The Ricochet anti-cheat system for Call of Duty games can now block cheaters before they play a game or as they play a match and before they can win.
Activision’s Treyarch studio released its report about its Richochet anti-cheat technology as it prepares to launch Season 1 for its Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 game. The new season gets under way later this week with Ranked Play coming on November 21.
The team behind Ricochet anti-cheat is actively monitoring systems, preventing and removing cheaters, and prepping new systems to make Ranked Play a fair and fun experience.
Activision has been open about stopping cheaters who can ruin the game experience for legit players. It has, for instance, talked about using ToxMod’s AI tech to screen voice chat for inappropriate behavior, doing so in real-time and booting players who commit offenses or giving them warnings. Since Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 went live across the globe on October 25, Activision had some details to share.
Black Ops 6 launch details and data
In-game reporting and internal data show that the upgrades made to Ricochet Anti-Cheat’s systems for launch have stood up strongly against cheaters. Several systems the devs deployed, including those in secret that were designed only to monitor data to ensure the effectiveness of upcoming detections, have been performing beyond expectation across behavioral and identification measures.
For example, a new behavioral model to analyze for anomalous skill has recorded and categorized over 4.4 million data points per hour at its peak. This information feeds into a system that examines both authentic play and cheaters to better suss out bad actors based on how they play — flagging accounts for human review and potential action.
As of last week, and since the launch of Black Ops 6, Ricochet Anti-Cheat systems intervened in over 582,000 matches to remove suspicious accounts before they could win, as well as removing thousands of accounts before they played a single game.
Ranked Play security updates
In preparation for Ranked Play going live on November 21 for Black Ops 6, Treyarch has helped deliver several updates to combat disruptive behavior. These updates include enhanced AFK detections to battle against account boosting – one of several measures to combat boosting – and adjusting ping thresholds to require players play matches in their region to cut down on VPN abuse.
To unlock Ranked Play in Black Ops 6, players will need to win 50 match-made multiplayer matches. This ensures that they’re experienced with multiplayer before they enter the mode and gives Ricochet a historical match history to examine before an account enters Ranked Play.
Ricochet Anti-Cheat also uses its Replay Investigation Tool, with the ability to watch any completed match, to monitor replays of top players as part of its investigation process.
For additional security, a change coming to Ranked Play is to add a manual review to any account rename requests for players at Crimson rank or higher.
The Ricochet Anti-Cheat team will also turn on systems that were initially deployed at launch to only collect data and test the effectiveness of the detections, as mentioned in the launch recap. Now that the devs have determined these systems are ready, they will go live with Season 01 to help flag accounts for action.
The security system updates listed above will also be active for Ranked Play in Call of Duty: Warzone, which launches at mid-season.
Policy updates
The Call of Duty security and enforcement policy has added new language about Call of Duty (COD) Points acquired fraudulently.
Users that are found to have acquired COD Points via fraudulent means may have their COD Points and/or in-game items revoked. Additionally, these users may be temporarily suspended or permanently suspended depending on the severity of the fraud.
In the next report, scheduled for the mid-season of Season 02, Activision said it will examine systems against the one-hour milestone established in the pre-launch blog.
The anti-cheat team always recommends you activate two-factor authentication to better protect your account and report any instances of cheating you see in-game.