Call of Duty: Warzone will now snip the parachutes of cheaters so they ‘splat’

The Call of Duty devs are always trying to stay one step ahead of cheaters to protect the experience for all of us regular non-jerky players. Their latest move to prevent cheating may just be the funniest one yet. The devs have announced an appropriately-named feature called Splat. When a cheater deploys, the system occasionally disables their parachute, sending them careening to the ground until they, well, go splat.

This was designed to call as much attention to the cheater as possible, with devs saying it’ll be “immediately obvious” who’s trying to game the system, as someone quickly descending from the sky is hard to miss. In the past, they’ve handled these cheaters privately, keeping them in the game to collect data or simply making them disappear, among other methods detailed below. The devs say this new tool is simply more “fun.”

The system doesn’t even have to flag the player as a cheater before they deploy. If caught once they reach the ground, the software will speed up the next jump to create the same effect. For instance, a simple bunny hop will turn into a 10,000-foot drop to “take them out instantly.” Like all anti-cheating measures, Splat won’t randomly turn on for normal players and it won’t activate by a report from another player. The machine learning algorithms have to spot verified shady behavior for it to kick in.

The programmers say this is just the beginning, as they’ve developed “many new tricks” that will be discussed at some point in the future. To that end, Splat is just the latest anti-cheating measure. In the past, cheaters were kept from seeing opponents or the system would clone real players to confuse them. When all else failed, the game would just take their guns away. It remains to be seen if the just-released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III will get access to this new Splat system. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/call-of-duty-warzone-will-now-snip-the-parachutes-of-cheaters-so-they-splat-181509485.html?src=rss