Cheating has been a huge problem in Call of Duty: Warzone, but the new anti-cheat action will now give non-cheating players a “damage shield” that will prevent non-wells from inflicting massive damage on them.
in a new way Articles, The team behind Call of Duty: Warzone has shared details about new updates coming to the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat system that “relies on data to identify cheating behavior and make our ban waves more impactful.” One of these new features is called Damage Shield, which is an in-game way to not only stop cheaters from winning matches or kill players, but also to learn more about the cheater and prevent them from doing it again.
“One of the mitigation techniques we’ve been testing is something we call damage shielding,” the blog reads. “When the server detects that a cheater is tampering with the game in real time, it disables the cheater’s ability to inflict critical damage on other players. This mitigation makes the cheater vulnerable to real players and allows #TeamRICOCHET to collect information about the cheater’s system.”
“We track these encounters to ensure that there is no possibility for the game to apply the damage shield randomly or by accident, regardless of skill level. To be clear, we will never get involved in firefights between law-abiding community members. The damage shield is now out of testing and is being deployed at the whole world. “
Other mitigations are in the works, but the team isn’t ready to reveal them yet as they don’t want to “spoil the surprise” of unsuspecting cheaters.
It was also announced that “severe or repeated breaches of the security policy – such as in-game cheating – may result in the permanent suspension of all accounts”. Whereas before this was applied only to Call of Duty: Vanguard, cheaters will now be banned from both modern and future Call of Duty titles from now on.
Furthermore, any attempt to “disguise, obscure or obfuscate your identity or the identity of your devices may also result in a permanent suspension.”
All of these changes are sure to be welcome, especially as Activision prepares to release both Warzone 2 and a sequel to 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare this year.
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Adam Pankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter Tweet embed and on Twitch.