No one likes cheaters, especially not the Ricochet Anti-Cheat team, Call of Duty’s dedicated cheat-busting unit. On April 4, Ricochet put out a brief report detailing how it’s preserving the integrity of the game. They’ve got some pretty hilarious ways of screwing over cheaters, from making their targets vanish before their eyes to straight-up yanking the guns out of their hands.
For as long as there have been online multiplayer games, cheaters have tried to get a leg up with third-party software, hardware modifications, or other trickery to gain an unfair advantage. From being able to see through walls to bots that will correct their aim, cheaters can wreck the experience for everyone else. And with a game as big as Call of Duty, cheating and hacking can sadly be all too common. In a new update, CoD’s anti-cheat security team has revealed they’re targeting third-party software and hardware exploits, as well as rolling out new ways to observe player behavior. The Ricochet team also released a few delightful videos of some of the “in-game mitigations” they’re using to stop cheaters right in the moment.
Call of Duty now targets external cheat devices
While CoD has seen tech that yoinks the guns from cheaters’ hands before, hardware devices that intercept and unfairly modify a controller or mouse input have remained a tricky bugbear for the anti-cheat team to squash.
Now, the team finally has the systems in place to detect and flag players using such devices. According to the latest update, anyone caught using a suspicious device will see an “Unsupported Device Warning,” and will potentially face an account suspension or ban. We already know that cheaters in Call of Duty get banned across multiple games, so cheaters aren’t just risking their ability to play Modern Warfare II here. Kotaku reached out to Activision to ask if banned cheaters can still play single-player campaigns.
Ricochet said the new detection services are in use for both PC and consoles. But that’s not all the team is doing to ensure a fair playing experience.
Cheaters risk getting their guns taken away
Ricochet included a series of pretty hilarious videos documenting what you can expect if you’re trying to get away with breaking the rules in Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0. One such enforcement mechanism will look familiar to Vanguard players: Fuck around with cheats, and you can expect your gun to simply go away.
Another amusing anti-cheat mechanism makes it so that legit players will simply vanish before a cheater’s eyes. The fun part? Non-cheating players can still see, and shoot, the cheater. Take a gander at this in action:
Griefers are also being put on notice
Using a new “replay investigation tool,” Ricochet will be able to keep a close eye on suspicious behavior, and this includes griefing, which can include hostile voice or text chat, teamkilling, or other behavior that’s clearly intended to harass other players. Players caught violating the game’s code of conduct face additional warnings and potential suspensions.
Griefing, glitching, and other kinds of exploits are sometimes hard to track, given that they might involve said unsportsmanlike conduct or manipulations of bugs the devs haven’t yet fixed. Ricochet states that it will start with a series of warnings and penalties, but that players who don’t get their act together can expect potentially steeper punishments.
Warzone 2.0 has had a bit of a hard time keeping CoD fans active and playing. While it remains to be seen if the game’s next update on April 12, which will feature fan-favorite operators Alejandro and Valeria, will help it course-correct, it’s nice to know that the devs are making sure the game remains fair.