Activision drops a year‑end anti‑cheat recap for Black Ops 7, highlighting bans, detections, and new tools used throughout 2025

As the end of 2025 draws near, everybody's social media timelines are flooded with end-of-the-year "wrapped" announcements. Activision's Team RICOCHET has one of its own this year, and it's a little different than you might expect. The anti-cheat has shared a 2025 Shutdowns Wrapped announcement that shares details on Ricochet anti-cheat efforts for the past year.

According to Team RICOCHET, more than 800,000 accounts have been permanently banned from Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and Call of Duty: Warzone due to the team's cheat mitigation and detection efforts.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's season one integration with Call of Duty: Warzone saw a flood of new hackers released into the popular first-person shooter franchise's lobbies after the game's proprietary anti-cheat system suffered from data outages and other issues.

That led Activision and the Call of Duty team to reprioritize plans for Black Ops 6's post-launch content to put more work into cheat mitigation efforts. Changes to cheat mitigation weren't just at the software level, as Activision's legal teams buckled down by sending cease and desists to disrupt the cheat business by targeting developers and resellers.

It has only been a month since Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 launched, but cheat disruption efforts are off to a strong start for this entry, as well. Activision has reported that 39 resellers have been disrupted so far, with 5 resellers and 3 primary vendors also shutting down operations to distribute Call of Duty cheats.

With the launch of Black Ops 7, Team RICOCHET would require Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 to launch the game. That cheat detection would expand to Call of Duty: Warzone with Season One integration into BO7.

Call of Duty's cheat disruptions have been widely successful due to the renewed vigor in detection, mitigation, and cessation. In the year following Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's launch, 295 resellers were disrupted in total, with 53 resellers shutting down cheat operations for good. The team also reports that 11 primary cheat vendors were also taken down.

Team RICOCHET has shared several updates on cheat disruption tactics since the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. According to reports, the new mitigation and detection tools led to a nearly cheat-free beta for BO7. The team has also been active on social media by replying to players who share videos of suspicious interactions to report when offending accounts are banned.

While the Shutdowns Wrapped is a celebration of Team RICOCHET's recent successes with anti-cheat efforts, it is not the end of the work that must be done to keep Call of Duty cheaters at bay. In the Season 1 progress report, Team RICOCHET shared additional plans to expand TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot requirements and the introduction of the Secure Attestation Wizard so that players can verify if their PCs meet the game's security and anti-cheat requirements.

"The goal is simple," wrote Team RICOCHET in a Call of Duty Blog post, "cleaner matches, faster detections, and a more secure foundation for every player."

Did the numbers surprise you, or does it feel like cheaters are still slipping through? Drop your thoughts below — especially if you’ve noticed improvements (or new problems) in Black Ops 7 this year. The anti‑cheat team says they’re making progress, but the real test is what players are experiencing in the wild.

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