Call of Duty will now steal your weapons if you’ve been naughty
Naked and afraid
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Cheaters in Warzone and Vanguard are in for a rude awakening, as developer Activision rolls out a new update to the games’ anti-cheat software.
Anyone who’s caught cheating inWarzoneorCall of Duty: Vanguardwill now face the wrath of Activision’s latest ironic anti-cheating mitigation tactic, Disarm. As described in ablog post, the new system does exactly what its name suggests: removing cheaters’ weapons mid-match to leave them totally defenseless.
Cheaters won’t even be able to punch with their fists, as Activision says removing all their offensive capabilities it’s an effective way of putting them “in time out”. By letting cheaters remain in the match but making it virtually unplayable for them, the pesky hackers are given a taste of their own bitter medicine.
It also makes unscrupulous players easy targets for legitimate players, who can pick up an easy kill while the cheaters are running around confused and helpless. If you spot an enemy player who seems a little too skillful, before they suddenly lose all their weapons, there’s a good chance you’ve run across a casualty of the new Disarm system.
Playful punishment
Activision has rolled out a couple of other ironic anti-cheat measures inCall of Duty. Througha cloaking system, any player who’s found to be cheating will no longer be able to see their opponents, and enemy sounds will be totally undetectable. Honest players, meanwhile, will see the cheaters as normal, letting them nab a quick kill.
A Damage Shield system was also introduced earlier in the year. That technique dramatically reduces the damage of cheaters’ bullets and prevents them from inflicting critical damage to opposing players. Again, it’s been designed to confuse cheaters, while letting legitimate players get the better of them.
Activision says these anti-cheat systems haven’t only been developed because they’re funny. By allowing cheaters to remain in the game while crippling their impact, Activision can gather more data about the hacks. It also lets them ruin their fun.
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“Cheaters, for some reason, feel superior using software to win games they have no business winning,” the blog post says. “Hitting them with mitigations transforms those euphoric feelings of being fake-best into glorious pangs of annoyance. We’ve seen the clips.”
The poetic justice will continue. Call of Duty’s Ricochet anti-cheat system will be making its way toWarzone 2when it launches later in the year.
Callum is TechRadar Gaming’s News Writer. You’ll find him whipping up stories about all the latest happenings in the gaming world, as well as penning the odd feature and review. Before coming to TechRadar, he wrote freelance for various sites, including Clash, The Telegraph, and Gamesindustry.biz, and worked as a Staff Writer at Wargamer. Strategy games and RPGs are his bread and butter, but he’ll eat anything that spins a captivating narrative. He also loves tabletop games, and will happily chew your ear off about TTRPGs and board games.
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