Activision released a big statement about RICOCHET’s anti-cheat for Black Ops 6.
Activision shared on Oct. 18 how they plan on tackling the cheaters in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which releases worldwide on Oct. 25.
There's a lot to unpack from Activision's statement about the RICOCHET anti-cheat, but the main takeaway is that Activision set the goal of removing a cheater within a mere "one hour" of them playing their first match in Black Ops 6.
Activision claimed that cheaters were able to complete 10 multiplayer matches throughout Black Ops 6 beta's first weekend. After making some tweaks to RICOCHET's systems, the cheaters were caught after five matches, and "25% of all Weekend Two bans" happened in the cheater's first match.
Another 12,000 accounts were banned without ever playing a match during the beta, too.
This big anti-cheat update comes after a massive security breach allowed hackers to permanently ban random players by sending a friend request or message in-game with the words "Nice Trigger Bot dude." It seems that the ultimate goal of the hackers was to ban the top players in Warzone's leaderboard, but they failed.
However, big names such as streamers Dennis "Cloakzy" Lepore and BobbyPoff were falsely banned as a result of this security breach in Warzone. Activision announced on Oct. 17 that it had disabled the workaround that allowed the hackers to ban accounts.
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How Activision updated the anti-cheat for Black Ops 6
RICOCHET will be live on Day 1 of Black Ops 6 with a variety of anti-cheat technology such as:
- An updated version of the kernel-level driver. All features in the Oct. 25 update will protect any title that uses the driver, including Warzone.
- All mitigations, including Damage Shield, Disarm, Splat, Hallucination, and others will be live.
- New machine-learning behavioral systems focused on speed of detection.
- New machine-learning detection models to analyze gameplay to combat aim bots.
- Upgrades when Ranked Play launches, which include continuous examinations to determine if leaderboard placements are accurate.
- For Warzone specifically, new mitigations are deployed to interrupt cheaters.
While kernel-level driver anti-cheat gets a bad rep for being an invasive type of anti-cheat, game developers found it was the most successful way to tackle cheating. If all this sounds weird to you, kernel-level software is any software that can monitor all activities on your PC at all times, with full permission and administrator privileges.
According to Activision, cheaters are already offering cheats that go beyond the kernel. That's why the RICOCHET team is working on a "suite of tools that use AI" to find and fight cheaters.
A final message from the developers
Activision knows it is at fault with players as of recently. Fans became more vocal after finding Modern Warfare 3 lackluster, and this recent Warzone exploit didn't do Activision any favors.
In light of that, Activision vowed to do its best to deliver a good multiplayer experience in Black Ops 6.
"Cheating is a frustrating issue across the industry. But our goal is to get bad actors out of our game as fast as possible. Our NorthStar is within one hour.
We’ve had a lot of wins over the years – taking down several cheat developers completely, shutting out third-party hardware, flinging cheaters toward the ground at Mach-speed – but we know those wins don’t make you feel any better when you get beamed by a cheater from across the map.
We can’t tell you cheaters will disappear forever because of the tech we’re preparing for launch. But everyone at #TeamRICOCHET will use every tool we can to keep fighting to deliver a fair and fun experience for you! And if the right tool doesn’t exist, we’ll make it ourselves. Anti-cheat is a constant effort, and we are always working to stop and thwart the efforts of cheaters. It’s an effort we’re deeply committed to, through and through."
That's all for now. However, stay tuned to esports.gg for more Call of Duty news.
