Highlights

  • Activision is addressing cheating in Call of Duty after banning 6,000 malicious players.
  • Cheating has long been a problem in Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone, affecting the player experience.
  • Despite efforts to combat cheating, the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat system may still struggle to stop persistent cheaters.

Activision has announced new security updates coming to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty: Warzone after banning more than 6,000 cheaters across both games earlier this month. Cheating in Call of Duty has already been bad before this, but a recent incident this February resulted in a massive surge of malicious players trying to exploit the game.

Like many other games in the multiplayer franchise, as well as other FPS titles in gaming history, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone have a long history of players going to great lengths to cheat to win. Less-skilled players would rather use exploits and cheating software to get an advantage over more competitive gamers, a phenomenon that always ends up ruining the experience for many people. For its part, Activision has tried over the years to implement anti-cheating measures, but enterprising cheaters have always found ways to get through.

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How Activision Will Address Cheating In Call of Duty

In an official update released on February 21, Activision admitted that the team manning the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat system had received over 6,000 reports of cheating incidents from February 16 to 20. This was because someone had mistakenly claimed that RICOCHET was offline, spurring cheaters to attempt using exploits. As a result, the developer not only tracked and banned these thousands of players, but it's also now testing new security updates. So far, the team's only concrete update was to disable game code for limited-time perks, but it's also said players should expect more announcements on the way.

Despite these measures, cheating and hacking in Call of Duty: Warzone remains a serious problem, as many creative players are just able to find different advantages over their opponents. For every exploit the system can squash, more seem to sprout and get past the protections, and the 6,000 players may not even be the end of it. These incidents may be an unfortunate reflection of how the current RICOCHET system may not be enough to defeat persistent cheaters.

At this point, Activision had already tried different ways to dissuade and discourage Call of Duty cheaters. It's unclear if anything can be done to completely stop cheating in online games like this.

Meanwhile, Modern Warfare 3 developer Sledgehammer Games remains hard at work at improving the experience. The latest Modern Warfare 3 update, aside from addressing the cheating incidents, made several tweaks to weapons and gameplay while also making stability fixes.