Call of Duty tackles cheaters in a completely new way

Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone are getting a brand new anti-cheat to fillet traps. But what do you give up for that?

Cheaters are a huge problem in all major games. They ruin fair competitiveness and the fun of others. Still, all the complaints from Call of Duty fans in recent years seemed to have no effect, as cheaters massively ruined the shooters. Now Activision is finally responding to gamers’ persistent objections because call of Duty gets brand new software against cheaters. The question now is, is everyone willing to accept the drawbacks?

Call of Duty hunts cheaters

The way cheaters are dealt with in all recent CoD games is going to change. Activision announces its own anti-cheat called Ricochet for Call of Duty: Vanguard and War zone. Yes, you read that right, if all is well, it will soon be over with cheaters in the popular battle royale.

How exactly does that work? That is slightly less good news. Ricochet is a so-called kernel-level anti-cheat system. That is, the software must have access to deep inside your system. So deep, that the software can detect at a fundamental level if malicious programs are used.

Why isn’t that such good news? Because programs usually don’t even come close to kernel-level access. A lot of anti-cheat software, including Call of Duty’s new program, on the other hand, and that is always controversial. Because of privacy considerations, you should think twice whether this is desirable.

The good news is that unlike some software, Ricochet only runs when the game is running. Valorant was in the news a lot last year because that game’s anti-cheat all the time had to be on. If you closed the program, you had to restart your PC for the game to work again. That is not the case with Ricochet.

Anyway, the new anti-cheat comes out early November with the release of Call of Duty: Vanguard for that game and Warzone. You can no longer play without it.