Black Ops 6 Season 1’s Cheating Problem Is So Bad That Even the Developers Cannot Help but Acknowledge It

On November 21, 2024, the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Season 1 brought Ranked Play with it. And boy has it been a bad experience for players as rampant cheating quickly overtook the game mode. Within hours, players flooded social media with complaints about hackers using tools like aimbots and wallhacks.

Even the developers and their anti-cheat team, Ricochet, have publicly acknowledged the severity of the problem. The anti-cheat team shared their efforts to address what many are calling the most severe cheating crisis in Call of Duty history. You know it’s bad when everyone, from the pros to the casuals, is up in arms.

And to Nobody’s Surprise Black Ops 6 Has a Cheating Problem!

Just hours after Ranked Play launched, social media was flooded with reports of rampant cheating. From high-profile players, including former champions and top streamers, to casuals, everyone has mass reported the cheating issue.

The cheating in Ranked Play on Black Ops 6 is the worst it’s been. I’m actually disgusted. Don’t know how it’s gotten to this point, but the game is completely chalked.

— 100T Nadeshot (@Nadeshot) November 21, 2024

Nadeshot, a former Call of Duty Major Champion, labeled the cheating problem as the worst he had ever seen, declaring the game “completely chalked.”

Seeing a lot of people say that they’ve NEVER seen cheating this bad in Call of Duty ranked play. #BlackOps6 pic.twitter.com/1RuHvZfTvK

— ModernWarzone (@ModernWarzone) November 22, 2024

His sentiments were echoed by other competitive players and content creators like ModernWarzone, who said that players claim they’ve “never seen cheating this bad in Call of Duty Ranked Play.”

Others, like former World Champion Parasite, criticized the game’s anti-cheat system, sarcastically noting, “Glad to see the anti-cheat is working as intended!” Another pro player even revealed that 16 out of his 20 ranked matches were ruined by cheaters.

It’s a Disaster, But It Isn’t a COD Player’s First Rodeo

At the heart of the problem is RICOCHET, Activision’s anti-cheat system, which has faced criticism since its debut. Ricochet failed to detect or mitigate cheating in Ranked Play at launch. Players accused the system of being ineffective, with some even claiming it “never existed.”

My conspiracy is Ricochet never actually existed at all

— Sam “Octane” Larew (@OctaneSam) November 21, 2024

Activision has acknowledged the problem, pointing to a recent data outage as a key factor behind Ricochet’s failure. While the outage has since been fixed, players remain skeptical about the system’s ability to stop cheating in the long term. Players are demanding more transparency and proactive actions from the developers.

#BlackOps6 #Warzone #RankedPlay#TeamRICOCHET with an update: Ranked Play launched this week and we’re on it. While there’s lots of work behind the scenes, here are some highlights:

• Identified and fixed a data outage that lowered efficacy of AI systems
• Adjusting existing…

— Call of Duty Updates (@CODUpdates) November 22, 2024

Beyond the technical problems with the anti-cheat, players have also called out the forced crossplay as a problem. Forced crossplay between console and PC players has caused console players to blame it saying that most of the cheaters are on PC.

Players are also claiming that cheaters are using complicated setups to bypass detection. These setups could potentially involve running cheats on one PC while playing the game on another, making it difficult for Ricochet to flag suspicious behavior.

Team RICOCHET has planned steps to improve the situation. However, these measures feel like damage control rather than a long-term solution. For a franchise of Call of Duty‘s scale and budget, such issues should have been anticipated and prevented, not merely patched after the fact.

Are you playing Black Ops 6 right now? Let us know in the comments!