26k+ Call of Duty accounts hit by anti-cheat sweep

Over 26,000 cheaters have been banned by Call of Duty’s anti-cheat software, Ricochet, in its March 7 wave.

“Our team has seen and share your frustrations about a rise in cheating reports. We remain focused on this fight,” the team behind Ricohet, the Call of Duty anti-cheat system, said in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter).

Esports.net reported that the move is considered to mitigate an ongoing “cheating pandemic” in the game, which impacts both the core game and other associated titles.

“In a sweep that targeted thousands of foul players, Team RICOCHET not only pulled many cheaters from MW3 and Warzone but also implemented a series of changes to mitigate the ongoing ‘pandemic’. For Call of Duty players, the issue with cheaters is reaching a point of no return, impacting everything from battle royale to mobile and from ranked play to multiplayer modes,” Esports.net said in its report.

Esports.net also said that intelligent “hacks” can result in shadowban other players, which they say is proof that “technology driving malicious elements is advancing as consistently as Activisions anti-cheat systems.”

Aside from the multiple account bans, more anti-cheating mechanisms have been released by Ricochet’s team, including what it calls are “ehanced protections and increased response times for kernel-level drivers,” specifically targeting the PC versions of the game.

Flying vehicle cheats have also been mitigated, with fixes being implemented, as well as random explosion for vehicles that should not be flying, or flying too much. Esports.net reported that cheats for flying vehicles are mostly done on boats and trucks in Warzone.

Third-party hardware device detection, Ricochet claims, have also been upgraded, and cheater detections in Ranked Play have optimized speeds.

Rampant cheating in free-to-play multiplayer games have also been observed in recent weeks and months, with games such as Fortnite and VALORANT being one of the major targets.