t adding a kernel-level driver because they already have one, and clearly the one that already exists is pure shit. I have serious doubts they’ll be able to come up with a big enough update for Ricochet in the next ~2 months before Season 3 when they have so far failed to come up with anything good over the past however many years Ricochet has been out.”
A number of players also called for changes to the ‘shadow ban’ system, claiming that they had been unfairly placed in lobbies filled with suspected cheaters. Complaints surrounding RICOCHET have been around ever since its introduction in 2021, and it’ll be interesting to see if the updates finally improve its reputation among players.
If you’re jumping into Ranked Play, make sure to check out the best loadouts for Black Ops 6 and the current Warzone meta.