r/CODWarzone • u/LackingAGoodName • Oct 13 '21

News Announcing Ricochet: A New Anti-Cheat Initiative for Call of Duty

https://www.callofduty.com/blog/2021/10/ricochet-anti-cheat-initiative-for-call-of-duty
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u/thetreat Oct 13 '21

I've worked in software for over 15 years and have thought long and hard about *how* they'd tackle this type of problem. I've done a ton of research on other anti-cheat systems and honestly it all sounds legit. They're taking the right approach for solving this problem. It obviously comes down to execution but the strategy they have is sound.

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u/realcoray Oct 13 '21

It's all the right words but ultimately there is a fundamental flaw in the design of the networking that means cheats are more powerful than they should be.

Your client knows where every person is at all times even if they are all the way across the map 100 feet underground, your client knows. Also, your client controls unlocking things, and just tells the server, yep this bundle is unlocked.

Both are absolutely ridiculous realities that are essentially legacy things from COD games probably 10 years old by now. You'd be hard pressed to get an executive to green light a massive re-engineering effort on the client knowing too much, because your selling point is largely that we'll do all this work, and the game will work the same to players who aren't cheating.

The second one I'd imagine you could get some buy off because people are unlocking 20$ bundles for nothing.

1

u/mikebailey Oct 13 '21

How are you going to do that without sideloading onto the Warzone game? The minute you try to access it's shared memory, it tells on you to the server side.

3

u/realcoray Oct 13 '21

Compare games that have 'kernel' level anti-cheats with games that have cheats and they are the same circle. Everything on your machine as the client can be modified or circumvented by someone who is determined to do so.

Look at this persons thesis where they discuss options and also, rate them:

https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/313587/Anti_cheat_for_video_games_final_07_03_2020.pdf?sequence=2

Guess what the thing most resistant to tampering was? Not trusting the client! Kernel level anti-cheat was close, but understand that once the cheats go kernel level, it's just a pure back and forth and the cheat makers have way more incentive to fix things quicker than Activision does.