Call of Duty unveiled Ricochet, its answer to the rampant cheating issue in its Warzone battle royale game, back in October of last year. Two updates went up following the announcement before official deployment, one in November and a second in December. Ricochet’s core is kernel-level software, with access to a PC’s central functions, so long as the game is running.
While the Ricochet team made no promises about the platform’s effectiveness, these sorts of invasive measures promise a quick removal of the cheating problem. Riot Games’ anti-cheat for Valorant, also kernel-level, seems to be incredibly effective, according to the developers. The expectation was the same here.
Unfortunately, Ricochet does not seem to hold up to the same standards set by Riot’s effort. In the most recent Ricochet status update, the Call of Duty team noted that while “cheating within Warzone [was at] all-time low during the holiday break,” the developers are seeing an increase in successful cheaters. They go on to say that the “recent rise in cheating is not at the level it was during Verdansk, according to our data,” but “any increase is frustrating.” Note that Riot’s launch of their anti-cheat and their reporting of all-time-low cheating were many months apart; Ricochet has only been active for a couple of months.
The team at Ricochet requested that players encountering cheaters continue to report what they see and gave additional details about how the platform works. There were no clear specifications to avoid cheat makers gaining an additional advantage. The next test for whether the Ricochet system can keep cheaters at bay or not are the follow-ups to Warzone and Modern Warfare.
