Warzone’s RICOCHET anti-cheat makes it so cheaters can’t do ‘critical damage’ to players

Cheating in Call of Duty Warzone has, at times, been at levels that not many other games have achieved at scale. After developing the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat kernel-level driver for Warzone and launching it, the game saw a drastic decrease in in-game cheat reporting, according to the company’s internal data. In fact, cheating in Warzone was at an all-time low during the holiday break. However, some cheat developers have gotten around RICOCHET, so the team has implemented and is testing a new feature called Damage Shield that does real-time anti-cheat as games are going on. What all does Damage Shield do, and can it affect non-cheating players? Let’s take a look.

Warzone’s Damage Shield anti-cheat makes cheaters almost ineffective in gunfights

While the #TeamRICOCHET devs detailed a lot about the anti-cheat’s progress in Warzone, we’re focusing on the Damage Shield aspect of it today. This in-game mitigation is designed to “reduce the impact of cheating players, beyond banning accounts.” Essentially, the Damage Shield mitigation will let the server detect a cheater tampering with the game in real-time. When this happens, it’ll disable the cheater’s “ability to inflict critical damage on other players.”

When this happens, the cheater essentially can’t kill non-cheaters. What happens next is that the cheater is found by non-cheating players, and they can focus-fire and eliminate the rule-breaker. While all of this is happening, #TeamRICOCHET is able to collect information about the cheater’s system, track the encounters, and keep tabs on what goes on in the game.

The RICOCHET team said that they also track the encounters in another way, ensuring that there is “no possibility for the game to apply a Damage Shield randomly or by accident, no matter the skill level.” Essentially, RICOCHET claims that it will “never interfere in gunfights between law-abiding community members,” so non-cheaters don’t have to worry about this happening to them.

9to5Toys’ Take

It’s good to see developers going after cheaters in every way possible. Cheating isn’t just wrong, it ruins the game for players who enjoy the game within the rules set forth by the developers. Cheating can completely ruin a game if it overtakes the lobbies, and this is one of the reasons I personally don’t play Warzone anymore. It’s just not fun to me to land in a lobby full of cheaters and get 1-shot from across the map with a headshot in an impossible move. Nobody likes that.

So, seeing that the Call of Duty team is taking it seriously and applying in-game restrictions on cheaters before banning makes me quite happy, especially when it makes the cheater essentially ineffective in a combative situation and vulnerable to those in the game who are playing properly.

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