While Call of Duty: Warzone continues to be incredibly popular with players, the free to play game has had a well documented struggle dealing with cheaters and hackers. Since it originally launched back in early 2020, Warzone has been plagued by exploits and third party tools like aimbot, being able to kill through solid objects, wall hacks, and plenty more. In fact some of these hacks have gone as far as forcing specific modes like Armored Assault to be taken down while a fix was implemented.
While developer Raven Studios has previously announced banwaves that have eliminated large groups of players, they always seemed temporary as the game would soon go right back to suffering through new hacks and cheats. As the fanbase continued to express frustrations with matches being ruined, Activision announced a more permanent solution with the implementation of the Ricochet anti-cheat system, which was finally integrated when Warzone was merged with Call of Duty: Vanguard.
After being rolled out on December 7 and continuing to be implemented through the following week, Ricochet has seemingly already had a big impact on the game's ecosystem. Not only did the threat of the service force popular Call of Duty: Warzone cheat sellers to close up shop, but the system has continued to analyze the game's data and learn patterns and trends. While the issues are not permanently fixed, the game's experience has been mightily improved in just a week after the system went fully online.
In fact, the official Call of Duty Twitter account provided an update, confirming that Ricochet banned nearly 50,000 players on December 21 for both Warzone and Vanguard. While this is a big improvement for Call of Duty: Warzone, the kernel-level system will need to continue to adapt and change, as there is no doubt plenty of third party software being created to try and bypass the system entirely. The system isn't perfect, but it appears to be heading in a much better direction.
In addition to Ricochet, fans have found that the NPC enemy Krampus has taken it upon himself to take out hackers and cheaters. The controversial addition during the Festive Fervor event, Krampus was spotted attacking a player using cheats to score easy kills. In a clip captured by Tyler Maillet via Reddit, the hacker is attempting to escape from the folklore monster while continuing to snap headshots against other players. Eventually Krampus managed to take them down, but after self-reviving, the player again attempts to flee the nearby monster. However, the hacker ultimately jumps off the ledge, forgetting that fall damage is a thing and dying due to the fall distance.
Call of Duty: Warzone is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.