Call of Duty Black Ops 6 bans over 136,000 players in ban-quake

Call of Duty developer, Treyarch, has announced it had to ban over 136,000 players in its latest crackdown on cheating in Black Ops 6.

A new community update outlines plans for the game’s upcoming Season 2. This refresh will introduce some new quality-of-life updates, as well as the option to “disable cross-play on consoles in Ranked Play”. It also digs into bans and the updates that the system will be receiving.

The cheating players that were banned were caught up in the Richochet Anti-Cheat’s new “detection models”. These are constantly being updated, something that the Richochet team points out will be receiving “major upgrades” in Season 2.

Ahead of Season 02’s launch, we’re here to discuss what the various dev teams and studios are doing right now to address what matters to our players today:

• Cheating and bans
• Ability to disable cross-play on consoles in Ranked
• Server issues
• Quality of life updates
•… https://t.co/O6traEfwwG

— Treyarch (@Treyarch) January 17, 2025

These will affect both the client and server-side detections. Essentially, the company will update both the game you run and the multiplayer servers on their end with better-equipped monitoring systems. This also includes the controversial kernel-level driver.

Call of Duty has implemented a kernel-level driver for several years now. Other games like Valorant also use them. This sits at the core of Windows to ensure undetectable programs being run can’t be used in the game.

It’s controversial, as it means Linux and Steam Deck users can’t play the game, but more importantly, it’s now an embedded part of the system. If an update were to break it in some capacity, like with the CrowdStrike fiasco in 2024, it could cause damage to the PC.

Ricochet’s team also said that they’re working on Season 3 “and beyond” as we speak. They intend to “dive a little deeper” when Season 3 rolls around later this year, but have tipped that it’ll bring a “multitude of new tech including a brand-new system to authenticate legit players and target cheaters.”

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was released in November 2024, to critical acclaim and a return to form. The prior year’s game, Modern Warfare 3, wasn’t the best received by fans or critics, owing to its overstretched nature as an elaborate and repurposed expansion for Modern Warfare 2.

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