A new post on social media from Activision's Team RICOCHET highlights ongoing efforts to thwart cheating in Call of Duty before the upcoming launch of Black Ops 7.
New data released from the team claims that anti-cheat protections for the Black Ops 7 beta period that happened earlier this month were among the strongest in Call of Duty history. Reportedly, 99% of matches were cheater-free by the end of the weeklong beta period.
According to Team RICOCHET, players who did make it through preventative anti-cheat efforts were detected and removed from the player pool within three matches.
🛡️Call of Duty #BlackOps7A message from #TeamRICOCHET:We’ve crunched the numbers for Black Ops 7 Beta, and RICOCHET Anti-Cheat achieved the strongest Beta results in Call of Duty history.Each day, our cheat detections got faster and your matches got cleaner.By the end:•… pic.twitter.com/bRLFFAAHyvOctober 13, 2025
Team RICOCHET updates have increased in frequency in the lead up to Call of Duty: Black Ops 7's launch.
2024's Black Ops 6 launch beta and launch were massive successes for the Call of Duty franchise, but the post-launch seasonal integration with Call of Duty: Warzone was hit with a data outage that took out the game's proprietary anti-cheat system. Black Ops 6 seemingly never fully recovered from the breach, with player taking to social media to complain about frequent encounters with cheaters.
Activision retaliated by taking the fight against cheating to legal heights — issuing cease and desists letters to a multitude of cheat developers. Some cooperated, removing their cheating software from distribution, while others simply rebranded and continued operations under new names.
Team RICOCHET's most recent move to stop cheaters before they even make it into lobbies relies on Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 for PC players. The enabling of TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot is a rising trend for anti-cheat methods across the industry, with Battlefield 6 also using the requirement as an early cheat detection and mitigation tool.
The rollout for the RICOCHET updates began with the start of Season 5 for Black Ops 6, but it wasn't without its issues. Some motherboard manufacturers like ASUS and MSI had to roll out new BIOS firmware ahead of the Black Ops 7 beta to ensure gamers with those motherboards could actually launch the game.
Early in the Black Ops 7 beta, some videos of in-game cheaters made the rounds on social media. The official Call of Duty Updates account was quick to reply, letting players know that confirmed cheaters from those clips were permanently banned during or shortly after the match in question.
Player reports continued to be a prominent source for cheat detection during the Black Ops 7 beta. One of my own matches featured a player who successfully eliminated our entire team within the first few seconds of the match. The disruptive player was reported and subsequently removed from the lobby in under a minute.
According to Activision and the Call of Duty team, players can expect RICOCHET anti-cheat to continue to be strengthened when the full brunt of anti-cheat measures go live across Black Ops 7 and Call of Duty: Warzone.
Among the new cheat mitigation tools, RICOCHET will feature smarter aimbot detection and faster wall hacking detections that utilize new machine learning systems. The team has trained its AI model on millions of hours of Black Ops 6 gameplay to help differentiate between the natural aiming habits of human players and the more precise aim from third-party scripts.
Team RICOCHET also plans to deploy a layered defense system that makes use of multiple detection methods that bolster and reinforce one another when Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 launches. Propping up the AI model with additional specialized updates that target problem areas and weak spots in the anti-cheat system will ideally make it harder for cheaters to linger.
Activision is no stranger to using machine learning for moderation in Call of Duty, having previously partnered with Modulate to introduce live chat moderation for text and voice communication in 2023's Modern Warfare 3. That partnership continued through to Black Ops 6, but there has not yet been confirmation if Modulate AI moderation will return for Black Ops 7.
Follow Windows Central on Google News to keep our latest news, insights, and features at the top of your feeds!
