Team RICOCHET just dropped its first post-launch report card for Modern Warfare 4. Suspected cheating reports are trending lower than last year's launch, fewer major cheat sellers are active, and Server Culling, DMA detections and tougher hardware bans have been live since day one. Here's everything Activision said, how each layer works, and the one thing missing from the update.
Modern Warfare 4 has been out for a week, and Activision says the cheaters are having a rougher time than they did last year. In a thread posted today on the official Call of Duty X account, Team RICOCHET, the anti-cheat team behind Call of Duty, shared its first look at how the MW4 launch went on the cheating front.
“Early signals are encouraging,” the team wrote. “Reports of suspected cheating are trending lower compared with last year’s launch, fewer primary cheat vendors are active, and our response times remain strong.”
What you need to know
- Game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, which launched October 23, including on Xbox Series X|S and PC.
- Cheating reports: trending lower than last year’s Call of Duty launch, per Activision.
- Cheat sellers: fewer “primary cheat vendors” are active, per Activision.
- Live since day one: Server Culling, DMA detections and stronger hardware enforcement, working “across Multiplayer and DMZ.”
- Also running: behavioral detections, account security, TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, remote attestation, plus Activision’s “ongoing legal and enforcement efforts.”
- No hard numbers: this week-one update gives no ban counts or percentages. It’s direction, not data.
- What’s next: MW4 and Warzone Season 1 starts November 6, and Activision has said it is posting weekly RICOCHET updates through Season 1.
How each layer works
Server Culling: the wallhack killer
This is the new tech MW4 launched with, and it goes after wallhacks at the source. “Cheat software can’t reveal information it never receives,” Call of Duty wrote. “By limiting the player information sent to the game client, we’re making wallhacks harder to use.”
Cheat software can’t reveal information it never receives.
In plain words: older multiplayer games send every nearby player’s location to your console or PC, even when they’re behind a wall, and wallhacks read that data to draw boxes on enemies you shouldn’t be able to see. With Server Culling, the server decides when you have no legit way of knowing where someone is and holds back their location until they come into view. In its official explainer video, Activision explains that it does this by building occlusion layers into each map.
- Coverage: every map available at MW4 launch, including DMZ and Combat Outpost, per Activision’s explainer.
- Going forward: new live season maps for Multiplayer, DMZ and Warzone in Season 1 and beyond.
- Still evolving: the team says it’s “continuing to refine that technology based on what we’re seeing in live matches.”
Modern Warfare 4 Week One: Activision Says Cheating Reports Are Down From Last Year’s LaunchHardware bans: “New account? Nice try.”
“When a player is banned for cheating, hardware enforcement makes it harder to create a new account and jump straight back into the game,” Call of Duty wrote. Hardware bans work alongside “account security, TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, remote attestation, DMA detections and other anti-cheat systems.”
This builds on the pre-launch push. Back before the MW4 beta, Activision said it locked out more than 70,000 systems tied to cheating in one wave across Black Ops 7 and Warzone, as Destructoid and MW4.GG reported at the time, and said hardware bans would keep rolling out on PC and console.
Behavioral detections
The team says it’s “continuing to refine behavioral detections, giving us more ways to identify suspicious activity, investigate potential cheating and take action faster.” The goal, in its words: “making Call of Duty a tougher place to cheat.”
The bottom line from Activision
“One week down. The work continues,” the thread closes. “Protecting fair play isn’t a launch-day milestone. It’s an ongoing commitment.”
OnPoint’s take
Real talk, this is the stuff that actually matters to people grinding MW4 on Xbox every night. You can have the best maps in the world, but one wallhacker in DMZ wipes out a whole loot run. Server Culling is the smartest move Call of Duty has made on cheating in years, because it doesn’t wait to catch the cheater. It just starves the cheat. If the data never hits your machine, there’s nothing to draw. That’s a W for every Series X player who’s been tired of getting beamed through a wall in crossplay lobbies.
Now here’s what people are skipping past: there are zero numbers in this update. “Trending lower” than last year could mean a lot or a little, and Activision didn’t give a ban count, a percentage or anything we can hold it to. Before launch it was happy to say 70,000 systems got locked out. So let’s see the receipts in next week’s report. And PC players, notice the requirements list: TPM 2.0, Secure Boot and remote attestation. That’s the price of a cleaner lobby, and most of you on a modern rig won’t even feel it. Week one looks good. Week six, when Season 1 is in full swing and the cheat sellers adjust, is the real test. Let us know in the comments if your MW4 lobbies feel cleaner.
Sources
- Call of Duty on X: MW4 WEEK ONE thread
- Call of Duty on X: Server Culling post
- Call of Duty on X: Hardware bans post
- Call of Duty on YouTube: Combatting Wallhacks with Server Culling
- Destructoid: Activision promises ‘stronger’ hardware bans in Call of Duty, with weekly updates
- MW4.GG: TeamRICOCHET Strengthens Hardware Bans, Commits to Weekly Anti-Cheat Updates
- Destructoid: New ‘Server Culling’ anti-cheat method in Modern Warfare 4
Image: Activision (Modern Warfare 4 key art) / OnPoint 4 Gamers
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