Activision Blizzard wasn’t kidding when it talked about introducing a stronger anti-cheat system with Call of Duty: Vanguard.

Set in World War II and created by Sledgehammer Games, Call of Duty: Vanguard‘s beta had a bit too many hackers (except for those who were banned for cheating in previous games… we wrote about that) using aimbots, wallhacks, invulnerability and invisibility. Activision Blizzard and Sledgehammer have had enough of this, and with the retail release of the game now featuring Ricochet, this may not be as much of a problem.

Ricochet will be a kernel-level system that will fight cheaters in several ways (and only on PC!). There will be new tools on the server-side to track cheats; more substantial inspection processes to filter out cheaters, and more robust account security (Activision Blizzard still recommends 2FA or two-factor authentication), so on paper, it sounds like a good system that will even make it into Call of Duty: Warzone this year in the Pacific update. However… we need to point out that it’s a kernel-level driver.

In a blog post, the publisher discussed that the driver will not be active all the time but will only work when the game is running. In addition, Ricochet will also investigate if any software and applications might want to interact with the Call of Duty: Warzone/Vanguard pair and if the games’ processes will be modified in the process. The information tracked by the driver is said to only relate to reports and Call of Duty.

But this doesn’t sound like a user-friendly move. For example, most recently, Riot Games’ Valorant has also used kernel-level software to combat cheats. Still, anti-cheat programs shouldn’t have valid access to the core of your operating system. And this is something that players have not yet raised their voices against. Interesting; why is that the case?

Source: WCCFTech