Activision’s Team RICOCHET has shared an interesting update in the leadup to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s Season 1.
As they revealed in the Call of Duty Blog, they are prepared for Season 1’as launch this coming November 21. RICOCHET has set up a system to monitor possible cheating in real time, and another system to collect the data after the fact. The second system acts as a sort of evaluation on the effectivity of the first one, and RICOCHET says their evidence proves that their systems are effective in curtailing cheating right now.
Their systems are certainly very impressive. RICOCHET touts building a behavioral AI model that is finding cheaters in game recording at the rate of 4.4 million data points per hour. Team RICOCHET claims they have directly intervened in over 582,000 separate cases of cheating. They have removed suspicious accounts before they could win matches, and they have also caught other such accounts, in the thousands, before they were able to start playing.
Now, RICOCHET’s next big target for Season 1 are gamers who abuse VPN. Now, let us be clear here; RICOCHET is not banning gamers using VPNs. VPNs are ostensibly used so that some gamers can play in servers in other regions, and Activision does not block or discourage that practice.
However, using VPNs can also enable bad actors to make use of certain cheats. So we’ll let RICOCHET explain what they plan to do about it below:
“These updates include enhanced AFK detections to battle against account boosting – one of several measures to combat boosting – and adjusting ping thresholds to require players play matches in their region to cut down on VPN abuse.
To unlock Ranked Play in Black Ops 6, players will need to win 50 match-made multiplayer matches. This ensures that they’re experienced with multiplayer before they enter the mode and gives #TeamRICOCHET a historical match history to examine before an account enters Ranked Play.
RICOCHET Anti-Cheat also uses its Replay Investigation Tool, with the ability to watch any completed match, to monitor replays of top players as part of its investigation process.
For additional security, a change coming to Ranked Play is to add a manual review to any account rename requests for players at Crimson rank or higher.”
And they end this by mentioning their monitoring systems, that simultaneously check for cheating in real time, and also helps them assess how successful they are in curtailing cheating.
With what is likely the most successful game of the year, RICOCHET has to put in a lot of work to make sure Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 remains enjoyable for everyone. Well, everyone except for the cheaters.
