RICOCHET Anti-Cheat™ Progress Report: Season 04

news.blizzard.com:

In the latest RICOCHET Anti-Cheat Progress Report we’re examining new and shelved mitigations, recapping how mitigations fit into our enforcement work, and examine our third-party hardware device detections, which was first announced ahead of Season 03.

RICOCHET Anti-Cheat Mitigations

#TeamRICOCHET remains focused on combating unfair play and ejecting bad actors from our games. One of the ways we accomplish this is by banning accounts we have determined are cheating; however, we have also outlined our use of mitigations and we wanted to refresh the community on why and how those systems are used.

In some scenarios, #TeamRICOCHET may choose to deploy in-game roadblocks we call Mitigations on accounts we verify as cheating. These are gameplay adjustments we can make to constrain the gameplay experience of verified cheaters – such as taking away their weapons with Disarm or making legitimate players invisible to cheaters with Cloaking.

Why do we do this?

Cheating in video games such as Call of Duty is big business, and the technology behind cheats is constantly evolving. Allowing cheaters to remain in the game in a mitigated state provides #TeamRICOCHET with intel, while keeping cheaters occupied, in the dark, and unable to harm your in-game experience. The data we gather through analysis of mitigated players enhances our ability to reliably detect and ban players using similar cheat software.

After we capture info, cheaters are removed from matches and/or the accounts are permanently disabled across titles, as outlined in our Security and Enforcement Policy.

Mitigation data shows our detections are doing a better job of protecting the game. In Modern Warfare II, for example, we mitigated four players for every one report.