Ahead of Season 02: Updates on RICOCHET Anti-Cheat, Warzone, Multiplayer, and Zombies

Ahead of Season 02’s launch in Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty: Warzone on January 28, we’re here to address the comprehensive feedback we’ve been hearing from our community in recent weeks and tell you what we’re doing right now to improve the game.

Members from the various development teams and studios dedicated to specific systems, modes, and functions across the Call of Duty franchise have provided insights below into how we’re prioritizing what matters to our players today:

Cheating and bans
Ability to disable cross-play on consoles in Ranked Play
Server issues
Quality of life updates
Requested bug fixes

Let’s get right into it.

An Update from the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat Team

Instances of cheating in Call of Duty, particularly in Ranked Play across both MP and Warzone, are frustrating and severely impact the experience for our community. We’re here to tell you what’s being done about it today and our plan for support throughout 2025.

Live now are new layers of security and protections against cheaters in Call of Duty as well as updates to protect the competitive integrity of the game:

Updated detection models for behavioral systems, such as aim botting, and other data points, including account trust and hardware identifiers to target serial cheaters
Over 136,000 Ranked Play account bans since the mode launched
Enhancing cross-examination tools focused on reducing the time it takes to action accounts
New detection and warning systems for Spam Reporting by accounts
- Note: Malicious Reporting is against the Security and Enforcement Policy, which you can read online. It’s important to clarify that when a user spams the report button in-game multiple times against a user, or someone uses an illegal cheat tool to spam 10,000 reports, our system does not consider more than one single report from a player versus another (despite what cheat developers are telling players when they try to sell their illegal software).
New detection and warning systems for repeat Playing with Cheaters behavior
- Note: When a cheater is banned, our system will detect other accounts it had regularly partied up with and raise flags for investigation to combat boosting and other cheater behavior.

We have seen community questions about detection methods, like IP-based banning. We do not utilize IP-based bans for anti-cheat because they tend to take action against entire groups within a range that aren’t problematic. For example, a college campus or internet café would be swept up in an IP-based ban wave when only a single machine was targeted.

In December, we announced that we’re implementing major upgrades to the currently online and active kernel-level driver for Season 02, as well as upgrades to server-side systems in early 2025. Here’s more on what to expect from these updates, and when they’re set to be added:

Season 02:
- New and improved client and server-side detections and systems
- Major kernel-level driver update
  - Improvements to driver security
  - Reinforced encryption process
- New tampering detection system
Season 03 and beyond:
- A multitude of new tech including a brand-new system to authenticate legit players and target cheaters
  - Note: As we get closer to S03 we’ll dive a little deeper on these systems; however, it’s important we don’t provide too many details that could give cheat developers a peek behind the curtain

We’re not slowing down in our mission to shut down cheaters whose only mission is to ruin the fun for everyone else, and we’re confident that the combination of the updates above, as well as ongoing improvements to our detection systems and Activision’s continued legal actions against illegal cheat sellers, will provide a demonstrably healthier gameplay experience going forward.

Server Stability, Packet Loss, and “Lobby Crashing”

We’ve seen community reports of increased “rubber-banding,” packet loss notifications, and server disconnects in recent weeks, especially in Ranked Play – and in certain regions where some players may not have access to as many servers as others.

We have been monitoring match activity closely, including identifying suspicious accounts that appear in multiple “crashed” lobbies. The team at Demonware has narrowed down some specific causes of these issues that can affect all players, and new improvements have been made to Call of Duty’s server infrastructure this week to reduce targeted cases of malicious activities on our infrastructure and players. While this is an industry-wide issue, we remain committed to combatting individuals and organizations who intend to ruin the gameplay experience for others.

With these new improvements now in place for both Black Ops 6 and Warzone, we’ve already seen improvements in stability on the backend. While this isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for every potential issue with the online experience, we’re confident in the results we’ve already seen in practice.

In addition to these improvements, the team has also solved some server issues in regions that had recently experienced instability, and will continue to act quickly to resolve these as they pop up. As always, the Call of Duty teams will continue to keep a close eye on performance and make adjustments as necessary to deliver the best possible player experience.

An Update from the Disruptive Behavior Team on Voice Moderation

Since its initial rollout in 2023, Call of Duty’s in-game voice chat moderation system has been an essential tool in reducing our players’ exposure to hate speech, harassment, and derogatory language in voice comms. You can read our previous progress report for background on results.

Players should have the freedom to trash talk and we’re constantly working with our teams to make sure moderation is solely targeting conversations that veer into derogatory territory.

The Disruptive Behavior, moderation, and Player Support teams are consistently examining our moderation systems to make sure we get this distinction right. We employ regular tuning sessions, conducted by humans, to improve the accuracy of the voice moderation detection systems based on our Code of Conduct, which specifically calls out the type of inappropriate language we target.

Stay tuned later this year for a new Progress Report from the Disruptive Behavior team examining results for voice and text chat moderation.

Incoming Black Ops 6 Updates

In addition to all the new maps, modes, and rewards coming on day one of Season 02, Treyarch has prioritized several gameplay updates, quality of life improvements, playlist changes, and notable bug fixes scheduled for Season 02 launch based on player feedback, as well as key updates to Ranked Play:

Global

Challenge Tracker (up to 10 manually tracked Challenges or 10 nearest completion)
Separate HUD Preset settings for MP and Zombies
Reduced collision with teammates to improve maneuverability around tight spaces and doorways with nearby teammates

Multiplayer

Gameplay & quality of life updates:
- Weapon balance pass
- Bullet penetration updates
- Further reducing weapon motion when jumping, sliding, and diving with the Dexterity Perk equipped
- Improving player visibility in Kill Confirmed by reducing the height of dog tags
- Simplifying/expanding requirements for several Prestige Calling Card Challenges
- Later in Season 02, we’re planning on adding an icon over an opponent’s head when you shoot them if they have War Cry active, so you know they’ve got faster health regen. This should clear up confusion in firefights where you didn’t know why an enemy with more health was able to survive an engagement.
Playlist changes:
- Expanding the number of Featured Playlist slots
- Bringing Gunfight back to Featured Playlists
- Keeping Stakeout 24/7 in Featured Playlists and/or Quick Play
- Planning a “Small Maps Moshpit” shortly after season launch for camo grinders
High-profile bug fixes:
- Gearhead will now properly increase the charge rate of Field Upgrades
- Free for All will accurately calculate the scoreboard by kills and the Winner’s Circle will accurately showcase the Top 3 FFA players
- Ninja will no longer be able to reset between respawns or round transitions in certain game modes
- Fixes and tuning updates for a large number of Calling Card Challenges

Ranked Play

We’ve heard the feedback from players about wanting the choice to toggle cross-play in Ranked Play since its launch earlier this season, and in the spirit of improving the gameplay experience, we’re returning to the way we’ve traditionally handled cross-play. In Season 02, we are enabling the ability to disable cross-play for console players who want to compete only against other console players.
- This is currently in testing and is planned to go live for both Black Ops 6 Ranked Play and Warzone Ranked Play during S02. We’ll be monitoring closely and will consider further changes to prioritize the integrity of the ecosystem, and we’ll have more details to share as we get closer to the launch of this feature.
The Vote to Forfeit feature is coming at Season 02 launch, which allows players to vote with their team to end a match early if the team is getting blown out, or you’ve lost a teammate. Forfeited matches count as a standard loss and do not result in SR penalties or suspensions.
The ability to rejoin Ranked Play matches is also planned for later in Season 02, which should help to ensure fuller teams in matches if players experience a disconnect.
New S02 Ranked Play Rewards will include:
- Camos for Gold Rank and up
- Jackal PDW Blueprint for 10 wins
- Large Decal for 100 wins

Zombies

As mentioned in Treyarch’s 115 Day celebration, players will be able to jump into The Tomb, the newest Zombies map at the start of Season 02
The team remains committed to putting player fun first, squashing leftover bugs, and keeping new Zombies content coming throughout the post-launch seasons
In addition to challenge tracking and per-mode HUD Preset settings, upcoming Zombies QoL updates include:
- Co-op Pause: In matches where everyone is in the same party, the host will now be able to pause the game
- AFK kick loadout recovery: If a player is kicked for going AFK in a co-op game, they’ll now have their loadout, Essence, and Salvage restored when rejoining