In the latest announcement related to Activision’s latest Call of Duty game, the studio announced that its new Call of Duty: Warzone anti-cheat system, called Ricochet, will include a kernel-mode driver that gives Activision the ability to access any bit of memory on your PC.
However, many users of the Warzone community think that giving Activision that kind of power “doesn’t sit right” with them but also that they’ve been killed by so many cheaters that they could “honestly give a shit at this point.”
one user wrote that “I play Call of Duty to unwind, not get shit on by a child that spent $30 on an aimbot…If a kernel-level driver prevents this, have at it.”
When Vanguard was announced as the mandatory anti-cheat software for FPS Valorant in 2020, many in the community viewed it as an invasive and dangerous overstep, and some even pointed that it was an ill portent for what was to come.
The problem with kernel-mode drivers is that normal user-mode software is isolated from the rest of your PC and can’t send instructions directly to the CPU or mess with the memory used by Windows and other software. However, Kernel-mode drivers, they can simply do whatever they want with your system.
The reason behind the controversy of using these kernel-mode drivers, was mainly due to the Anti-Chinese sentiment since Riot is owned by Chinese conglomerate Tencent, which also owns portions of Activision Blizzard and Epic Games. Riot has stated that Vanguard’s driver “does not collect or send any information.”
but the question is how well the Ricochet will work, just having a kernel-level driver doesn’t mean software cheats won’t get by it, and there are also other ways to cheat.
Ricochet’s anti-cheat kernel driver will come to Call of Duty: Warzone first, t will also come to Call of Duty: Vanguard at some point after it launches on November 5.
