Call of Duty mitigates cheaters by ‘cloaking’ legit players as Warzone 2 is on the horizon

Yesterday, Call of Duty confirmed that Modern Warfare II is officially launching later this year. While we don’t really know a whole lot about the upcoming title outside of the tweet we’ve embedded below, we do know that the team is hard at work focusing on mitigating cheaters in the existing Call of Duty games. And we now have more information as to how the team plans to do just that with an all-new update to Call of Duty’s RICOCHET anti-cheat where cheaters…well, they no longer see legitimate players in-game in Warzone. More details below.

Cheaters might no longer be a problem in Warzone with the latest update

One of Call of Duty’s biggest issues is cheating. In fact, cheaters are one of the main reasons I never really got into Warzone. Cheating is so prevalent that it’s sometimes hard to find any lobby that doesn’t have at least one cheater in it. Well, the team behind the RICOCHET anti-cheat, which we covered back in February, now has another update to Call of Duty’s in-house solution to hackers: cloaking. What cloaking does is hide legitimate (noncheating) gamers from those who are actively employing cheats. Essentially, cheaters won’t be able to see or hear opposing players – legitimate characters, bullets, and even sounds won’t be detectible by cheaters. However, those who are playing the game without cheats will see those who are cheating with no problem. The Call of Duty blog even jokes that you’ll be able to figure out who a cheater is by seeing the person “spinning in circles hollering ‘Who’s shooting me?!'” While tongue-in-cheek as it may be, cheaters are going to have a harder time in Call of Duty from here on out.

Once RICOCHET detects a cheater and applies the in-game limitations to the character, it begins identifying how the person was able to cheat and eventually bans the person. In the recent ban wave, Call of Duty removed 90,000 accounts, with another 54,000 additional accounts being banned after that.

9to5Toys’ Take

All of this is crucial for Warzone 2 to have a solid launch, in my opinion. We know the game is coming out and will be completely rebuilt according to reports we were given back in February. So it’s understandable why the team is focusing so hard on getting rid of cheaters leading up to its release. Later this year, Warzone 2 will likely make or break the next few years of the Call of Duty franchise.

I love that Modern Warfare II is officially confirmed at this point, but with yearly releases (though the 2023 launch was bumped to 2024), it’s hard to deny that Warzone is really the bread and butter for the series as it persists across multiple launches. Hopefully, the team can further dial in on cheaters and mitigate the problem before it gets too out of hand, as nothing ruins a good game like hackers taking all the fun out of it for those who prefer playing legitimately.

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