You can’t play dirty if you can’t find targets.
Call of Duty creators are coming up with increasingly inventive ways to discourage cheating in online matches. Eurogamer reports that Activision is bringing its kernel-level RICOCHET anti-cheat system to Call of Duty: Vanguard, and that the countermeasure punishes cheaters with “Cloaking.” Cheaters will be unable to see or hear their opponents, including incoming bullets, if they are detected. They’ll be at a disadvantage — and, hopefully, frustrated enough to abandon the game.
Cloaking joins other “mitigations” for cheaters that include Damage Shield, which prevents cheaters from landing critical damage on rivals. Activision also made clear that anyone banned for cheating will be removed from the leaderboard for a given game, and that it bans users both daily and in waves. Its most recent crackdown culled 54,000 accounts.
RICOCHET reached the multiplayer-only Warzone in 2021. Unlike the anti-cheat technology in Valorant, the kernel-level driver for Call of Duty titles is only active while those games are running. That theoretically minimizes vulnerabilities and potential problems with other software.
Anti-cheating measures like Cloaking aren’t guaranteed to work. Provided RICOCHET spots a cheater in the first place, it also assumes their hacks can’t auto-detect enemies. This nonetheless makes it harder for cheaters to prosper, and might be enough to discourage all but the most determined spoil-sports.
