It’s been a wild couple of days for Activision andCall of Duty: Warzone. After a long time battling hackers and cheaters,Activision finally revealed a system called Ricochetwhich is a kernel level anti-cheat system, a tool similar to what Valorant uses. Scheduled to arrive alongsideWarzone’s Pacific update, Ricochet activates alongside the game inside of the kernel, or the PC’s most privileged level with access to the OS, graphics card drivers, and more.
With fans now hopeful that the rampant cheating issues may now be in the rearview mirror, things took a turn for the worst when theRicochet kernel driver code was leaked online. The leak included Activision Blizzard’s digital signature with a signing date of September 30 and P2C developers were working behind the scenes to protect Ricochet due to the leaked code. After a worrysome few hours,Call of Duty: Warzonedevelopers have finally responded to the incident.
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Thankfully, the incident doesn’t sound as bad as it looked. A Tweet from the officialCall of Dutyaccount provided some updates from the Ricochet team and some of the concerns expressed by the community. Ricochet remains in controlled live testing using a pre-release version of the driver used by select third parties. Server-side upgrades are being readied for when the system ultimately launches. All in all, the leaked code was a pre-release build and Raven is indicating that the final version will be different at launch.
While the news was meant to calm the fears of players, theCall of DutyTweet was challenged by more than a few, who responded to the update. One in particular was from theAntiCheatPD account who initially reported on the leaked Ricochet code. While they agreed that the leaked code is likely an early build, they also commented that they felt the obfuscator used for the kernel driver is subpar and would be broken by hackers within hours. Ultimately, the overall leak has left more than a few fans lacking confidence in the final release.
Regardless, fans are hoping that Ricochet is the final nail in the coffin for hackers, who have been a constant source of aggravation for players nearly since the free to play mode arrived early last year. Players have had to deal with all sorts of issues ranging from minor stuff like hackers using unreleased skins to game breaking issues involving aimbot, wallhacks, and more. WhileRaven continues to banWarzoneaccountsover time, many cheaters have found loopholes like creating new accounts and jumping back in due to the game being free to play.
Call of Duty: Warzoneis available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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