Activision has outlined the steps it’s taking to combat Call of Duty cheating on PC, while stressing that there’s no easy solution to the problem.
Call of Duty has a reputation for cheating (it comes with the territory of being such a hugely popular shooter and having a free-to-download battle royale). Cheating is more prevalent on PC (Activision recently confirmed as much, to the point where it said if you believe you’ve died unfairly to a console player, it’s much more likely that they’ve used ‘intel advantage’ than cheats). So, some console players head straight into Call of Duty’s settings to turn off crossplay across the board, just to take the potential for PC cheaters ruining their day out of the equation. Earlier this year, Activision added new console-only crossplay options for regular multiplayer, although PC players who do not cheat said they were being unfairly punished.
Activision, as IGN has reported, has spent millions of dollars in the battle against Call of Duty cheat makers, cheat sellers, and cheat users, with a number of recent high-profile successes. In March, Phantom Overlay announced it was shutting down, with fans reacting in disbelief that such a prominent Call of Duty cheat provider could fall by the wayside. Also in March, IGN reported on four cheat providers that were shut down ahead of the hotly anticipated return of Verdansk to Warzone.
In the run up to Black Ops 7’s November launch, Activision is, like EA for Battlefield 6, employing extra steps to help stop cheating on PC. When Black Ops 7 launches on November 14, PC players will be required to enable both Secure Boot and TPM 2.0. “These hardware-based features will give us a stronger, more trusted foundation for detecting and blocking certain cheats before they can take root,” Activision said in a new blog post.
Other security features will be tested during the Black Ops 7 beta to see how they perform. “These tools are designed to identify and remove cheaters faster, and we’ll be closely monitoring how they respond in real matches,” Activision said. “The full force of our protections will be reserved for launch, when all systems come online together.”
But Activision, as so many other video game companies have done, qualified this work by saying the war on cheaters is a never-ending one.
“We also want to be clear: there’s no one-and-done solution to solving the challenge of cheating. Every major game faces this issue, and cheaters are constantly looking for new ways to exploit systems.
“What matters, and where we’ve seen real improvement, is how quickly we adapt. In Black Ops 6, detections are faster, mitigations are stronger, and enforcement is cutting deeper into the networks that try to harm fair play. With Black Ops 7, hardware protections like Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 will add another layer of defense.”
Elsewhere, Call of Duty will now tell players directly in-game if they’re placed into shadow ban status for Warzone and Multiplayer.
“More than 75% of the LMM [Limited Matchmaking] pool is made up of users who have been brought into the system through parties, so this notification is important to clarify account status,” Activision explained.
“As a reminder, being placed in Limited Matchmaking doesn’t signal that an account is a confirmed cheater. It means an alarm was raised that requires examination.”
Last month, Battlefield 6 developers lamented the need for security measures such as Secure Boot. Speaking to Eurogamer, Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl said: “The fact is I wish we didn’t have to do things like Secure Boot.”
He continued: “It does prevent some players from playing the game. Some people’s PCs can’t handle it and they can’t play; that really sucks. I wish everyone could play the game with low friction and not have to do these sorts of things.”
Still, Buhl sounds pleased with the effectiveness of the likes of Secure Boot, which are “some of the strongest tools in our toolbox to stop cheating.”
“We were pretty happy with how the anti-cheat performed. Obviously I’ll say we can never be perfect, anti-cheat is always a cat-and-mouse game where we’re constantly going back and forth and keeping on top of what the cheaters are doing. But from the beginning this was something we put a high priority on, so when we launch this game we have a really strong anti-cheat program in place.”
Buhl continued: “Again, nothing makes cheating impossible, but enabling Secure Boot and having kernel-level access makes it so much harder to cheat and so much easier for us to find and stop cheating.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
