Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 developer outlines new tools to fight online cheats

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 developer Treyarch has tweaked its anti-cheat systems and banned another 136,000 players across Black Ops 6 and battle-royale spin-off, Warzone.

In a detailed update to players on X, Treyarch and partner studios Raven Software, Beenox, and Demonware acknowledged that "instances of cheating in Call of Duty [...] are frustrating and severely impact the experience for our community" and outlined new layers of security and protections to combat cheaters.

This includes updated detection models - such as to catch aim botting - and better account trust and hardware identifiers to target serial cheaters, helping the game identify and then ban 136,000 ranked play cheats.

Addressing IP-based banning, the update said Call of Duty's Ricochet system does not utilise IP-based bans so as not to "take action against" entire groups that may not have been engaging in cheating behaviours.

Looking ahead to 2025, there will be major kernel-level driver updates, a reinforced encryption process, and an all-new tampering detection system.

"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," the statement concluded.

We recently learned that developing three Call of Duty titles between 2015 and 2020 cost Activision between $450m and $700m per game.