Activision finally cracked down on cheating in Call of Duty: Warzone. Call of Duty: Warzone, Call of Duty Vanguard will soon have a Ricochet anti-cheat program. The system will combine a PC kernel driver with machine learning algorithms to analyze player behavior and a dedicated team of professionals to investigate cheaters.
Activision has developed the PC kernel-level driver internally for Call of Duty: Warzone. It will be released with the Pacific update. PC games increasingly use kernel-level drivers in order to detect sophisticated cheating. However, this driver runs at such a high level within Windows that privacy concerns are constant.
Activision has confirmed that the Ricochet anti-cheat mechanism in Call of Duty won't always be active. This means that the kernel-level driver is only active when Call of Duty: Warzone is opened. The driver will then shut down when the game is closed. The driver will monitor all processes that interact with Warzone and report back any suspicious activity.
Activision claims that it has tested the driver on a wide range of computers. The driver will be required to play Call of Duty: Warzone later in the year, when the Pacific map update launches. Call of Duty: Vanguard will soon include the kernel-level driver.
Call of Duty players will appreciate this new anti-cheat effort even though there will undoubtedly be questions and concerns about a kernel-level driver. This announcement comes one day after Call of Duty's main Twitter account warned cheaters that they were not welcome. We won't tolerate cheaters and you will soon see why.
Tomorrow, see you. pic.twitter.com/BAvAGPkTzx Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) October 12, 2021
Activision has banned thousands of accounts but cheaters continue to ruin Call of Duty: Warzone over the past months. Raven Software has been contacted by prominent Warzone players to raise the issue and promised an anti-cheat system for August.
Call of Duty: Warzone doesn't have to be the only PC game that is affected by cheaters. Over the past year, cheating in top PC games has become more common. Wallhacks and aimbots have become increasingly common among the most elite shooters in the industry. Aimbots lock onto your opponents automatically, making it easier to hit head shots. Wallhacks reveal everyone on a map so cheaters have a huge advantage knowing where their opponents are at any given moment.
Even though tools such as Easy Anti-Cheat or BattlEye use kernel-level drivers, the industry has struggled to fight cheaters. Although Valorant has seen some success with its kernel-level driver, it is still an expensive investment to have dedicated teams fighting hackers and malware authors. Hackers are constantly trying to circumvent security measures. It's a constant game of cat and mouse.
To really address the problem, a more coordinated effort may be needed from all sectors. Microsoft holds the Windows platform, but TruePlay Anti-cheat for Windows 10 has never been implemented. It was limited to apps on the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), which many game developers ignored. And it's not clear if Microsoft will ever offer a complete anti-cheat solution for Windows kernel to help game developers.
