RICOCHET has been a huge help for Call of Duty’s anti-cheat efforts, and this year’s update – which coincides with Modern Warfare 3’s release – includes the unique potential to punish hackers in the funniest possible way.
If you don’t remember RICOCHET, the big cheat-stopping program arrived in the Caldera era of Warzone. It natively detects hackers in every area of Call of Duty and punishes anyone who breaks the rules for a competitive advantage. It’s been flawed, but the developers have committed to improving it with every major release.
Programs like this are common enough in the industry, but Call of Duty’s version has a little more fun than most. The devs rolled out the “weapon disarm” feature a while back, which takes away the arms of any in-game operator that a cheater is controlling, but they’ve upped the ante once again in Modern Warfare 3.
Related: Modern Warfare 3 Removes Weaponing Tuning With Major Gunsmith Overhaul
Call of Duty’s New SPLAT System Punishes Hackers
The big new thing this season with the release of Modern Warfare 3 is SPLAT. A ‘just for laughs’ mitigation tool that allows the devs to take away a player’s parachute privileges mid-game. The idea is to catch cheaters at the start of the game and send them careening into the ground at Mach speeds before they can do any damage to the lobby.
SPLAT was revealed in a RICOCHET-centric blog on November 9, where the developers explained that AI-powered Machine Learning will help them better isolate cheaters in Call of Duty. The post goes on to say that even more improvements have been made, but they’re not ready to discuss them just yet.
If they’re too late and a hacker gets in the game, then another switch can be flipped to turn their next bunny hop into a certified coffin drop. Splat can also adjust player velocity, which transforms a bunny hop into a 10,000-foot drop taking them out instantly. “This is one of many new tricks we’ve developed – and we’ll talk about more in the future,” the developers wrote.
One thing I found particularly interesting is their reassurance that this can’t turn on by accident. A player has to be verifiably cheating before it will ever be considered. That’s a major relief for everyone who’s grown tired of the constant witch-hunt mentality that has been peddled so far across the social CoD sphere.
Still, this is a ‘great power means great responsibility’ type of mechanic. Any slip-ups on the dev side could have devastating consequences on an innocent player. We’ve had cheating controversies in Warzone, the Call of Duty League, and in your everyday public matches, so it’s crucial that Call of Duty gets this thing right.
