Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Vanguard were all set to get a new level of protection against in-game cheaters via a kernel-level anti-cheat system called Ricochet. But that future is under threat, as the kernel driver for the tool may have leaked.
As VG24/7 reports, an online group that works against online cheating, Anti-Cheat Police, has shared a file they discovered online that is reportedly authentic drive code for Ricochet anti-cheat. The team suggests the code “will be reversed easily.”
Call of Duty: Warzone has been plagued by cheaters, and Activision has banned hundreds of thousands of accounts over the lifespan of the game, PCGamer reports. Popular streamers have also raised concerns about the lack of a dependable anti-cheat service in the game.
The new Ricochet anti-cheat system should have helped cut down on some of that cheating going forward in both the free-to-play Battle Royale game as well as the new installment, Vanguard. By using a kernel-level driver for Ricochet, the system “allows for the monitoring of applications that may attempt to manipulate Call of Duty: Warzone game code, while it is running,” Activision explains.
While the kernel-level driver may prevent cheaters from using software to get around it, it now seems likely that some will be able to bypass the Ricochet system anyway. And, with the driver leaking this early, cheats for the game may be ready before it even launches.
Ricochet still has more ways to block cheating, as Activision has detailed that it is “a multi-faceted approach to combat cheating, featuring new server-side tools which monitor analytics to identify cheating." But players may have to temper their expectations.