Activision has said it is conducting “hourly sweeps” of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's ranked play mode and leaderboards, as work continues to try to combat the game's cheating issue.
Activision's anti-cheat team, Team Ricochet, has imposed more than 19,000 bans since ranked play in Black Ops 6 launched last week, the publisher revealed in a social media post.
Meanwhile, in the background, Ricochet's AI systems “continue to improve with code optimizations to speed up applications,” the company wrote. “Thank you for your patience as our team continues to fight cheaters.”
Black Ops 6's ultra-competitive ranked game mode launched on November 21 to a mixed response, with criticism of the prevalence of cheating.
“19,000 accounts banned, 25,000 new accounts created,” was one fan's response to Activision's post. “Fourth year of hearing this,” said another.
Activision said earlier this month that it had fine-tuned Ricochet's detection systems ahead of the launch of ranked play, although those changes had focused more on “disruptive behavior” from players taking time off to increase account levels or using alternative accounts via VPN.
Activision boasted last week that Black Ops 6 was the biggest Call of Duty launch ever, with the best total players, hours played, and number of games played in the game's first 30 days. So adding it to Xbox Game Pass seems to have helped.
“For a series built on high-octane thrills and explosive gratification, its retreat to the well-worn formula echoes the industry's continued allergy to risk at large,” wrote Chris Tapsell in his Call of Duty: Black Ops review. 6 from Eurogamer.