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The Call of Duty anti-cheat team tasked with keeping the game fair for all players — Ricochet — is up to its old tricks by continuing to troll players who are caught cheating or using external devices to gain an unfair advantage, and will close the game entirely. But only for keyboard and mouse players using aim assist tools. Since Modern Warfare II launched back in 2022, Team Ricochet has been making strides by coming up with inventive ways to bring the hammer down on cheaters. This included making enemy players invisible, as well as preventing weapons from hurting other players.
More recently, Ricochet added an anti-cheat tool called ‘Splat’ that would immediately disable the parachute of players deploying in Warzone if the anti-cheat software detected a player was cheating. Resulting in that player falling to the ground and entering their downed state. The same mitigation would cause detected cheaters to fall at extremely high speeds even from low elevation. Causing the same downed state. Its latest mitigation takes things a few steps further and simply shuts down the game.
Call of Duty will close down if the anti-cheat software detects PC players using aim assist
Love it or hate it, aim assist is here to stay in Call of Duty and likely all other shooter games. At least for controller players. Aim assist is intended to be there to help course correct some of the aim because joysticks can be much less accurate than a mouse. Even if it does sometimes go a little overboard and requires scaling back.
That being said, aim assist is only supposed to be for controller players. But over the years various PC hardware and software products have come out that allow you to enable aim assist. Even if you don’t play with a controller. This is cheating, plain and simple. Because it’s not what the developer intended. Ricochet will now take measures to ensure that players on keyboard and mouse aren’t able to use this assistive feature.
If a player using a keyboard and mouse is caught using these tools, initially the only thing that will happen is the forced closing of the game. However, Ricochet says that repeated use could lead to further account action. This would likely include a ban. Probably both temporary and permanent. Although a permanent ban probably isn’t on the table unless a player is caught using these tools quite a few times. As Engadget points out, the Ricochet team even implemented a mitigation that would clone real players. In attempts to trick cheaters into firing at them and exposing their bad behavior.
Players who are extremely determined to cheat will most certainly find workarounds. But it’s nice to see Ricochet being open about how it combats cheaters.
🛡️ #Warzone #MW3 #MW2#TeamRICOCHET: Our security detection systems now target players using tools to activate aim assist while using a mouse and keyboard. The Call of Duty application will close if detected.
Repeated use of these tools may lead to further account action.
— Call of Duty Updates (@CODUpdates) January 16, 2024