The anti-cheat team for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, sets a lofty target: 'Catch and eliminate cheaters within an hour'

I made peace with cheaters long ago. The more you play multiplayer games, and the more you improve, the more you're likely to encounter losers who paid $30 for cheating at videogames. Call of Duty’s dedicated Ricochet Anti-cheat Team knows it can’t stamp out cheaters in an FPS which is constantly changing. But it has set a new ambitious goal as Black Ops 6 approaches: “We want to catch cheaters and remove them within an hour of their first match.”

Activision's latest Ricochet report says that while the target is ambitious, it is not impossible. The team is working on a number of anti-cheat updates to boost its efforts.

• Updated version of the kernel level driver. Note: All features of the October 25 update will be protected for any title that uses this driver, including Call of Duty (r): Warzone (tm).
• All mitigations including Damage Shield, Disarm, Splat, Hallucination, and others, will be live.
• New machine-learning behavioral system focusing on speed of detection.
• New machine-learning detection algorithms to analyze gameplay and combat aimbots.
• Upgrades will be made when Ranked Play launches. This includes a continuous examination to determine if the leaderboard placements are correct. In a blog post closer to the launch of Ranked Play, we will provide more information on Ranked Play upgrades.
• We've developed new mitigations for Call of Duty: Warzone to stop cheaters. Keep an eye out for a future article to learn more about these new tricks.

The Black Ops 6 Beta in September was an important step for Ricochet to establish itself in the new game. During the first beta weekend, cheaters detected were able play an average of ten matches before they were removed. The second weekend was much faster.

The report states: "After tweaking and deploying new detection techniques for Weekend Two, this time was cut in half to only five matches." This timing achieved our Time to Action target. In fact, 25% all Weekend Two bans occurred during the first match that a cheater played.

Total, 12,000 accounts have been banned during the beta. It's not bad, but it's important that these figures only include cheaters who Ricochet was able to catch. You can assume that there are cheaters who have evaded Ricochet, but you cannot count those you don't know exist. Activision has also taken some time to discuss cheat makers, pushing back on the assumption that hackers are just a bunch random amateurs.

"The people behind cheats" are organized, illegal group that go through every bit of data in our games looking for a way to cheat. These bad guys aren't just script kids playing around with code that they found online. They are a group of people who profit by exploiting the hardwork of game developers in the industry.

"But cheat developers have flaws (clearly, they must pretend to be good video game players). Every time they cheat they leave breadcrumbs."

In a way, the fight against cheating has as much to do with image as it does with technology. Call of Duty, and all other competitive games for that matter, are fighting two separate battles: A technological grudge match and a fight to counter the perception that a game's integrity is compromised. This second battle is the reason Ricochet makes such a spectacle of punishing cheaters, before they are banned, by taking their guns away, cutting their parachute mid-flight or blinding them to other players. Morale boosters, justified by the chance to study the enemy.

Fans of popular shooters are always criticizing them for not doing enough against cheaters. But, if you grade Call of Duty on a scale of 1-10, I would say it does a good job.