Activision uses AI to ban nearly 20,000 Black Ops 6 cheaters

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DragonSlayer101

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What just happened? Black Ops 6 debuted to widespread acclaim in October, but like many other multiplayer online shooters, it quickly became plagued by cheaters, spoiling the experience for legitimate players. In response to persistent complaints, Activision has banned thousands of accounts found guilty of cheating in Ranked Play.

Activision has banned over 19,000 accounts for cheating since the launch of Ranked Play on November 21. The company revealed it is leveraging AI to detect cheaters and performing "hourly sweeps" to remove them from the Ranked Play mode and leaderboard. Additionally, the company is enhancing its AI systems with code optimizations to improve its anti-cheating measures.

Prior to the release of Black Ops 6, Activision disclosed plans to use AI to differentiate cheaters from highly skilled "God-tier" players. The company emphasized that while cheat developers may help users improve their gameplay, they cannot alter behavioral patterns. "How people play – the legit, the phony, the good, and the bad – gives us information and we use that to build ways to pick those bad folks out of a lineup," the company had said.

The mass suspensions come in response to a community backlash after swarms of cheaters overran Ranked Play shortly after its launch. The situation escalated to the point where prominent Call of Duty content creators publicly criticized the issue, pressuring the developers to address it. In response, the team acknowledged the problem and promised updates to the Ricochet anti-cheat system to tackle the issue.

Initially, a data outage in Ricochet reduced the effectiveness of the AI systems, hampering the publisher's ability to detect and ban cheaters. However, the issue has since been resolved, and the AI systems are now reportedly performing as intended. According to Activision, these systems are more effective than ever, identifying and isolating cheaters based on player behavior and gameplay patterns.

That said, some players claim they have been unfairly banned despite not engaging in any illegal activity. It remains unclear whether these reports are genuine or if legitimate players are indeed being mistakenly flagged by the AI.

Meanwhile, many console gamers are calling for an option to disable crossplay, arguing that PC players using a keyboard and mouse have an inherent advantage in shooting games. Whether the developers will introduce a crossplay toggle remains to be seen.

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Activision uses AI to ban nearly 20,000 Black Ops 6 cheaters

 
Hahaha, and they were complaining that on Linux they need kernel level anticheat to remove cheaters, but apparently this doesn't help at all with windows, so.... They simply want to have bloat ware collecting user data pretending it helps to keep the game clean.....
 
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Meanwhile, many console gamers are calling for an option to disable crossplay, arguing that PC players using a keyboard and mouse have an inherent advantage in shooting games
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No duhhhh
 
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Meanwhile, many console gamers are calling for an option to disable crossplay, arguing that PC players using a keyboard and mouse have an inherent advantage in shooting games. Whether the developers will introduce a crossplay toggle remains to be seen.
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How about you turn off your insane auto-aim assist (which at this point is basically an aimbot) and then we'll talk.

Also, consoles have supported KB/M since the PS3, and PCs have supported gamepads for far longer.
 
dangh said:
Hahaha, and they were complaining that on Linux they need kernel level anticheat to remove cheaters, but apparently this doesn't help at all with windows, so.... They simply want to have bloat ware collecting user data pretending it helps to keep the game clean.....
Click to expand...
Frankly, there are so many good games that I'm not missing out on anything. Linux is my future.

I have the mind set of console exclusives, but I own everything and have control over what it does. And here is a fun one Zenimax has taken a "hands off" approach to Linux so now ESO works on proton in steam. The 2 games I play the most, ESO amd EvE, both work great on Linux. Spacemarines 2 works on Linux.

Frankly, the AAA gaming industry is so toxic these days I don't even feel like I'm missing out. I wouldn't play them even if I wasn't running Linux. To be honest, I've been playing a lot of indie games lately with many of then having native Linux ports.

We're still far off from Linux gaming for the everyday user, but I think that day will come before 2030. I think about a year from when Valve releases a general purpose steamOS we will see the start of a movement that can't be stopped. I think that is what will set into motion developers actually missing significant amounts of revenue from not support linux or even just letting the community support Linux for them.
 
Why do we put all our eggs in one basket with AI when it's still unreliable? Using AI to ban people from the game without the ability to appeal it is like using AI in our court system to send people to jail for life. When we let a computer program to make the final decision then humanity is a lost cause.
 
I was somewhat involved with the Nostalrius WoW Vanilla Private Server and used to read the posts those botters made in order to get unbanned at the Nostalrius Forums Unban section.

There was even this one famous guy called Sephirofl, a guy who had studied English Literature and used to write emotional petitions for Blizzard and Nostalrius to read and potentially unban well-off Botters who could pay him.

Nostalrius was much more professional than Activision-Blizzard when it comes to removing/banning botters. There were volunteer human GM's who were hunting for bots. It was like a game to them and they were very effective. Original Blizzard used to also employ Human GM's in the Bot Hunter role but they were later fired when Activision took over.

Don't believe Activision. Like New Blizzard, which they now own, they are very bad at banning bots intentionally. See, bots pay subscriptions or buy items, w/e, and any for-profit company earns more money by keeping Botters around indefinitely or at least for as long as possible before they get banned.

What we have here is a publicity stunt. The situation will get back to normal when the programmers who write the code for the bots cheaters use update their bots with new code to make it undetectable by Activision.

This situation has been going on for years on Blizzard WoW servers and the Botters and the ppl who write the code for the bots always win. See above.

Bots who go unchecked by Activision-Blizzard have literally destroyed the in-game economy on many Classic WoW servers. I don't play Retail WoW so I am not sure what is going on there.
 
Achaios said:
I was somewhat involved with the Nostalrius WoW Vanilla Private Server and used to read the posts those botters made in order to get unbanned at the Nostalrius Forums Unban section.

There was even this one famous guy called Sephirofl, a guy who had studied English Literature and used to write emotional petitions for Blizzard and Nostalrius to read and potentially unban well-off Botters who could pay him.

Nostalrius was much more professional than Activision-Blizzard when it comes to removing/banning botters. There were volunteer human GM's who were hunting for bots. It was like a game to them and they were very effective. Original Blizzard used to also employ Human GM's in the Bot Hunter role but they were later fired when Activision took over.

Don't believe Activision. Like New Blizzard, which they now own, they are very bad at banning bots intentionally. See, bots pay subscriptions or buy items, w/e, and any for-profit company earns more money by keeping Botters around indefinitely or at least for as long as possible before they get banned.

What we have here is a publicity stunt. The situation will get back to normal when the programmers who write the code for the bots cheaters use update their bots with new code to make it undetectable by Activision.

This situation has been going on for years on Blizzard WoW servers and the Botters and the ppl who write the code for the bots always win. See above.

Bots who go unchecked by Activision-Blizzard have literally destroyed the in-game economy on many Classic WoW servers. I don't play Retail WoW so I am not sure what is going on there.
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I think what people dont understand is that these companies created the botting problem by creating the Pay to Win mechanic. They wanted to pay wall items or make some items obscenely difficult to obtain. So, because there are only so many hours in a day, bots became the preferred method to obtain things.

Bots will always be there, but bad game mechanics and business practices is what fuels most of them
 
ZedRM said:
That took long enough.. Good for Activision and legit players! Hopefully that AI will not start to ban legit users..
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It already has, but since everyone banned is guilty until proven innocent, that little problem will go unfixed, likely for a long time.
 
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