The Call of Duty developers working on the game’s anti-cheat system have added a new way to mitigate the impact cheaters have on the game, by adding hallucinations to matches. You read that right, hallucinations are now being added into Call of Duty matches via the Ricochet anti-cheat system.
It’s the latest tool the developers are using to combat the ever-evolving cheat software that some players use to gain an advantage of over others. And perhaps one of the funniest new features to date.
If you actively play Call of Duty you may be familiar with some of the ways cheaters have been handled. But if you’ve forgotten, here’s a refresher. Since Modern Warfare II released in 2022, new mitigation tactics have been added to combat cheaters in various ways. For example, if Ricochet detected a cheater, other players would become invisible.
Another tactic would make it so cheaters couldn’t do damage to other players. With hallucinations in place, cheaters essentially see these fake players surface in a match. And won’t be able discern the difference between them and a real player according to Team Ricochet.
Call of Duty anti-cheat hallucinations mimic real players
If you’re curious about the innerworkings of this new active mitigation, it works by tricking cheaters into thinking hallucinations are real players. As an example, once a hallucination is placed, it will mimic the movements of another player that’s actually in the match.
Because the cheater can’t discern the difference, they can more easily out themselves as a cheater. Team Ricochet says they can also be placed anywhere on the map relative to a suspicious player. And that they trigger the same kind of unique information a cheater might have active to gain an advantage. The teams says this is the first step in combating “non-rage hackers.” Which are players who use tools that give them additional in-game information they aren’t supposed to see. You can read more about the new mitigation tool in the official blog post.