Activision is finally acknowledging Call of Duty fans’ complaints with a new anti-cheat system, Ricochet, that’s set to arrive on Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Vanguard later this year.
People have been cheating at Call of Duty since the franchise debuted. Warzone’s popularity brought more attention to the problem, however, especially when popular creators bemoaned the lack of a functioning anti-cheat system on their Twitch live-streams and YouTube videos.
Enter Ricochet, which Activision says is “a multi-faceted approach to combat cheating, featuring new server-side tools which monitor analytics to identify cheating, enhanced investigation processes to stamp out cheaters, updates to strengthen account security, and more.”
Those systems will apply to Call of Duty players on all platforms. Activision says it will also release a kernel-level driver to “assist in the identification of cheaters, reinforcing and strengthening the overall server security,” alongside the Pacific update to Warzone.
This aspect of Ricochet could prove controversial. Activision won’t be the first to introduce a kernel-level driver as part of its anti-cheat system. Riot did the same with the Vanguard system installed alongside Valorant—but that doesn’t mean it will escape criticism for that decision.
“Cheating software has become more sophisticated, allowing cheaters to circumvent traditional approaches to security,” Activision says. “A kernel-level driver allows for the monitoring of applications that may attempt to manipulate Call of Duty: Warzone game code, while it is running. […] User-mode applications have limitations on access and monitoring, making it more likely for unauthorized software to manipulate game code or to circumvent security features.”
But that monitoring comes at a cost: Ricochet will have unfettered access to a system. Activision says the driver won’t always be active, though, and only “monitors the machine and processes interacting with Call of Duty: Warzone to determine if they are manipulating the game.”
The question then becomes whether or not people are comfortable giving Ricochet such privileged access to their systems just to play Call of Duty. That won’t be a rhetorical question; Activision says Ricochet will have to be installed to play Warzone on PC after the system’s debut.
