Call Of Duty Is Battling Cheaters By Taking Away Their Most Important Item

And that's why you don't cheat.

By Jason Collins | Published

call of duty modern warfare

The teams at Activision are apparently full of creative ideas on how to troll cheaters in their online games, such as Call of Duty: Warzone and Vanguard, and their newest method of punishment is stripping the cheaters of all their weapons. Now, this is a very interesting approach to dealing with cheaters, as it gives them the taste of their own medicine, putting them in a very unfavorable position against their non-cheating opponents.

According to IGN, Team RICOCHET disclosed their latest methodology for combating cheaters in Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone to provide a better gaming experience for all. The team initially disclosed that there isn’t a single most-effective way of dealing with ne’er-do-wells. Instead, anti-cheating measures are akin to anti-virus software in the sense that they’re constantly evolving. Unfortunately, cheaters are also devising new ways of gaining an unfair advantage, so implementing anti-cheating measures implies a continuous effort to outsmart those trying to cheat.

Luckily, the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat continues to evolve, and the anti-cheating system is becoming better and more effective at recognizing cheaters within the aforementioned Call of Duty titles. When the system detects a cheater, it “releases” one of all forms of punishment from the RICOCHET’s “mitigation toolbox,” which turns the tables on cheaters, making them helpless in front of fair-game players. It also helps the team gather more data to prevent future cheating attempts.

The very first punishment the team implemented was the Damage Shield. As per our previous report, this tool enhances the player’s protection against cheaters by refuting the damage that a cheating player would cause. This allows non-cheating players to realize that they’re being shot at by a cheater and gives them a better chance of enacting revenge. In most cases, though, the Call of Duty gamers team up on cheaters and ruin their kill-death ratio.

call of duty: warzone

Another tool that we previously mentioned is cloaking, which makes the cheater’s victim invisible when they’re hit, making them impossible to target further. But this method doesn’t only turn the cheater blind; it makes them deaf as well and unable to see the Call of Duty’s legitimate players’ characters, bullets, or even the sound they make, making them akin to sitting ducks for honest players. Not precisely the reason why Lady Justice wears a blindfold, but we’ll take it.

And the latest and most interesting punishment method is disarming, an effect imposed by RICOCHET Anti-Cheat, which takes the cheaters’ weapons, and prevents them even using cold weapons (such as knives and other types of blades) and their fists, making them utterly defenseless against legitimate Call of Duty gamers, who only want to test their skills, have some fun, and ultimately punish a cheater or two if the circumstances require.

Despite all the mitigation efforts, bans remain the biggest deterrent to cheating, and both Activision and RICOCHET have banned anywhere 500 thousand and one million accounts reported and confirmed of cheating within various Call of Duty games, including the aforementioned titles. And while in-game cheating is a plague that will never be eradicated, this is the first anti-cheat system that made concepts of in-game cheating fun for non-cheaters.