Call of Duty: Warzone will drop cheaters from the sky with new Splat feature

Cheating in Call of Duty: Warzone is about to get a lot more risky, thanks to a new update to the game’s Ricochet anti-cheat system. The update introduces a new feature called Splat, which will detect cheating players and make them fall to their deaths without a parachute at the start of a match. (Hence the name, Splat.)

“While we hesitate to call it an in-game Mitigation – because it’s immediately obvious when it happens – we have developed a new trick for cheaters going forward in Call of Duty: Warzone: We call it Splat. 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,” Call of Duty wrote in a blog post.

If a cheater manages to evade the initial detection and join a match, the publisher has a backup plan to deal with them using various in-game mitigations. “But what if we catch them after they’ve deployed? Well, Splat can also adjust player velocity, which transforms a bunny hop into a 10,000-foot drop taking them out instantly. This is one of many new tricks we’ve developed – and we’ll talk about more in the future,” Call of Duty added.

Only validated cheaters, not random players, will face Splat, Activision stated. It will be immune to player reports and game malfunctions. “Like all mitigations, Splat won’t randomly turn on for a player that isn’t verified to be cheating. Player reporting won’t turn it on, and the game can’t accidentally activate it,” Call of Duty said.

This is not the first time Activision has tried to deter cheaters in creative ways. Previously, the publisher gave players god mode and invisibility when they were being shot by cheating players. It also announced their bans in the kill feed, for everyone to see.

Splat is not the only anti-cheat measure Activision is working on. The company is also improving its server and client-side anti-cheat systems, as well as using machine learning to identify cheating behaviour more quickly and accurately. These enhancements are expected to be ready for the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.