Activision has taken decisive steps to address the growing concerns about cheating in Call of Duty, particularly in Black Ops 6 and Warzone. Following the intense backlash from the community after the launch of Ranked Play in Season 1 last year, the company has announced significant updates and measures to combat cheating in 2025.
Last month, Team Ricochet, the division dedicated to Call of Duty's anti-cheat technology, admitted that their initial efforts with the Season 1 launch fell short, especially in Ranked Play. "After a series of updates, our systems are in a better place today across all modes; however, we did not hit the mark for the integration of Ricochet Anti-Cheat at the launch of Season 01 — particularly for Ranked Play," Activision stated.
In a recent blog post, Activision revealed their comprehensive plan to tackle cheating moving forward. They reported issuing over 136,000 account bans in Ranked Play since its inception. With the upcoming Season 2, players can expect enhanced client and server-side detections, along with a major kernel-level driver update. Looking further ahead to Season 3 and beyond, Activision teased the introduction of new technologies, including a system designed to authenticate legitimate players and target cheaters. They are keeping the specifics under wraps to prevent cheat developers from gaining insights into their strategies.
A significant short-term change coming with Season 2 is the ability for console players in Black Ops 6 and Warzone Ranked Play to disable crossplay. This move is aimed at addressing the higher incidence of cheating on PC, allowing console players to compete solely against others on their platform. "We'll be monitoring closely and will consider further changes to prioritize the integrity of the ecosystem, and we’ll have more details to share as we get closer to the launch of this feature," Activision noted.
Despite these efforts, the Call of Duty community remains cautiously optimistic. Cheating has been a persistent issue for Activision, especially since the surge in popularity of Warzone in 2020. The company has invested heavily in anti-cheat technology and legal actions against cheat developers, with several notable successes recently.
Ahead of Black Ops 6's launch, Activision set an ambitious goal to remove cheaters from the game within an hour of their first match. The game introduced an updated version of Ricochet's kernel-level driver, alongside new machine-learning systems to quickly detect and analyze gameplay for aim bots.
"The people behind cheats are organized, illegal groups that pick apart every piece of data within our games to look for some way to make cheating possible," Activision explained. "These bad guys are not just some script kiddies poking around with code they found online. They are a collective who profit from exploiting the hard work of game developers across the industry."
Activision emphasized their ongoing efforts to identify and remove cheaters, noting, "But cheat developers are flawed (clearly — they have to pretend to be good at video games). Every time they cheat, they leave breadcrumbs behind. We’re always looking for those breadcrumbs to find the bad actors and get them out of the game."
