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Windows Central
Windows Central
Technology
Cole Martin

It's not just you: Team RICOCHET confirms a data outage affected Black Ops 6 anti-cheat

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

What you need to know

  • Multiplayer Ranked play just went live for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on November 20.
  • The mode has been ransacked by players utilizing cheats and hacks to gain access to the top of the leaderboards.
  • Activision's Team RICOCHET has confirmed via a social media update that t data outage was preventing the anti-cheat system from performing effectively.
  • Team RICOCHET has shared that the outage was identified and fixed, and additional adjustments for cheat mitigation thresholds for Ranked Play were being deployed.

A data outage has caused Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's anti-cheat mitigation efforts, dubbed RICOCHET, to be less effective than originally intended, according to an announcement from the development team.

If you had an encounter in Black Ops 6 multiplayer, Ranked play, or Warzone lately that set off some hacking alarms for you, chances are good it was actually a cheater. A recent update from TeamRICOCHET shared that following the launch of Ranked Play, a data outage lowered the efficacy of the AI cheat mitigation systems in the game.

Of course, the nature of anti-cheat means that any communication and updates from Team Ricochet are inherently vague, but TeamRICOCHET has made efforts to communicate issues and mitigation efforts when possible. Unfortunately, as in this case, it may have come a bit late. The integration of Black Ops 6 and Warzone was a mess, and players have been decrying the unbalanced gameplay and increased interactions with cheaters since the launch of Season 1.

Players on consoles have also taken to social media to rant about forced cross play with PC users who they suspect are deploying third-party cheat software. Meanwhile, PC players lambaste forced cross play with controller players because of frustrations with controllers' aim-assist.

We appreciate your patience as we battle against these attacks that disrupt a fair and fun experience.

TeamRICOCHET, Activision

TeamRICOCHET has deployed a fix for the data outage that was allowing cheaters to run rampant. The team has stated they've also made additional adjustments to the existing thresholds for detecting cheaters in Ranked Play and increased aggressive targeting of accounts that are suspected of cheating activity. The team has also accelerated replay investigations to further review captured gameplay of suspicious players.

Activision began releasing internal research and data on player behavior in the past year. The most white paper from Activision's research department was primarily focused on toxic and disruptive player behavior in Call of Duty, and it provided the first look at statistics on cheating in Call of Duty. The cheating activity was most rampant in the upper echelons of the Ranked leaderboards, with just 0.25% of players who were caught cheating and removed from those leaderboards reoffending by cheating again.

With Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Ranked play only in its first season, it's safe to say TeamRICOCHET has a long road of cheat mitigation efforts ahead of them. At least for now, players should see a little reprieve in active cheats being used against them.

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