Warzone Ricochet unveils anti-cheat system

Warzone Ricochet Anti-Cheat is a bespoke security initiative for Call of Duty games, including the upcoming Warzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2, that includes a core-level anti-cheat driver for PC. Like other anti-cheat systems, Ricochet Anti-Cheat tries to restrict and ban accounts it associates with cheating. We also understand that there are a number of other measures to make Call of Duty games a horrible experience for cheaters even before they were banned, effectively shadow-banning them in games like Warzone 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Call of Duty games have been badly affected by hackers, cheats, and aimbots for years, and it’s an important time for Ricochet Anti-Cheat to enter its second year of use and launch with Warzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2. In this guide, we’ll explain everything we know about the Ricochet Anti-Cheat system and what impact it might have on your gameplay and potentially on your privacy.

What if Ricochet Anti-Cheat says you’re cheating?

As we understand it, there are three main consequences of being flagged by the Call of Duty Ricochet Anti-Cheat system. First of all, if the system detects that you are cheating, possibly via the PC kernel level driver, you will almost certainly be banned. For the recent Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 beta testing, the Ricochet Anti-Cheat team reported that they banned 60,000 “illegal accounts” before the beta began, blocking their access, and another 20,000 accounts banned during the beta.

A new security feature added to the Ricochet Anti-Cheat initiative: in-game mitigations (opens in new tab). These are the systems that will be active from the launch of Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2 and aim to make the gaming experience as miserable as possible without a complete ban for scammers. This allows the Ricochet team to analyze the behavior of cheaters to further increase security. These mitigations include Damage Shield (causing cheaters to deal minimal damage and effectively render their weapons useless), Concealment (causing players hit by the cheater to be completely invisible and silent, making them significantly harder to kill), and Disarm (detected cheaters during the match) pulls out weapons, including melee weapons and fists).

The third and final method is less severe, but is meant to reduce the odds of regular players encountering cheaters in their matches and make matches much more difficult for cheaters. A Q&A between Activision and the creators revealed that players can be split into matchmaking pools for “trusted” and “untrusted” accounts (thanks CharlieINTEL), meaning accounts marked as “untrusted” by Ricochet Anti-Cheat will only be matched with other accounts. untrusted accounts Activision said they don’t plan to share details of their rating system, but if you’re not cheating, you probably won’t have anything to worry about.

Is Warzone Ricochet safe for privacy?

Core-level systems like Ricochet were viewed quite negatively by many due to the fact that their function was primarily to pass through your computer and send data to creators – something many saw as a breach of privacy.

However, Activision made the following claims regarding privacy security when using Ricochet:

• RICOCHET Anti-Cheat’s kernel-level driver ONLY works when playing Call of Duty: Warzone on PC.
• The driver for RICOCHET Anti-Cheat is not always open.
• RICOCHET Anti-Cheat’s driver monitors software and applications that interact with Call of Duty: Warzone.
• The drive shuts down when you close Call of Duty: Warzone.

Activision also stated that “player privacy is extremely important” and stressed that protecting this privacy is a priority. However, do not think of this guide as an endorsement or disapproval of the Warzone and Ricochet system.

Do you need to download Ricochet Anti-Cheat to play?

No, you don’t have to manually download Ricochet Anti-Cheat as it will be part of the installation process of any game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2. Anti-Cheat is required to play the respective games, so even if you can specifically uninstall Ricochet, you cannot play these games without it.

Is Ricochet Anti-Cheat on consoles?

As far as we know, the kernel-level driver used to identify cheaters is for PC gamers only. However, the broader security improvements introduced by the Ricochet Anti-Cheat initiative should also benefit console gamers. Regarding the specific implementation of the kernel-level driver for PC, Activision said that “by extension, console players who play via cross-play against PC players will also benefit.”