Call Of Duty Cheaters May Now Lose Their Parachutes, Sending Them Plummeting To Their Death

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III launches on November 10, and that game, along with the battle royale title Warzone, will include new measures to thwart cheaters and jerks. At a high level, Activision says Modern Warfare III will have a "stronger and faster process" to fight cheaters.

This will include using machine learning, as well as client- and server-side systems for the anti-cheat tool, Ricochet. There is also a new system in Warzone specifically called Splat where cheaters will lose their parachutes and crash down onto the map to their death. Here's everything we know.

Machine learning

For the machine learning developments, Activision said this will help with "efficiency and speed in prevention, detection, and removal of cheaters." Using machine learning, Ricochet is now better able to find new cheating behaviors and implement "account challenges" to validate suspected bad behavior, and collect "problem" accounts so they are flagged for action to be taken against them.

"In short, machine learning helps us anticipate behavior better and operate with more effectiveness, with our team validating for accuracy," Activision said.

The machine learning systems do not, however, issue bans on players--that's still done by a human.

Activision went on to say that machine learning helps Activision's teams review matches to look for bad behavior. A Ricochet staffer is currently able to review around 700 replay clips per day, but for more complicated and involved forms of cheating, the machine learning should help speed up the process.

"For the replay investigation tool, a machine learning model is trained to identify suspicious behavior like wall hacks or raging (plus many others), and immediately prioritizes and alerts the team to review the issue for account action," Activision said. "A single PC running the model can review up to 1,000 clips per day--a number that grows exponentially when multiple computers are tasked with operating this specific replay machine learning investigation model."

Splat

The wonderfully named Splat is a new cheating mitigation system that Activision is deploying in Modern Warfare III and Warzone alongside Activision's other systems.

"With Splat, if a cheater is discovered, we may randomly, and for fun, disable their parachute sending them careening into the ground after they deploy," Activision said.

The system is advanced enough to catch bad behavior after a player has deployed, too. The tool can adjust player velocity, which Activision says, "transforms a bunny hop into a 10,000-foot drop taking them out instantly."

Splat will only be enabled for players already verified to have been cheating.

"While it's fun to annoy cheaters that make it into games, our aim is to prevent them from ever getting near a match," Activision said.

A "continuous" battle

Call of Duty games are massively popular and played by millions around the world, and Activision said it is a "continuous" battle to try to thwart cheaters. According to Activision, it recently banned 80,000 accounts across Warzone and Modern Warfare II, and those players cannot access Modern Warfare III.

"As players of our own game--and other online multiplayer experiences--we too are disrupted by cheating issues," Activision said. "Our team is dedicated to using all technologies, providing our team with more data and tools, developing new prevention and detection systems, and doing anything we can to make the lives of cheaters that make it into our games as annoying as possible."

Keep checking back with GameSpot for more on Modern Warfare III in the days ahead.