With Season 2 of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Warzone just around the corner, developers are stepping up their efforts to keep games fair by improving the Ricochet anti-cheat system.

Activision’s team behind RICOCHET Anti-Cheat is introducing a new suite of detection methods designed to spot and block cheating tools — especially third-party input modification hardware like Cronus Zen and XIM Matrix. These devices can give players unfair advantages, such as automated recoil control or perfect aim, and Season 2 aims to reduce their impact dramatically. Rather than simply detecting specific hardware, the system now analyzes input behavior, such as timing, consistency, and reaction patterns, to tell apart machine-generated movements from normal player actions.

A major focus of the update is Ranked Play, which launches in Season 2. Ricochet will use remote, cloud-based attestation powered by Microsoft Azure to check a player’s system for tampering before matches begin, building on existing TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot protections. This cloud verification helps prevent altered systems from entering Ranked lobbies, aiming to ensure that wins are earned by skill rather than exploits.

Season 2’s anti-cheat changes are just the next step in an ongoing effort to make Black Ops 7 and Warzone fairer for everyone, with RICOCHET expected to continue evolving to meet new threats.