Black Ops 6 cheaters are getting banned from ranked play, but not fast enough — even with help from AI

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Season 1 screen shots and multiplayer map details.

What you need to know

• Ricochet is the anticheat software behind Call of Duty, protecting both Black Ops 6 and the newly integrated Warzone.
• The team behind it has provided an update that declares 19,000 cheaters have been banned from ranked play, alongside regular sweeps to remove them from the leaderboard.
• The trouble is that most of the playerbase doesn't think this is nearly enough, as it seems impossible to play ranked or Warzone right now without coming into contact with a cheater.
• Console players deserve to be especially aggreved, with PC crossplay forced upon them for ranked.

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I'm saying it up front. If you cheat at Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, I'm not mad at you, I'm just disappointed. It's sad, frankly, that people PAY good money to buy hacks to inflate their progress on a competitive video game over just, I don't know, enjoying the grind like the rest of us.

Anyway, rant over. Team Ricochet, the developers behind Call of Duty's anticheat system, have issued an update on the state of play around a week into the life of Black Ops 6's ranked mode.

On the face of it, it reads like good news.

📢 #BlackOps6 #RankedPlay #TeamRICOCHET with an update on the ongoing work to combat cheating in Ranked Play:• AI systems continue to ramp up with code optimizations to accelerate enforcements• Over 19,000 Ranked Play bans since the mode launched• Hourly sweeps to remove…November 26, 2024

We all knew it would happen, and lo and behold, it did. As prophesized by anyone who has ever played the game before, as soon as ranked dropped, we expected it to be infested with cheaters.

19,000 sounds like a lot, but compared to the number of people playing the game it's a drop in the ocean. While this type of action is always positive and welcomed, it just doesn't feel like enough. I'm no developer, but if Ricochet worked as intended, this wouldn't be happening.

I am pleased though that they're doing their best to police the integrity of the leaderboards. In under 24 hours there were already a few names inside the top 250 category, and everyone presumed they were cheaters.

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We just want to play the game properly, guys. Stop spoiling our fun. (Image credit: Activision)

Console players deserve to be particularly aggreved. Ranked play on Black Ops 6 mandates crossplay with PC, and it's on PC where all the filthy hackers live. That's not to say there aren't some cheaters on console, but it's certainly far, far less common. Looking at you Cronus users.

I'm not a particularly good player, but I have mostly been enjoying Black Ops 6. You come across obvious cheaters from time to time in public matches, but when diving into ranked it seemed like one literally every game. Even on the low tiers. It's satisfying when your team still gets the W, but it's irritating as hell.

I don't know what the solution is, but I hope there is one. As quick as these accounts are banned, more crop up. And I remember when EA decided that the Steam Deck was the problem with rampant cheating. We just want to play some games and have fun. All of this is such a buzzkill.