The relationship between gamers and Call of Duty’s Ricochet anticheat system is tumultuous to say the least. The news that Ricochet banned over 23,000 accounts since Nov. 12 didn’t seem to dispel players’ disappointment, with the overwhelming majority claiming Ricochet is still totally worthless.
The official Call of Duty profile shared what would usually pass as great news on X, formerly Twitter. The new machine learning detection method has been deployed for a little over a month now and led to impressive numbers—over 23,000 banned accounts and over 2,000 Splat activations.
Nevertheless, fans’ reactions to the Ricochet update were almost entirely negative. The community was quick to bring up several important issues with the anticheat system, as well as other pressing matters affecting MW3 and Warzone.
The most prevalent complaint is that Ricochet keeps shadow-banning supposedly legitimate players. While there’s hardly a way to confirm that those complaining aren’t actually cheating, with so many attesting to the claim, there must be at least some truth to it. Getting banned without actually breaking the rules is never fun, so a fierce reaction is to be expected.
Another criticism of Ricochet is that the players behind all these banned accounts can just create new ones and get right back at it. This is a recurring problem for every anticheat system. Cheaters usually use disposable accounts anyway, so creating a new one is no biggie. But alas, a more severe ban system wouldn’t really mesh well with the apparent threat of shadow bans, so this element of Ricochet is here to stay.
The timing of the anticheat update also doesn’t help. At the same time, Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone players were furious that the promised double XP weekend for the holidays lasted just 24 hours, flooding the Ricochet post with angry comments as a result. That debacle was later resolved by an emergency statement from Sledgehammer extending the double XP weekend well beyond Christmas, but the damage was already done, further souring the reception of the Ricochet and Splat news.
The Ricochet anticheat is inherently tied to Warzone and Modern Warfare 3, even causing Steam Deck users additional hassle if they wish to run MW3 on the handheld. Splat is the more severe form of the anticheat, which can ban you right after the start of a Warzone match. If it detects cheats, Splat will splat your character on the ground immediately after deploying, hence the anticheat’s name.
While sounding nice in theory, Splat and Ricochet haven’t been doing their job all too well, as far as the CoD community is concerned. Fans went as far as to claim the MW3 and Warzone anticheat system doesn’t work at all. With over 23,000 banned accounts, that’s clearly not the case, but it’s obviously not working as well as some Call of Duty fans want.
