A tougher anti-cheat stance

Call of Duty's fight against cheaters escalated in 2026. The Ricochet Anti-Cheat Season 4 update, detailed on the official Call of Duty blog on June 4, 2026, rolled out Microsoft Azure Attestation enforcement, meaning PC players must have TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot enabled to access competitive playlists. It is one of the more aggressive hardware-level requirements the series has imposed.

The goal is to raise the barrier for cheat software by verifying system integrity before letting players into ranked and competitive modes.

How it works

The new system has real teeth and real friction:

Players who fail attestation are shunted into separate matchmaking pools, restricted to Nuketown 24/7 in Black Ops 7 and Battle Royale Casual in Warzone.
Verification happens remotely via trusted Microsoft servers rather than local checks.
Enhanced detection now targets scripted-input and cheat hardware by name, including Cronus Zen and XIM Matrix.
Activision says nearly two-thirds of players temporarily banned for such devices stopped using them after returning.
Some AMD users on certain TPM software versions may need BIOS or firmware updates, and a single non-compliant party member can cause the whole party to fail attestation.

The trade-offs

The approach reflects a clear philosophy: make cheating harder by requiring a verified, secure hardware baseline. Segregating non-compliant players rather than outright blocking them is a pragmatic middle ground, letting people still play casual modes while reserving competitive integrity for verified systems.

The cost is friction for legitimate players. Requiring TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot can trip up users with older or unusually configured systems, and the party-wide failure condition means one friend's misconfiguration can sideline an entire group. The need for BIOS or firmware updates on some AMD setups adds another hurdle for players who just want to jump into a match.

Targeting cheat hardware like Cronus Zen and XIM Matrix by name is notable, since those devices sit in a gray area between accessibility tools and cheating aids. Activision's claim that most temporarily banned users abandoned the devices suggests the deterrent is working, at least in part.

Anti-cheat remains an arms race, and Ricochet's hardware-attestation push is a meaningful escalation. Whether it meaningfully cleans up competitive lobbies without alienating too many legitimate players will determine if the aggressive approach pays off.