Activision issues new anti-cheat update

Whether or not you think it's working, RICOCHET is Activision's weapon of choice for cheating. The team continues to implement new measures against hacking, and today detailed more on how that's going. A lot has occurred in Season 3 Reloaded, and hopefully the fight will fall in player's favor soon. Check out the intel from the Call of Duty Blog below.

Verdansk is back and, for the first time in the map’s history, Ranked Play has arrived.

Our commitment is to keep cheaters out of the game and, for those who make it past our initial systems, identify and remove them as quickly as possible. The RICOCHET Anti-Cheat™ team is hard at work taking on would-be cheaters throughout the game, including those looking to steal leaderboard glory. Here’s a recap of the results we saw during the Season 03 launch.

Season 03 Results Recap:

Shutdowns: Continuing to proactively destabilize the cheat marketplace with five more cheat makers shut down since our previous Progress Report, and over 150 cheat resellers disrupted since Black Ops 6 launched
Account Linking Impact: We’ve protected over 10,000 accounts that had a potential suspicious account link in Season 03
Replay Tech Preview: New tech helps examine Replays for faster investigation
Additional Updates: New elements added to the Death Widget, making KillCams clearer for players, and more

Season 03 Anti-Cheat Results

Since Season 03 arrived, our team has successfully shut down five more cheat developers – on top of the 20+ we’ve closed since Black Ops 6 launched. The Season 03 update has made a strong impact against cheat makers and resellers. For example, as we announced recently, RICOCHET Anti-Cheat quickly detected a cheat provider that came back online after weeks of downtime, resulting in a large-scale ban wave against its customer base, forcing it offline once again.

We’ve continued to cause chaos in the cheat marketplace and have hit a milestone of disrupting over 150 cheat resellers – shutting them down or rendering their software ineffective. And we’re not slowing down.

We know that new account creation is a tactic cheaters use when they get booted from the game, which is a reality for all free-to-play games like Call of Duty: Warzone. We've been focusing our attention on targeting new accounts and we’re seeing strong results. On average from the period between Season 02 through Season 03, new accounts are banned within 4 matches when they cheat.

The Account Linking policy change we made for Season 03 has helped protect longstanding accounts, too. This change forced players to verify they are in control of an account if someone attempts to link a new PC account to an Activision ID. In only a few weeks, we’ve protected over 10,000 accounts that had a potential suspicious account link but were blocked by the new verification requirement.

Our roadmap continues, with new systems and upgrades coming throughout Season 03 Reloaded – specifically with Ranked Play online in Call of Duty: Warzone – as well as upcoming seasons.

Our team’s commitment remains the same. While threats continue to exist, we’re focused on strengthening the barriers to make cheating in Call of Duty a fool’s errand, eliminating as many cheaters as possible before they can impact a match, and hunting down and removing any cheating account that makes its way into the game as quickly as possible.

In Season 03 Reloaded, we rolled out an expanded version of the Death Widget UI to provide more detailed information about how you were eliminated. In addition to showing attacker count and damage dealt, the widget now highlights additional key conditions that contributed to your death:

Affected by Heartbeat Sensor: Indicates the enemy detected your position with the Heartbeat Sensor equipment.
Body Shield on Teammate: Indicates your position was revealed by an enemy who has a teammate in an active Body Shield.
Affected by Resurgence Mark: Indicates your position was revealed by a teammate who died in a Resurgence game mode.
Affected by Prox Alarm: Indicates your position was revealed by a Prox Alarm Tactical equipment.
Affected by Most Wanted Target: Indicates your position was revealed by opting-in to the Most Wanted Contract.

The update went live with Call of Duty: Warzone on Season 03 Reloaded launch day and is rolling out to Black Ops 6 Multiplayer throughout the season. More elements will be added in the future, which will be communicated through Progress Reports, Patch Notes, and/or the @CODUpdates X account.

Read more about the Death Widget in the Season 03 Progress Report.

Third-Party Hardware Update

Despite detections and our public stance against third-party hardware used to cheat in our games (and others throughout the industry), the makers of these devices continue to issue updates to try to circumvent our security systems.

In response, we have delivered cease and desist demands to several companies that create and sell these products and will take them to court if necessary. We have already seen compliance from some of the companies we’ve contacted; 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.

These devices and scripts used to cheat in our games are not welcome. Call of Duty does not endorse the use of these products.

Any account that utilizes these devices on PC or console for the purpose of cheating will be permanently banned.

Replay Tech Preview

Team RICOCHET has been developing updates to its advanced video replay technology for some time to weed out wallhackers. This approach uses clips captured by Call of Duty’s Replay Investigation Tool (RIT) – an internal tool to watch any completed match using captured and stored game data – to determine the probability of suspicious gameplay using Machine Learning. With its “sus score” determined, that information is currently elevated for review for human validation. This update ramps up our investigation speed, rising the worst offenders to the top of our review process for faster enforcement.

Our Replay Investigation Tool (RIT) captures a ton of clips across Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty: Warzone, but we see the bulk of its power in examining Ranked Play – in Multiplayer and in Battle Royale. It’s unbelievably frustrating to be bumped off a leaderboard by a cheater but RIT and its advancements – in addition to other major detection systems – are zeroed in on the Ranked Play experience.

For an example of how all our systems work together: Cheaters caught by the Replay Investigation Tool and this update are flagged for faster human review, any confirmed cheaters will be banned. In addition, all players in a Ranked Play lobby invaded by the cheater will be refunded Skill Rating (SR) Points – in line with the SR Refund Update that went live earlier this season.

The Replay Investigation Tool then elevates the score to our internal teams, identifying possible cheaters for human review and enforcement and learning more about spotting wallhacks for faster scoring with future video reviews.

No anti-cheat system can eliminate all threats, but we continue to deliver updates to take the legs out from under cheat makers by banning their users, forcing them offline, and reducing the time to detection for accounts that make it into the game. Today and into the future, the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat roadmap continues, with new updates being developed and deployed on a regular basis.

Keep an eye out for updates in future Progress Reports and across social media, particularly the @CODUpdates X social account for real-time issues.

Stay tuned to GamingTrend for more Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Warzone news and info!