Activision Aims to Ban Call of Duty Cheaters Within 1 Hour
Image Credit: Activision, Gameplay Trailer
As the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 approaches, Activision has a bold new approach when it comes to its fight against cheaters: identifying and removing them within just one hour of their first match. This incredibly ambitious target is a new part of their strategy to combat rampant cheating in their games, a long-standing issue within the Call of Duty franchise in particular, especially Warzone which is free-to-play (which makes it hard to keep up with cheaters since they can easily make a new account if they get banned).
For years, Call of Duty has faced some pretty big challenges in dealing with cheaters, especially on PC platforms where malicious players exploit vulnerabilities to gain an unfair advantage. Activision has certainly invested heavily in anti-cheat measures, going as far as taking legal action against cheat developers and the implementation of advanced software solutions. Yet, the cat-and-mouse game between developers and cheat creators continues on, with cheaters and their software becoming increasingly sophisticated, relatively speaking.
Activision is now turning towards utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to bolster its anti-cheat safeguard system. The company believes that AI-driven systems can help identify cheaters faster and more effectively than ever before. In a blog post, Activision described the current situation as "fighting on the enemy’s turf," where cheat developers have direct control over the machines running their programs, creating an environment where cheaters almost always have the upper hand despite existing defenses like kernel-level drivers.
The company’s AI tools will end up analyzing player behavior in real-time, faster than a human could ever hope to do, identifying suspicious patterns that deviate from what one would consider “normal” gameplay (just don’t count my gameplay in that… I suck). While those that create cheat software will obviously try to hide their programs, they cannot mask a player’s behavior entirely. Activision’s system is designed to pick up on these subtle indicators and flag suspicious accounts for review, at which point a human may take a look at the account (although perhaps this may not even be necessary if the cheating is blatant enough). By studying data from professional Call of Duty League matches, where every move is recorded, the AI system can differentiate between really good players and those using cheats to mimic that same level of play.
Image Credit: Activision, Gameplay Trailer
The most challenging new objective for Activision is its "Time to Action" goal, which will essentially be an attempt to catch and remove cheaters within the first hour or 60 minutes of their first match. During the beta phase of Black Ops 6, the company admittedly had some pretty impressive results where cheaters were only able to play just five matches on average before being banned. In some cases, cheaters were kicked out in their very first match, accounting for 25% of the bans issued during the beta’s second weekend.
This rapid response is made possible by an upgraded kernel-level driver and machine learning systems that focus on detecting common cheats like aimbots or wallhacks, and these upgrades will be rolled out for both Black Ops 6 and Warzone alike, with a particular eye and emphasis on Ranked Play modes where cheating is especially an issue.
While Activision’s AI-driven approach does look like it has some potential, and again the data is already there showing it can work (at least to some extent, and for now), it’s just one answer to a complicated problem. Cheating in online games has evolved into a well-organized, profit-driven industry, with developers of cheat software working tirelessly to stay ahead of anti-cheat measures and often from all over the world where game developers have very little power. These groups are not just hobbyists tinkering with code, but rather they are part of a broader criminal network that profits from undermining game integrity for a buck.
Activision is aware of this and is has come out with a commitment to cracking down. By focusing on behavioral analysis and leveraging data from professional players, of which they have plenty, the company hopes to develop a system that not only catches cheaters for them but does so faster and more accurately than we thought possible.
As Black Ops 6 launches on October 25, only 2 days away, we will quickly see how effective these measures will be in actual practice.
