Activision apologizes as hackers run rampant in Warzone and Black Ops 6 Season 1 Reloaded

Activision updated RICOCHET Anti-Cheat in Black Ops 6 and Warzone to alleviate growing concerns surrounding the issue.

On November 22, Activision admitted that BO6 Ranked Play has a cheating problem. After the game mode’s release in Season 1 Reloaded, players encountered lobbies infested by cheaters and posted clips online of hackers taking over high-rank matches.

Frustrations eventually boiled over as content creators and Call of Duty League pro players tore apart the mode on social media.

Team RICOCHET Identified and fixed a data outage that lowered the efficacy of AI systems, adjusted existing thresholds for Ranked Play to target suspicious accounts, and accelerated replay investigations.

The latest update builds upon those changes made in November and increases efforts to clean up Ranked Play.

RICOCHET Anti-Cheat December update explained

Activision

Activision admitted, “We did not hit the mark for the integration of RICOCHET Anti-Cheat at the launch of Season 01 – particularly for Ranked Play.”

In response, RICOCHET is set to introduce a kernel-level driver and brand new server-side protections, launching in Seasons 2 and 3. Activision confirmed that there will be more information about this update closer to those season release dates.

Here is a look at the other changes included in the update.

• Upgrades & Accounts: Account bans are now happening hourly due to increased velocity from several RICOCHET Anti-Cheat systems, this in addition to the over 19,000 accounts we’ve removed recently. These updates to our systems mean enforcement response times are now quicker than they have ever been.
• Leaderboards: The cleanup process has been updated for faster synchronization of leaderboard changes.
• Investigations: We have significantly expanded our Replay Investigation render farm – the machines used to generate clips for examination. We’ve also ramped up the group dedicated to manually review clips (based on a priority order that favors detections). In the last several weeks, the Replay tool updates have been highly effective at validating detections and reports, providing further training for AI systems for the anti-cheat team, and removing cheaters.

A kernel-level driver has been at the top of player wish lists since cheating became an issue. Kernel Anti-Cheat Systems will allow developers to detect suspicious behavior by identifying malware and hacks directly on the computer running them better than other programs are capable of.

As for when more updates will go live, we expect Black Ops 6 and Warzone Season 2 to start on January 28 based on the current Battle Pass.