Call Of Duty cheaters are now having their weapons (and fists) taken away

metro.co.uk:

Activision has revealed another of its anti-cheat methods in Call Of Duty; one which strips cheaters of all their weapons.

While anti-cheat measures in games are always welcome, they unfortunately never work perfectly. Cheaters will persist and often try and find workarounds, as has proven to be the case with Call Of Duty.

Activision made a big deal out of its Ricochet anti-cheat software when it was unveiled last year and while it hasn’t got rid of cheaters completely, the team is still coming up with new ways to detect and punish them.

The latest method is to just take cheaters’ weapons away, like a frustrated parent snatching their toddler’s toys because they’re not behaving. Activision even describes it as putting them in time-out.

This includes removing cheaters’ fists, so they effectively have no means of defending themselves if they’re spotted by another player.

Other techniques include turning legitimate players invisible to protect them from cheaters or giving them improved shields, so cheaters deal very little damage against them.

Activision says that since introducing the Ricochet software, there have been significant drops in cheater activity, but it unfortunately regularly bounces back up.

‘We’ve seen both significant drops in cheaters invading our games as well as some unfortunate increases – an expected ebb and flow that is a frustrating reality in game security,’ explains a recent blog post.

In an effort to be as transparent as possible, it admits that cheaters will continuously come up with new ways to ruin other peoples’ games. So, what it’s striving to improve is the speed with which it can counter them.

Current data suggests that these tactics are working, as matches with mitigations active tend to have less