Call of Duty Warzone’s anti-cheat, RICOCHET, was rolled out late last year and it appears to have resulted in a significant drop in the amount of cheating in the game. The team reports that a kernel-level driver on the PC was able to quickly catch and detect accounts, causing cheating in Warzone to hit an all-time low during the holiday break.
Among the many ways Ricochet uses to mitigate cheating in Call of Duty Warzone, one particular system is the most curious. Ricochet uses the “Damage Shield”technique when it detects that a player may be cheating in a match.
“Damage Shield”significantly reduces the impact of cheating on players in the game, depriving the cheater of the ability to deal critical damage to other players. Thus, the cheater will not be able to kill other players, but they will be vulnerable to damage from real players.
Call of Duty Warzone Anti-Cheat uses “Damage Shield”to mitigate cheating
When the real-time server detects a cheater interfering with the game, it will deploy a Damage Shield to real players. This mitigation makes the cheater vulnerable to real players and allows the team to collect information about the cheater’s system.
The team also reiterates that there is no way to turn on Damage Shield randomly or accidentally, regardless of skill level. Damage Shield is no longer tested and used worldwide. The team explains that this is just one of many easing that will come to Ricochet with more live ones in development.
It’s quite interesting to see how the developers of Call of Duty Warzone use all sorts of innovative anti-cheat protections in the game. The game has been known to run into cheating issues for the past year, but hopefully Team Ricochet can change that narrative with mitigations like this.