Gaming.
In focus.

Wallhacks have traditionally worked because a multiplayer game client can receive location information for opponents even when those opponents are hidden behind walls, terrain, smoke, or other objects. Cheat software can then read that information and expose positions the player was never supposed to know.

DON’T SEND THE CHEAT THE INFORMATION

Modern Warfare 4 is taking a different approach with a technology called server culling. Instead of relying only on the game client to hide an opponent, the server can determine when a player has no legitimate way to know where that opponent is and withhold the opponent’s location data entirely.

The maps use additional occlusion information to help the server decide when an enemy should remain unknown. The location data is then delivered when that opponent becomes legitimately visible. The idea is straightforward: wallhack software cannot reveal positional information that never reached the computer in the first place.

BUILT AROUND FAIR PLAY

For legitimate players, the goal is for matches to behave normally while creating a much larger technical obstacle for wallhack developers. It also represents a different style of anti-cheat defense: reducing the sensitive information available to cheating software rather than simply trying to detect every possible wallhack after it is running.

RICOCHET remains a layered anti-cheat initiative, so server culling is not being presented as a single solution to every form of cheating. Call of Duty’s security work also includes server-side detections, PC protections, investigations, account and hardware enforcement, and other in-game mitigations.

WHAT COMES NEXT

The effectiveness of the system will become clearer once Modern Warfare 4 is in players’ hands and cheat developers begin testing against it. For now, server culling is an interesting example of developers redesigning the flow of multiplayer information itself to make one of gaming’s most frustrating cheats harder to use.