Hacking isn’t something new to the gaming industry, and it is certainly nothing new to our beloved battle royale – Call of Duty: Warzone. Warzone has suffered at the hands of hackers ever since its inception in 2020, but it seemed to have risen to such a level that the game has become unplayable in recent months.
Combine the hackers with the out-of-the-map exploits and other bugs, and you have a perfect infrastructure for disaster.
It was not until recently that the game’s devs announced a brand new anti-cheat called Ricochet, which runs on a kernel level.
Understanding kernel-level properly is too technical, so in simple words, it allows the anti-cheat to have a lot more control of your system. The application’s increased access to your computer raised some alarm among the skeptics who worry about their privacy. However, in recent years the same approach has been implemented in well-known and reputable titles such as Apex Legends and Vaolorant that use a kernel-level anti-cheat called Easy Anti-Cheat.
Another popular kernel-level anti-cheat is BattleEye which is also used by many widely played games, including Player Unknown: Battlegrounds (PUBG), H1Z1, Rainbow Six: Siege, and ARK Survival: Evolved.
When it comes to permitting these kernel anti-cheats, you do not have control over them getting access to your system. This is how they get the data needed to stop hackers from cheating in-game. Giving better access to your system means less hacking as the system-wide data can help the devs or the anti-cheat detect files that can slip by otherwise. This is the reason why most of the games like Valorant and PUBG have fewer hackers.
It is a fair concern to the privacy point, but Ricochet anti-cheat is slightly less invasive compared to the other kernel-based anti-cheats in the market. According to the developers, ricochet will only work in the background while Warzone is running. The moment you close the application, the Ricochet anti-cheat will also stop working, unlike other anti-cheats that keep running in the background regardless of what application is being run.
Ricochet was scheduled to be released during season 1 of Warzone & Vanguard, and the latest update today has fully implemented the anti-cheat into the game. It is now live in all regions (NA, Europe, & Asia).
If you would like to check whether it is available in your system or not. You can do so very easily by following the steps below:
- Go to start menu and type ‘cmd’
- Open ‘Command Prompt’
- In the command prompt window, type ‘driverquery.exe’ and press enter.
- You will find ‘atvi-brynhil atvi-brynhildr’ with the type listed as kernel next to it with the date and time this kernel was implemented in your system.
Hopefully, now you should be experiencing fewer hackers in Warzone and Vanguard.
