Vanguard & Warzone anti-cheat revealed: Full RICOCHET details
ActivisionThe Call of Duty: Warzone anti-cheat has finally been revealed. Along with its arrival date, CoD has announced RICOCHET Anti-Cheat, a proprietary security system based on server enhancements, a kernel-level driver, and machine learning.
Call of Duty’s emergence in the PC market with Warzone coincided with an influx of hackers. This cheating situation carried over into Black Ops Cold War and continued in the battle royale, disturbing the community.
But the developers maintained that they had plans to combat the problem month after month. And now, we finally know what exactly those plans consist of: the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat.
Much like Apex Legends and Fortnite’s Easy Anti-Cheat, PUBG and Rainbow Six: Siege’s BattlEye, and Valorant’s Vanguard — RICOCHET is a kernel-level driver system. And, combined with server enhancements and machine learning efforts, it’s a first for CoD and should be much more effective than previous security efforts.
RICOCHET Anti-Cheat: Warzone and Vanguard release dates
In an October 13 post, Activision have laid out RICOCHET Anti-Cheat. While some hoped an October 12 teaser meant the Warzone anti-cheat would arrive sooner, the team has clarified that it’s a little further away.
“RICOCHET Anti-Cheat’s backend anti-cheat security features will launch alongside Call of Duty: Vanguard, and later this year with the Pacific update coming to Call of Duty: Warzone.” Further details explain that the server updates will arrive with Vanguard and the kernel-level driver will come with Warzone’s Pacific map integration.
As such, RICOCHET Anti-Cheat is set to debut in some capacity on November 5 for Vanguard’s release. Then, Warzone will also make use to the Anti-Cheat system from December 2 onwards with the launch of Season One.
RICOCHET Anti-Cheat details: Server enhancements, kernel-level driver, machine learning
ActivisionAs far as what the system consists of, the backend upgrades will include “server enhancements” and then a kernel-level driver.
The latter “will be required to play Warzone” and, much like the aforementioned other systems, it’s software that has “a high enough level of access to monitor and manage software and applications on a PC.” To satisfy privacy concerns, Activision have maintained that RICOCHET will turn off when you close Warzone and will only monitor or report activity related to CoD.
Machine learning is the final piece of the system: “Algorithms examine gameplay data from the server, helping to identify suspicious behavior trends.”
In sum, this is a much deeper system than the previous efforts made and includes software built for CoD specifically. While expected to be better than earlier attempts, the devs have maintained that they’re devoted to continually improving RICOCHET Anti-Cheat and that user reports will still be helpful.