Call of Duty banned nearly 20,000 Black Ops 6 cheaters in one week

Call of Duty has announced that it has banned nearly 20,000 players for cheating, just over a week after Black Ops 6 ranked play was launched. Activision has said its Ricochet AI software is running hourly sweeps, and the company aims to remove cheaters within one hour of them playing their first game. Although it has yet to hit these levels, TeamRicochet has seemingly improved its detection rates.

Cheating in Call Of Duty: the state of play

The popularity of the Call of Duty series, which has sold more than half a billion units across the years, means that its games are plagued by cheaters, especially in ranked matches. With every launch of a new Call of Duty game comes a swathe of bots and cheat software. In particular, the most common types are the following:

• Aimbots which automatically locate and target opposition players.
• Wallhacks that enable players to see through walls and other obstructions.
• Radar hacks that include features like ignoring the Ghost Perk.

As is typical, it only took a few weeks after the Black Ops 6 launch for new bots to hit the servers. Those selling them claim that they are undetectable by Activision and its anti-cheat protocols. The problem led to Activision launching the Ricochet anti-cheating software. It was first featured in Vanguard multiplayer matches, but it has seen controversy.

Many players claim they cannot see the benefit of the anti-cheating software, stating that cheating is as prevalent as it has ever been. But arguably worse still are the shadowbans that many non-cheating players have been hit with. A shadowban means a player is removed from the general matchmaking lobbies and is only pitted against other shadowbanned accounts.

Generally, Activision will not overturn these bans, claiming they “will only be overturned if we determine the infraction was due to your Activision account being hacked.” Players can’t even appeal. Activision, for its part, believes that these unwarranted bans are few in number and that the ends justify the means.

What kind of cheats are there for Call of Duty?

Ricochet’s anti-cheating software performance by the numbers

Activision has reported that its software has fared well during the first few weeks of the game’s release. In the report, they stated the AI examines 4.4 million data points at its peak and that within a couple of weeks of launch, Ricochet had intervened in nearly 600,000 matches to remove accounts while also removing thousands of suspicious accounts before they even had the opportunity to play a single game.

Ranked play launched on November 21. Players must compete win 50 matches to show they have appropriate experience in multiplayer games. This also allows Ricochet to analyze their game performance to identify any possible cheaters and prevent them from getting involved with ranked play proper.

The software also can rewatch completed matches so it can analyze the performance and actions of the top-ranked players. The same security systems were also implemented in the Black Ops 6 Warzone update. Activision also said it would report on its one-hour milestone during its next report, which is slated to arrive in the middle of season 02 content.

Black Ops 6 is still thriving

Cheaters are likely still found on Black Ops 6, but this hasn’t stopped gamers from buying the latest title. Activision announced that it has enjoyed the most new players, total games played, and total game time of any Call of Duty release during its first month. It was also the biggest Game Pass day one release, having driven the most new signups for the subscription service of any game launch.