Cheating has ruined Call of Duty for so many years; now the war on these has to escalate to an extremely serious level. The most recent Black Ops 7 Beta update was one with some truly wild numbers and has generated much discussion amongst the player base. And for discussion, read arguments in the replies as they always do- but stats don’t lie.
Activision wastes no time issuing new anti-cheating stats for the BO7 beta and they are pretty wild. Among a few others: 97 percent of all banned cheats get their bans finalized within half an hour of entering their accounts. Never a day late, never a dollar short, this one is basically an immediate ban. While more cheat providers are still being wiped out, many now openly claim that their cheats are ‘unusable’ against whatever new system has now been implemented. Then, this is really funny: Less than 1% of cheaters managed to land in an actual match, only to be thrown out within minutes; they practically didn’t have the time to fully load their hacks before being ejected.
Before we get overexcited, let’s remember we’re talking about the beta here. But still, these numbers are better than, obviously, anything we’ve seen from the recent CoD titles. The players in the comments do notice the difference. One user, Coinz, said, “‘6kd’ player on bo6, ‘6kd’ on bo6 as well. But in the beta I haven’t seen one. Thought one was cheating, but to be honest, he was just better and I was without attachments on my gun. Once I did, I became the player who got accused, so yeah, I don’t know if it works, but I have not ran into one yet.”
Another player by the name of pene42 claims to have banned more than 500 cheaters on Rebirth Island in the past year and has since not seen a single one in BO7 after secure boot implementation. That would be a huge improvement if it’s true. Don’t get me wrong, not everyone is buying it. Skepticism for obvious reason because of, you know, it’s Activision. Mr_Blinx_ said, “Don’t believe it and I never will with Activision,” which, admittedly, is a fair standpoint considering the history.
Watching the community debate happens to be the most fascinating. Some players claim to have been playing with cheaters within hours of the starting of the closed beta. KrekonOri responded, “Cheaters were ingame legit not even 2 hours after closed beta start. Wdym. Cod just doesn’t have a working anti-cheat as they say,” in contradiction to the official numbers. Who’s right? Probably both-int some may be caught immediately; some may still get through.
Then, we have the whole Zen/Cronus thing again appearing. Jarvy7713 cited: “Still can’t detect zens/cronus,” which is a rather different kind of cheating that has been going on in Call of Duty for years. These gizmos bestow aim assist and several other advantages upon their users but do so without being technically labeled as ‘traditional hacks.’ This is precisely that grey area of cheating that has been driving the competitive crowd nuts.
What’s wild is watching players argue over whether somebody is actually cheating or just really good. “Get shit on = soft aim and walling lmao,” as yeonreal_ put it, pretty much sums up modern gaming experiences. Sometimes you just get outplayed, other times… well, other times it’s pretty obvious when someone’s tracking you through walls.
The passion in these replies is another good thing. Sweepty_eu said, “the passion to play games but cheat i will never understand them,” which is actually same from my side. Like, why would you pay for a game just to cheat? What’s even the point? But then idontknowalt2 took it to another level, saying, “The only way to stop cheating is to put people in jail for it. That’ll stop them,” which sounds a bit crazy but you can feel the frustration.
What does seem apparent is that Activision is at least trying something different with BO7’s anti-cheat. Either through the secure boot or something else they put in, it has become harder for cheat providers to operate. The phrase “unusable” frequently gets thrown around by several replies talking about cheat providers claiming that their products are no longer usable, which would be a really good sign if it were true. But, as with any anti-cheat, this is just the beginning of an arms race. The cheat makers will find a way to evade it; developers will then patch it, and this cycle will continue forevern.
The real test will come when the full game launches and the cheat devs get some time to reverse engineer whatever new protections have been put into place. Beta numbers are one thing; keeping up such effectiveness for months or years is the real challenge. That said, at least for now, Black Ops 7 goes a long way into delivering clean arenas, and after the cheating that has haunted recent CoD titles, this is obviously a big reprieve that players have been begging for forever.
So yeah, the anti-cheat of Black Ops 7 beta seems to be working way better than anticipated. Whether it will retain that in the longer-term, well, that’s another story, but for now, it’s giving every single one of those cheaters hell and making sure a good time is had by everyone else who has been hard-pushed to enjoy the fun. And honestly? Good. Crack open a few bottles and toast to them for finally paying for destruction they’ve brought to the multiplayer community. The game is available on PlayStation and Xbox.
