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Hackusations: We’ve all made one, been the target of one, or at least suspected that our online opponents aren’t legit. Few communities are more likely to call foul on your play than Call of Duty, whose prevalence among cheat sellers convinced Activision to form Ricochet, an entire division dedicated to anti-cheat, a few years ago.
The Ricochet Anti-Cheat team has since released progress reports every few months, documenting ban statistics and detailing new tactics to counter the latest and greatest in ruining games for other people. Today’s report touches on the purpose of “shadow bans,” new restrictions around Ranked play, and community questions, but what caught my eye was a section on bogus reports.
Apparently, console players take the brunt of today’s Call of Duty hackusations despite cheating being much less common and effective on the platform.
“Over 60% of received cheater reporting in Call of Duty: Warzone have been against console players, for example,” the blog says. “Console cheating is possible, but our data has consistently shown it represents an extremely low population of detected cheaters when compared to PC, which means that this large volume of cheater reports are inaccurate even if the KillCams may have made it seem like the player was cheating.”
That’s pretty funny, if only because it makes me seriously question if CoD players are capable of recognizing actual suspicious behavior when they see it or if the majority of reports are motivated by the frustration of losing a fight.
I have my best guess, but the Ricochet team is giving players the benefit of the doubt. They reckon folks are often reporting what they genuinely believe is someone using wallhacks, but is actually just opponents using one of the many legitimate ways to detect players through walls in Warzone.
“We’ve found that many of these reports have been inaccurate in situations where the killing player might have had an intel advantage—such as when using perks like Recon Scout or when having the advantage of a Spy Cam live ping.”
To combat this, a new “Affected by” module in Warzone’s killcam will tell players exactly how many ways they were totally boned: In an example screenshot, the new killcam reveals that the player was spotted because of their unsuppressed weapon and a live ping.
Here’s the full list of gameplay elements that will be reported by the killcam, with callouts for “equipment, killstreaks, field upgrades, perks, and more” coming in a mid-season patch:
- List of attackers who dealt damage with their username, weapon, damage, and hits
- Affected by Live Ping: If the enemy had you pinged via line-of-sight
- Affected by UAV: If the enemy had you pinged on the minimap via UAV, UAV Tower, or Advanced UAV
- Affected by Unsuppressed Weapon: When firing your weapon revealed your location on the minimap to nearby enemies
The hope is that ticked-off players will give the box a gander before accusing a 40-year-old dad enjoying his nightly PS5 time of downloading wallhacks on his non-existent gaming PC. Hackusations or not, I think every multiplayer shooter could benefit by surfacing information like this. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve taken a bullet to the head in Hunt: Showdown and wondered what gave me away. If I knew, I could improve!
Call of Duty’s enhanced killcam will arrive in Season 3, which kicks off April 3. Other headliners include more maps, a return to Warzone’s Verdansk map, and a weed-themed event called “Blaze of Glory”.
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Kurt Indovina
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