One of the biggest sticking points for the Call of Duty community, particularly for the tens of millions of people who are playing the free-to-play Warzone, is how rampant cheating is. Calls for more anti-cheat efforts have echoed through the community, and console players are actively disabling cross-play to avoid getting matched with PC players who have an unfair advantage. Activision issued an update on Call of Duty anti-cheat, including announcing 60,000 more bans for Warzone cheaters who were using cheat software. The publisher is also implementing additional tools to help them continue to tackle the problem.
Most notably, Activision is targeting the manufacturers of cheat software at the source. While they stop short of saying they pursue legal action, reports last year seem to confirm that the company is putting legal pressure on these companies and cheat developers in order to cut off the supply of cheat software before players can even get it.
Activision also promised more communication with the Call of Duty and Warzone community on how it’s addressing the cheating problem. At a minimum, they should offer monthly updates, and where possible, they want to be talking with the community weekly about Call of Duty Warzone anti-cheat efforts. They’ve outlined a number of actions they plan to take in order to keep the competition fair and fun for everyone.
- Enhancements to internal anti-cheat software
- Additional detection technology
- Adding new resources dedicated to monitoring and enforcement
- Regular communication updates on progress; more two-way dialogue
- Zero tolerance for cheat providers
- Consistent and timely bans
These are in addition to steps taken since last year’s launch of Warzone to tackle the issue:
- Weekly backend security updates
- Improved in-game reporting mechanisms
- Added 2-factor authentication, which has invalidated over 180,000 suspect accounts
- Eliminated numerous unauthorized third party software providers
- Increased dedicated teams and resources across software development, engineering, data science, legal, and monitoring
The publisher says that the security and enforcement teams “have additional measures coming – both preventative and enforcement – throughout this year” that will help identify and eliminate cheaters and cheat providers.
With Call of Duty being the biggest gaming franchise over the last 10 years, Activision is well aware of bad actors always probing the game for vulnerable spots that allow cheat software to offer players an unfair advantage. They are consistently looking at ways to combat a variety of cheats, including “aimbots, wallhacks, trainers, stat hacks, texture hacks, leaderboard hacks, injectors, hex editors, and any third party software that is used to manipulate game data or memory.”
While much of the focus for this update is on cheating in Warzone, Activision clarifies that their efforts cover the entire active franchise right now, including Modern Warfare, Warzone, and Black Ops Cold War. For anti-cheat updates specifically centered on Warzone, Activision is handing the reins over to Raven Software on Twitter. Players should pay attention to Treyarch if they’re looking for anti-cheat related to Black Ops Cold War.
[Source: Activision]
