Activision has taken significant steps to address the Call of Duty community's concerns about cheating in Black Ops 6 and Warzone, particularly following the introduction of Ranked Play last year. The issue of cheating has become a focal point for hardcore fans, who believe it severely impacts competitive multiplayer. In response to criticism, Activision's Team Ricochet, the unit tasked with managing the game's anti-cheat technology, acknowledged that the initial implementation of Ricochet Anti-Cheat in Season 1 did not meet expectations, especially in Ranked Play.
In a recent blog post, Activision detailed its strategy for combating cheating in Call of Duty throughout 2025. Since the launch of Ranked Play, the company has already issued over 136,000 account bans. With the upcoming Season 2, Activision is rolling out enhanced client and server-side detection systems along with a significant update to the kernel-level driver. Looking further ahead, Season 3 and beyond will introduce a range of new technologies, including a novel system designed to authenticate genuine players and identify cheaters. However, specifics of this new technology were withheld to prevent cheat developers from gaining insights into their methods.
In a move to address immediate concerns, starting with Season 2, console players in Black Ops 6 and Warzone Ranked Play will have the option to disable crossplay. This feature allows them to compete solely against other console players, a long-standing request given the higher incidence of cheating on PC. "We'll be monitoring closely and will consider further changes to prioritize the integrity of the ecosystem, and we’ll have more details to share as we get closer to the launch of this feature," Activision stated.
Despite these efforts, skepticism among the community remains high. Cheating is a pervasive issue across many video games, but it has notably tarnished Activision's reputation since the surge in popularity of Warzone in 2020. The company has invested heavily in anti-cheat technology and has successfully pursued legal action against cheat developers. In October, prior to Black Ops 6's launch, Activision set a goal to remove cheaters from the game within one hour of their first match. Black Ops 6 and Warzone launched with an updated version of Ricochet's kernel-level driver and new machine-learning behavioral systems aimed at quickly detecting and analyzing gameplay to combat aim bots.
Activision highlighted the sophistication of cheat developers, describing them as organized, illegal groups that meticulously analyze game data to exploit vulnerabilities. "The people behind cheats are organized, illegal groups that pick apart every piece of data within our games to look for some way to make cheating possible," Activision noted. "These bad guys are not just some script kiddies poking around with code they found online. They are a collective who profit from exploiting the hard work of game developers across the industry. But cheat developers are flawed (clearly — they have to pretend to be good at video games). Every time they cheat, they leave breadcrumbs behind. We’re always looking for those breadcrumbs to find the bad actors and get them out of the game."
