Call of Duty Warzone’s new anti-cheat tech has been revealed

Activision has today announced that its new anti-cheat software, Ricochet, will debut alongside Call of Duty: Vanguard, and then later in Warzone with it’s Pacific update.

In a post Wednesday 13 October to the Call of Duty blog, the developer detailed how the new system will work.

“The Ricochet Anti-Cheat initiative is a multi-faceted approach to combat cheating, featuring new server-side tools which monitor analytics to identify cheating, enhanced investigation processes to stamp out cheaters, updates to strengthen account security, and more.

“Ricochet Anti-Cheat’s backend anti-cheat security features will launch alongside Call of Duty: Vanguard, and later this year with the Pacific update coming to Call of Duty: Warzone.”

It went on to announce a PC-specific driver targeting cheaters, something that has been a problem on the platform, and for console players via cross-play, for some time.

“In addition to server enhancements coming with Ricochet Anti-Cheat is the launch of a new PC kernel-level driver, developed internally for the Call of Duty franchise, and launching first for Call of Duty: Warzone.

“This driver will assist in the identification of cheaters, reinforcing and strengthening the overall server security. The kernel-level driver launches alongside the Pacific update for Warzone later this year.”

This announcement follows a tease on Call of Duty’s Twitter page that called out cheaters directly on Tuesday 12 October. “No one likes a cheater. Our goal is to deliver a fun and fair gaming experience for our developers. For our fans. And most importantly… for Call of Duty players everywhere.” read the tweet.

Warzone’s new WWII Pacific map will arrive shortly after Vanguard’s release on November 5.

Speaking to VGC in April, Warzone’s creative director revealed that he shared fan frustration over cheating in the smash hit, which has attracted over 100 million players.

“Cheating is handled by our security team,” he said. “But what I will say is that we have reporting tools, we ban a ton of people and no one hates the cheaters more than we do. We make this content for the players and while you’re upset that it ruined your game, I’m upset that it’s ruining some of the best work that I’ve done in my life.

“I made this content for players and I know that everyone around the team feels that way,” Hodge continued. “We put our hearts into this content, we have 100 million players, it’s been out a year, this is a huge stage and some of the best work we’ve ever done, and to have cheaters come in and ruin the game bothers us more than anyone. I know the security team are on top of it and they’re continually going to make updates.”