Activision (Finally) Launches New Warzone Cheat Detection!

While Call of Duty Warzone is arguably one of the best titles to date from the ‘battle royale’ genre, it has had a pretty huge problem ever since the game was initially released. Namely, cheaters. – An issue compounded by the fact that Activision has had a really hard time solving the problem. Why? Well, in a nutshell, because a cheater gets banned, then they can set up a new email address, register the account, and then start cheating in Warzone again. – It has, however, been well known that Activision has been working hard with developer Raven in the development of a brand new anti-cheating system. And following an official post on their Twitter account, Richochet has (finally) been launched!

Activision Announce Richochet Anti-Cheat for Warzone and Vanguard!

The announcement of Ricochet is not entirely surprising as yesterday afternoon pretty much anyone with a Warzone Activision account received something of a teaser ‘open letter’ email regarding cheaters (I did myself). While the email didn’t mention anything about this new cheat detection system, which has subsequently been launched, it did seem to indicate that something was on the horizon. And, well, with the launch of an official website, Activision has said:

“Cheating in Call of Duty is frustrating for players, developers, and the entire community.   

Our teams have made great strides in combatting this persistent issue that affects so many, but we know more must be done.

We are proud to introduce RICOCHET Anti-Cheat, a robust anti-cheat system supported by a team of dedicated professionals focused on fighting unfair play.

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.

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.

While the kernel driver, which is only a part of RICOCHET Anti-Cheat, will release to PC, by extension, console players playing via cross-play against players on PC will also stand to benefit. The kernel-level driver will subsequently release for Call of Duty: Vanguard at a later date.”

What Do We Think?

The mention of a ‘PC kernel-level driver’ is certainly very interesting as this would suggest that the new anti-cheating system is arguably going to go deeper than anything has before. Perhaps this is the long-rumoured ‘hardware ban’ being fully implemented.

While this will undoubtedly raise some concerns in the community regarding privacy, it sadly seems that if you want to play Warzone (or Vanguard) on PC or on console with crossplay and not risk encountering cheaters, something this drastic was probably needed. – I mean, let’s be honest, the cheating problem in Warzone was, and remains, huge. Like it or not, this might be the only solution. Well, presuming it works (and I pray that it does!).

While Activision has not yet confirmed when this will be introduced into Warzone, all I can say is that it is better late than never!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!