The latest update to Call of Duty's anti-cheat system leaves cheaters searching for the enemy, destined to never find them.
This week, Activision released a new version of its Ricochet anti-cheat driver for both Call of Duty: Warzone and Vanguard. The driver was already available for Warzone, but this is the first time Vanguard players can benefit from it, as well as a new feature just introduced called Cloaking.
Back in February, Ricochet introduced a mitigation technique called Damage Shield, which disables a cheater's ability to inflict critical damage on players. However, they could still run around attacking opposing players. Cloaking goes a step further and will render opposing players invisible and silent if it detects you are cheating in the game.
Legitimate players will continue to see the cheaters as they play. Activision says "they’ll be the players you see spinning in circles hollering, “Who is shooting me?!”"
Ricochet now also ensures a player who is found cheating and subsequently banned will be automatically deleted from global leaderboards. By implementing that feature, Call of Duty players will be further discouraged from cheating as it could see their leaderboard entry disappear.
If you think this sounds like a lot of work simply to stop a few cheats, keep in mind Activision has already banned around 150,000 accounts due to cheating. The company also points out that, "every advancement we make in anti-cheat, cheaters are working to circumvent those updates." If a team wasn't working to stop cheats, then Call of Duty games would simply be overrun with them.