Call of Duty: Black Ops 7’s release is a just under two months away and it’s beta is about two weeks away. This is a pivotal moment in time for the franchise. Black Ops 6 did a great job generating pre-launch and immediate-post launch hype, but excitement died down fast; largely due to over-the-top cosmetics and terrible map design.
Beyond BO6’s hype falling off fast, the reveal of Black Ops 7 has become the most poorly received Call of Duty reveal since Infinite Warfare all the way back in 2016, nearly a full decade ago. The initial showing of Black Ops 7 did not get people excited in the way that Activision and the developers would’ve been hoping it would.
Add on top of all of that the looming threat of what appears to be a genuinely good Battlefield game, and it’s fair to say COD may be in a little bit of a crisis mode right now. Fans need to see something the Call of Duty franchise hasn’t shown in a while- real, significant effort to improve the core experience of the games.
One major problem Call of Duty has dealt with since the implementation of cross play and Warzone with MW2019 is cheaters. Cheating has been out of control in Call of Duty for a while with fans questioning whether the game’s proprietary anti-cheat RICOCHET was actually doing anything at all. Ahead of Black Ops 7, Team Ricochet has some updates that could help improve its ability to actually stop cheaters.
In the Black Ops 7 beta, Ricochet will require the Windows settings options of TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot to be active in order to play. In addition to these two settings being required, they mention that a brand new updated form of Ricochet will becoming with the full release of Black Ops 7, though they don’t provide much information about why exactly it’s better. That does make sense since they don’t want cheaters to have two months advance on figuring out exactly how to beat their new defenses.
https://t.co/eqzmFsnF6U
— Call of Duty Updates (@CODUpdates) September 22, 2025
Fan Response To These Announcements
As mentioned in the intro, fans have been fed up with cheaters in COD for years at this point and very few have any respect or hope for RICOCHET and it’s ability to effectively stop cheaters. Fan response to the announcement of these RICOCHET updates is mostly negative, but mixed overall. Many just simply have no faith in the anti-cheat software being effective.
A bunch of words that mean nothing. Ricochet is bypassed by ChatGPT level developers. It’s honestly embarrassing how you guys keep acting like Ricochet is some major player in the anti-cheat market.
PLENTY of cheats already bypass secure boot and tpm 2.0. Constantly lying
— Eric (@CreatedByEric) September 22, 2025
Cheating in Call of Duty esports is not a very common thing, but it has happened. There was a case a couple of years back of the player JIMBO being caught cheating in the middle of Challengers Champs.
While cheating in actual high-level amateur play or pro play is extremely rare, what’s not rare is the amount of cheating in ranked play. Cheaters have ran rampant in Call of Duty ranked play for years now and completely ruined the experience for many players.
Even though ranked play isn’t the same as pro play, it is the first step for almost anyone who one day becomes a pro in their journey towards reaching that status. It would be a shame if cheaters in ranked play caused players with great potential to quit the game because it wasn’t fun.
Players will have to wait and see if the Ricochet changes actually do anything, but if they do, it would be a huge benefit for competitive Call of Duty’s future.