Activision has just pushed out one of its most impactful ban waves ever, booting 26,000 malicious operators from the Call of Duty ecosystem. In a sweep that targeted thousands of foul players, Team RICOCHET not only pulled many cheaters from MW3 and Warzone but also implemented a series of changes to mitigate the ongoing ‘pandemic’. For Call of Duty players, the issue with cheaters is reaching a point of no return, impacting everything from battle royale to mobile and from ranked play to multiplayer modes.

Recently, further problems surfaced in the Call of Duty space, with it being revealed that some intelligent ‘hacks’ could effectively shadowban other players. With the technology driving these malicious elements advancing as consistently as Activision’s anti-cheat systems, it’s a constant cat-and-mouse battle to stay one step ahead of the other party.

RICOCHET Revisions

On Twitter, it was revealed that a series of changes had been made to combat the ongoing issues with cheating in Call of Duty. It was confirmed that with the Season 2 Reloaded update, Team RICOCHET has deployed ‘enhanced protections and increased response times for kernel-level drivers’. There have been optimisations made to detect cheaters faster in MW3’s Ranked Play mode, and third-party hardware device detection – such as Cronus devices – has been ‘upgraded’.

Targeting specific cheats, Team RICOCHET has made it so that vehicles that shouldn’t be airborne (or for too long) may randomly explode. This has been an issue in Call of Duty for quite some time, with cheaters zipping around Warzone maps in vehicles that shouldn’t be in the air, like boats and trucks.

Finally, the team stressed that in a single day, 26,000 bans were issued across the board. That’s the highest single-day figure we’ve ever seen reported, but it’s hardly a good thing. If anything, it’s indicative of the scale of the problem. If Activision can ban 26,000 cheaters in one day and still have to deploy further updates to tackle malicious operators, how many more cheaters are left out there avoiding punitive action?

It’s unlikely this pandemic will slow any time soon. From VALORANT to Battlefield and from Rainbow Six to Fortnite, cheaters are everywhere, all the time. It’s one of the harsh realities of modern multiplayer-based gaming. Even Palword proved to be a target for cheaters when it was released in January with an overwhelmingly positive reception. We just can’t win.

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