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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Beta Had Cheaters, Activision Says

Team RICOCHET said cheaters played matches during both Black Ops 6 beta weekends, but Activision did not publish a beta-wide cheating rate.
Length3 min Posted Quest giverVGSources Team
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Yes. Team RICOCHET acknowledged that cheaters got into multiplayer matches during the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 beta. In its October 18, 2024 report, the team said cheaters played around 10 matches before removal in Weekend One and five in Weekend Two. Activision did not publish a beta-wide rate of cheating, so those figures confirm the problem but do not show how common it was across all matches.

What Activision reported about cheating in the beta

Team RICOCHET’s October 18, 2024 Black Ops 6 launch report said its anti-cheat systems were tested live during the beta. The team reported that cheaters played around 10 multiplayer matches before removal in Weekend One, compared with five in Weekend Two.

Beta period Reported matches before removal
Weekend One Around 10 multiplayer matches, according to Team RICOCHET
Weekend Two Five multiplayer matches, according to Team RICOCHET

Team RICOCHET also said 25% of all Weekend Two bans happened during the first match a cheater ever played. These are publisher-reported enforcement figures, not independently audited measurements.

How many cheaters were banned before they could play?

Team RICOCHET said it stopped more than 12,000 confirmed cheating accounts before they entered a match during the beta. That is a count of accounts blocked from playing, not a count of cheaters who completed matches and not a measure of the share of beta players who cheated.

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#1 Best Overall
Call of Duty®: Black Ops 6 - PlayStation 5
  • Developed by Treyarch and Raven, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a spy action thriller set in the early 90s, a period of transition and upheaval in global politics, characterized by the end of the Cold War and the rise of the United States as a single superpower.
  • This is signature Black Ops across a cinematic single-player Campaign, a best-in-class Multiplayer experience, and the epic return of Round-Based Zombies.
  • The Black Ops 6 Campaign provides dynamic moment-to-moment gameplay that includes a variety of play spaces with blockbuster set pieces and action-packed moments, high-stakes heists, and cloak-and-dagger spy activity. 
  • In a best-in-class Multiplayer experience, players will test their skills across 16 new maps at launch, including 12 core 6v6 maps and 4 Strike maps that can be played 2v2 or 6v6. 
  • Black Ops 6 also marks the epic return of Round-Based Zombies, the fan-favorite mode where players will take down hordes of the undead in two brand-new maps at launch. Post-launch, players can look forward to even more exciting maps and groundbreaking experiences dropping into both Multiplayer and Zombies.

The report does not give the total number of beta players or matches, so it cannot establish what percentage of matches were affected. It also does not report a false-positive rate. The published numbers show that enforcement took place, but they cannot support an estimate of overall prevalence.

Was every beta cheater caught within an hour?

No such beta-wide result was reported. Team RICOCHET called catching and removing a cheater within one hour of their first match its target, saying, “Our NorthStar is within one hour.” Its beta comparison was expressed in matches played before removal, not elapsed time. The five-match Weekend Two figure therefore should not be read as proof that every cheater was removed within an hour.

Rank #2
Call of Duty Black Ops 6
  • Cross Gen-Bundle of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 includes Xbox Series X and Xbox One versions of the game.
  • The Black Ops 6 promotion brings dynamic play moment to moment containing a variety of playing spaces with big buster set pieces and action-packed moments, high stakes wedges and spy activity mantle and dagger.
  • In a premium multiplayer experience, players will test their skills over 16 new maps at launch, including 12 core 6v6 maps and 4 strike maps that can be played 2v2 or 6v6.
  • Black Ops 6 also marks the epic return of Round-Based Zombies, fan-favorite mode where players will take down hordes of the undead in two brand new maps at launch.
  • Cross-Gen Bundle of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will also be available on select game pass plans at launch. *

How RICOCHET says it detects and disrupts cheating

In its October 2024 report, Team RICOCHET described a layered approach for Black Ops 6: a PC kernel-level driver, server- and client-side detections, machine-learning models that examine matches, replay investigation tools, and third-party hardware detections. The report also said the game would launch with updated anti-cheat technology and in-game mitigations.

Activision Support’s current RICOCHET overview says the PC kernel driver starts when a supported game launches and shuts down when the player exits. Activision describes anti-cheat as an ongoing effort, noting that no single solution or policy will eliminate cheating. The overview also explains that in-game mitigations and player reports help identify suspicious behavior and inform system updates.

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Rank #3
Call of Duty Black Ops 6
  • Kampania Black Ops 6 oferuje dynamiczną rozgrywkę z różnymi obszarami gry z pięknym tłem, intensywą akcją i fantastycznymi aktywnościami szpiegowskimi
  • In the top-class multiplayer gameplay, players can check their skills on 16 new maps at the time of release, including 12 standard 6 on 6 and 4 battle maps that can be played in 2 on 2 or 6 out of 7
  • Black Ops 6 also means the epic return of your fan-favorite Zombies mode

Beta figures are separate from post-launch enforcement

A later Team RICOCHET update, published November 13, 2024, said its systems had intervened in more than 582,000 matches since the October 25 launch, as of the week before publication. That is a post-launch count of matches intervened in—not a beta statistic, a number of banned players, or a percentage of affected matches. The same update reported more than 4.4 million behavioral-model data points per hour at peak; that figure describes model input, not confirmed cheating incidents.

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What to do if you suspect cheating

Use the in-game report option for suspicious behavior. Activision Support says player reports help the team identify issues and improve its systems. A surprising play or a large skill difference alone does not establish that someone is cheating, so report what you observed rather than making a public accusation.

Rank #4
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 - Cross-Gen Bundle - Xbox [Digital Code]
  • This is signature Black Ops across a cinematic single-player Campaign, a best-in-class Multiplayer experience, and the epic return of Round-Based Zombies.
  • The Black Ops 6 Campaign provides dynamic moment-to-moment gameplay that includes a variety of play spaces with blockbuster set pieces and action-packed moments, high-stakes heists, and cloak-and-dagger spy activity.
  • In a best-in-class Multiplayer experience, players will test their skills across 16 new maps at launch, including 12 core 6v6 maps and 4 Strike maps that can be played 2v2 or 6v6.
  • Black Ops 6 also marks the epic return of Round-Based Zombies, the fan-favorite mode where players will take down hordes of the undead in two brand-new maps at launch. Post-launch, players can look forward to even more exciting maps and groundbreaking experiences dropping into both Multiplayer and Zombies.
  • The Cross-Gen Bundle of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will also be available on select Game Pass plans at launch.*

Activision’s support index lists Black Ops 6 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Battle.net; its game support page links to relevant help resources.

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