Call Of Duty Plans To Combat Cheaters By Turning Them Blind

Popular shooting game Call of Duty has really been cracking down on cheaters, and they plan to take the power of sight soon.

By Jason Collins | Published

call of duty

After banning nearly half a million players for cheating — a rather unethical gaming behavior — Activision Blizzard’s team Ricochet unveiled several new methods they’re developing to combat cheaters in Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone games. Apparently, one of those methods is turning the cheaters blind and unable to see other players, with other players still capable of seeing them perfectly.

According to IGN, legitimate players’ characters, bullets, or even sound will be undetectable to Call of Duty cheaters, making them akin to sitting ducks for honest gamers. It’s serving cheaters the taste of their own medicine, as it provides honest players with an unfair advantage over those who tried to gain an unfair advantage first by altering or modding the game’s code — cheating. So, the cheaters aren’t really turned blind; instead, the game entirely cloaks the honest gamers, dealing justice to the cheating players.

call of duty

Activision’s team enacted a number of in-game mitigation techniques through a series of updates that help identify cheaters and employ ways to impede their ability to adequately play the game in nefarious ways. It’s a pretty interesting technique and probably more effective than account bans, as cheaters won’t be able to see their opponents and walk around the map, unknowingly putting themselves in their opponents’ crosshairs.

Considering that cheating has had a significant impact on leaderboards across the globe in both Call of Duty games, this method will not only prevent cheaters from rising on the leaderboards but will actually sink their rank due to the numerous in-game deaths their characters would suffer at the hands of their opponents. And here’s an interesting idea: on top of cloaking, cheating gamers should have a flashing “Cheater” instead of their in-game name and enable friendly fire on them. In addition, players who deal a killing shot should receive a score boost. It’s open season on Call of Duty cheaters.

With that said, Activision stated that cheaters who manage to weasel their way past cloaking would be banned if caught, and their entries will be deleted from the Call of Duty leaderboards, granting more room for those who rely exclusively on gaming skills. Unfortunately, cheaters in multiplayer games are highly resourceful and always looking for a way to gain an advantage over honest players without exerting any effort or skill.

In truth, cheating is becoming more rampant in the gaming community, despite the platform. Cheating in Call of Duty, at least on consoles, was unimaginable some time ago, as the console’s software prevented tampering with the game’s live code. Then cross-platform gaming came along, and honest PC gamers apologized to their console-playing colleagues for the behavior of those hellbent on cheating in games.

Sure, spawning a tank in GTA: The Trilogy video game isn’t hurting anyone, as long as it’s a single-player game, but doing so in a Call of Duty multiplayer is a big no-no. In fact, 74$ of gamers said that cheaters had ruined their enjoyment of a game, and 61% said they themselves had been caught cheating. One would think that cheating isn’t so widespread, but according to PCMag’s report, even console players aren’t immune to cheating — ever since the rise of hardware aimbots that allow console gamers to aim perfectly or even set their accuracy levels.

This really speaks volumes about the gaming scene; and it should. People should question the skills of their favorite streamers, for example, as many have been accused of cheating, even in Call of Duty.