Call of Duty: Warzone’s New Anti-Cheat Measure Gives Players a ‘Damage Shield’ Against Cheaters

Cheating has been a huge problem in Call of Duty: Warzone, but a new anti-cheat measure will now give non-cheating players a “Damage Shield” that will prevent ne’er-do-wells from inflicting critical damage on them.In a new blog, the team behind Call of Duty: Warzone shared details on new updates coming to its RICOCHET Anti-Cheat system that “relies on data to identify cheating behavior and make our banwaves more impactful.” One of these new features is called Damage Shield, and it’s an in-game way to not only stop cheaters from winning matches or killing players, but also to learn more about the cheater and stop them from doing so again.”One mitigation technique we’ve been testing is something we call Damage Shield,” the blog reads. “When the server detects a cheater is tampering with the game in real-time, it disables the cheater’s ability to inflict critical damage on other players. This mitigation leaves the cheater vulnerable to real players and allows #TeamRICOCHET to collect information about a cheater’s system.”We track these encounters to ensure there is no possibility for the game to apply a Damage Shield randomly or by accident, no matter the skill level. To be clear, we will never interfere in gunfights between law-abiding community members. Damage Shield is now out of testing and deployed across the globe.”There are other mitigations in the works, but the team isn’t ready to reveal them yet as it doesn’t want to “ruin the surprise” for unsuspecting cheaters.It was also announced that “extreme, or repeated violations of the security policy – such as in-game cheating – may result in a permanent suspension of all accounts.” Whereas before this was only applied to Call of Duty: Vanguard, cheaters will now be banned from modern and future Call of Duty titles going forward. Furthermore, any attempt to “hide, disguise, or obfuscate your identity or the identity of your hardware devices may also result in a permanent suspension.”All of these changes are sure to be welcome ones, especially as Activision is gearing up to release both Warzone 2 and a sequel to 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare this year.Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.



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