How Activision is planning to tackle cheaters in Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0

With the launch date of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 just on the horizon, Activision has been at the top of its game regarding the cheaters' manence in their titles.

A recent announcement on the official blog of Call of Duty has given us a glimpse of the upcoming measures that Activision is taking to combat the usage of cheat applications in Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone2.0.

The progress report published by Team Ricochet details the measures being applied and the actions taken against cheaters during the beta testing of Modern Warfare 2.

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Ricochet Anti-cheat to be present from day one of launch of Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0

This is the first instance in the Call of Duty franchise history when a dedicated kernel-level anti-cheat will be present right from the launch of a new title. Along with the kernel drivers that will provide Team Ricochet with near real-time monitoring of instances when a cheater gets into the game, Team Ricochet is adding various other measures to discourage players from cheating.

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In-game mitigations

The various in-game mitigations against cheaters and hackers already present in the current titles are getting carried over to Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0. These mitigations currently include Cloaking, Disarm, and Damage Shields that can already be found in Modern Warfare and Warzone.

Cloaking ghosts a normal player from the sight of an identified cheater, making them unable to find a target to engage. Disarm, as the name implies, removes the ability of cheaters to damage their opponents by taking away their guns, including the ability to use fists to inflict damage.

Damage Shield is another mitigation that is quite popular among players. If a normal player is shot at and sees their health slowly trickling down rather than getting quickly eliminated, they can realize that they are being engaged by a cheater and them in response. Many clips of this mitigation can be easily found on social media sites.

In addition to these measures, Team Ricochet is adding other mitigations to the upcoming titles that they have yet to announce to the public.

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Server vs Client

Along with the mitigation above and Kernal Driver, Team Ricochet is also working in close collaboration with the various studios under Activision to migrate specific processes to be powered on the server side in addition to the client. This will allow Team-Ricochet to have better real-time game monitoring, thus allowing much quicker detection and banning of hackers and cheaters.

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SMS Security Policy

As the major instances of cheating and hacking mainly come from PC players, Activision has added a policy of SMS verification during new account creation for PC users. This will prevent hackers and cheaters from indiscriminately creating a new account in the free battle royale mode once their old account is banned for cheating.

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Along with these measures, Activision continues to permanently ban accounts caught using cheats and hacks. Based on the latest report, Team Ricochet banned over 60,000 illicit accounts during the preparation phase of Modern Warfare 2 Beta, denying them access to the event.

In addition, over 20,000 accounts were banned during the event for using illicit applications. After analyzing their data, Team Ricochet mentioned that about 72 percent of cheaters were sanctioned even before they were able to play a single match. And for the rest were banned within an average of five games.

These figures indicate a cleaner ecosystem for players in Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0. However, players should remember that not all anti-cheat mitigation and measures were active during the beta phase. Players can expect an even quicker response against cheaters and hackers after the title's launch.