Players can expect more updates closer to the Season 2 release early next year.
The latest Call of Duty update provides insight from the game’s anti-cheat team and the development studios’ work. The developers acknowledge that they did not hit the mark for integration of RICOCHET Anti-cheat at the launch of Season 1.
The lack of integration is particularly noticeable in ranked play where cheaters have a much more significant impact on players’ gameplay experience.
The focus on Anti- Cheat and the Struggle
Soon after BO6's release, Activision acknowledged that the game had a cheating problem. The high number of cheaters led to the community’s constant criticism throughout social media. Even some big influencers would go on to complain about the game’s rampant cheating problem.
On November 22, the developers acknowledged the same and promised to work to help prevent, identify, and remove cheaters from the game.
We did not hit the mark for the integration of RICOCHET Anti-Cheat at the launch of Season 01 – particularly for Ranked Play.
As part of their effort to clean up the game, the developers have introduced systems that ensure kernel driver detections to block memory tampering. There are also, both client-side and server-side detections for suspicious behavior as well as AI systems to get elicit accounts out of the game.
- Upgrades & Accounts: Account bans are now happening hourly due to increased velocity from several RICOCHET Anti-Cheat systems, in addition to the over 19,000 accounts we’ve 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.
While there have been significant advancements in reducing the number of cheaters and improving the gameplay experience, it still fell short of what the developers wanted to do. Kernel-level anti-cheat is a major step forward in reducing the number of cheaters.
A Kernal-level anti-cheat system is proactive as opposed to reactive and will stay one step ahead of cheaters. It gains deeper access to your computer, but also ensures that it can block the game or weed out faulty accounts after detecting malware or illegal programs on their systems.
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Plans to improve Anti-Cheat Systems in future seasons
In their latest blogpost, the developers reaffirmed that they further plan to improve the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat systems in Season 2 and Season 3.
The RICOCHET Anti-Cheat team will be continuing its work to fight cheaters throughout the remainder of the month. While we have made progress, we know more needs to be done and we’re eager to share details of our planned major updates coming in the new year.
More information will be available to players as we head closer to Season 2 and Season 3. Meanwhile, players are urged to ensure their accounts have 2FA enabled - something that would add a much-needed layer of security to existing accounts. Black Ops 6 Season 2 is expected to go live in January next year
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