Call of Duty is plagued with cheaters, but Activision’s Team Ricochet is always developing new tools to stop bad actors from exploiting Vanguard and Warzone to cheat. Now, Ricochet has implemented another anti-cheat measure as part of its “mitigation toolbox” that steals cheaters’ guns right from their hands and even prevents them from punching. Basically, CoD cheaters are transformed into pacifists when caught by the game’s anti-cheat software.
Ricochet—a group composed of security, game, and server engineers, researchers, data scientists, and more—published an Anti-Cheat Progress Report blog on June 16. The group explained that dealing with cheaters is much like dealing with viruses: One solution might work, but it’s usually a temporary salve since bad actors can—and often do—adapt to new roadblocks. So, while Ricochet is confident in its growing mitigation toolbox, the group is aware that “tomorrow will continue to deliver new and evolving threats.” That said, squashing cheaters is a matter of building out the mitigation toolbox and hitting targets with one or all of these anti-cheat measures at once. And one new addition to this toolbox is a technique Ricochet has dubbed “Disarm.”
The name is pretty self-explanatory. When a cheater is detected in either Vanguard or Warzone, Ricochet’s anti-cheat system will “simply take their weapons away from them (including their fists).” That’s it. You get caught, you get robbed of the very thing that makes Call of Duty…Call of Duty. The combat, the shooting. I can’t imagine it’s fun to play without all that chaos.
Ricochet said that they don’t expect to see many clips of it online but they have seen the tool in action and found “the reactions from cheaters [to be] always priceless.” So, IDK, fuck around and found out, I guess. Disarm joins two other techniques in Ricochet’s mitigation toolbox: Cloaking and Damage Shield.
Read More: Call Of Duty Cheaters ‘May’ Be Banned From Every Call Of Duty Game Ever Made
Ricochet answered some other questions in the blog post, too. The group confirmed their anti-cheat system will be active day one in Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0. They also said that since April 2022, over 180,000 combined players have been banned from Vanguard and Warzone. That’s a lotta folks who could probably do well to accept they’re bad at video games. It’s OK.
Activision Blizzard has continued to come under fire for its legal troubles surrounding years of workplace harassment and sexual misconduct. But don’t worry, everything’s fine at the shamed publisher because last week, it put out a report clearing itself of any wrongdoing. Never mind that its moves have impacted projects and studios, including Vicarious Visions, who had to can a potential THPS 3+4 Remake after getting absorbed last year. Maybe Activision Blizzard should also accept it’s bad at managing video games and developers.
