Some gamers will do anything to climb the leaderboards, and for an unfortunate number of players, that includes cheating their way to the top. Unfortunately, no competitive game is immune to this fact, as Call of Duty: Vanguard players have already found out.
A Call of Duty: Vanguard player who goes by MrQuackerton on Reddit uploaded a video showing a blatant example of obvious cheating in action. While some are hopeful that the upcoming Ricochet Anti-Cheat will help curtail this activity, not everyone is optimistic about its success.
The video on Reddit shows the player moving carefully through a seven vs. Eight multiplayer match in Vanguard’s Desert Siege map. Everything looks clear until MrQuackerton is suddenly gunned down by a player he couldn’t even see. While that’s bound to be annoying on its own, the kill cam reveals just how unlikely the long-range, fully automatic shots were.
This led to a discussion about the effectiveness of Call of Duty’s partially implemented Ricochet anti-cheat system. For those who missed the announcement, Ricochet is a combination of server-side anti-cheat tools and a kernel-level driver for Call of Duty: Vanguard and Warzone. The server features are designed to monitor for cheating and speed up investigations while providing additional enhancements to server security. The driver, meanwhile, scans for applications cheaters use to tamper with Call of Duty: Warzone and Vanguard. Activision hopes the multi-angle approach will finally curtail the rampant cheating that makes Call of Duty: Warzone all but unplayable for many gamers.
The system is not fully rolled out yet, though many of the server-side features are already online. The drivers will be ready for Warzone when the Pacific update arrives in December, with a Vanguard release somewhere down the road. The drivers are PC only, though players will still see some benefits during cross-play.
Judging by reactions on the subreddit, opinions of Ricochet are mixed. Some share Activision’s hope that Ricochet will significantly reduce instances of cheating in Call of Duty multiplayer. However, others are less optimistic, noting that kernel-level anti-cheat hasn’t historically been the silver bullet many players seem to expect. Meanwhile, another commenter with a background in IT expressed concerns about giving the software kernel-level access to players’ PCs. Reddit user kvist56 points out that, regardless of the developer’s assurances, any program with kernel-level access represents a vulnerability hackers could exploit. He also argued that such systems aren’t even guaranteed to be more effective than other types of anti-cheating software.
Still, it’s undeniable that Call of Duty: Warzone and now Vanguard have serious cheating problems. While many players are hopeful Ricochet curtails the problem, only time will tell how secure and effective the fully implemented system will be.
Call of Duty: Vanguard and Call of Duty: Warzone are available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X.