Cheating and the use of hacks have been a constant issue with the free to play Call of Duty: Warzone since it originally launched back in early 2020. Players have seen all sorts of issues from the more common cheats like aimbots and wall hacks to more elaborate hacks which saw some player accounts getten stolen. As the community reached a breaking point, Activision announced the arrival of a kernel based anti-cheat system called Ricochet, giving players hope that the game would finally be cleaned out of those not playing fair.
The anti-cheat system finally arrivedearly in December 2021 alongside Season 1 of Call of Duty Warzone and its new Caldera map. Things seemed to get off to a promising start as the level of cheaters and hacks dropped dramatically and even Raven Software boasting that over 50K players had been banned in a single day. Unfortunately, it now appears that the tide is once again turning as players have recently begun flooding social media over a new wave of hacking and cheating that again plagues the Warzone experience.
Recent examples of these new cheats can be found on various sites like the Call of Duty: Warzone subReddit where users like Stuckinstickybuds have opened a discussion over the issues. In their thread, Stuckinstickybuds mentions concerns over the integrity of the anti-cheat system as they’ve run into four cheaters in a single night. COmments on this thread seem to agree, with one person even mentioning that some cheaters have seemingly found ways around Ricochet. Another offers hope that Ricochet is constantly learning, so these new workarounds may not last long.
Another thread from tumeg96 highlighted the fact that each lobby they’ve entered featured players that were cheating with wallhacks and ghost aim. Others echoed the experiences of tumeg96, with others saying they’re about ready to quit due to the amount of times they’ve been shot through walls. Others have warned that new cheats have been created, making them less detectable than previous versions, while others theorize that a way has been found to potentially disable Ricochet from the kernal level. Either way, with the rise of cheating complaint posts, it seems the issues are gettign worse instead of better as many have hoped.
Atr this point, there’s been no official comment from Raven or Activision, though the latter appears to be taking action against some more notible cheating sources. A few days ago, it was revealed that Activision is suing a major cheat website called EngineOwning. The site offers all sorts of ways to cheat including aimbots, rapid fite, player detection, and much more. Activision’s lawsuit mentions the company’s committment to fighting cheating in its game and the lost of revenue and reputation it has endured due to the efforts of sites like EngineOwning.
Call of Duty: Warzone is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
