Ricochet is a new anti-cheat system that Call of Duty’s developers are planning to introduce alongside the launch of Call of Duty: Vanguard, followed by support for Call of Duty: Warzone with the release of its Pacific map update. It’s a multi-faceted anti-cheat system, meaning that it targets cheaters in multiple different ways. The list of anti-cheat features includes “server-side tools” that monitor analytics for cheating behavior, “enhanced investigation process,” and “account security” updates.
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The heart of the Ricochet anti-cheat initiative is something new to Call of Duty games, however. It’s called a kernel-level driver and it’ll be a PC-exclusive feature, though it’ll impact console players via cross-play. A kernel-level driver is built into a PC at its foundation, akin to drivers necessary for video cards and other key PC devices. In other words, it grants much deeper access to software running on a PC and enables a significantly more thorough amount of protection.
The kernel-level driver for Call of Duty will arrive in Call of Duty: Warzone first, later this year, and will then come to Call of Duty: Vanguard. The implication is that the different systems for the Ricochet anti-cheat initiative are still in active development and will be rolled out as they’re ready.
Kernel-level drivers understandably cause some PC gamers to worry, given the breadth of access granted through them. For example, Activision theoretically could see everything a Call of Duty: Vanguard player does on their PC with an untrustworthy driver. In its announcement, however, the Call of Duty team promises the driver will solely operate while Call of Duty: Warzone or Call of Duty: Vanguard are on and will only monitor and report “software and applications that interact” with the game.
Call of Duty will not be the first to offer kernel-level drivers for anti-cheat. Dozens of games use third-party anti-cheat with kernel-level implementation. EasyAntiCheat, PunkBuster, and BattlEye are just a few examples of third-party services that provide kernel-level anti-cheat. Riot Games is perhaps the best comparison, as it implemented its own proprietary kernel-level driver in Valorant, much like Activision is doing for its Call of Duty games. No anti-cheat is perfect, but the Call of Duty team is clearly making an effort to improve.
Call of Duty: Warzone is available now and Call of Duty: Vanguard launches November 5 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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