Call of Duty’s battle against cheaters inBlack OpsandWarzonehas been somewhat legendary. With games as popular as these, there is a whole cottage industry that thrives on making paid cheats available to thousands of players, many of whom have become very adept at skirting Activision’s anticheat.Activision has shut downCall of Dutycheat makers before, exacting hefty tolls on their businesses in order to discourage others from joining in on the practice. But this time, alongside banwaves and updates to Ricochet, it isn’t the cheatmakers who are under fire – Activision is instituting a controversial age verification mechanism for players that could have huge ramifications.
This is whereCall of Duty’s new age verification comes in. Right now, players can state that they are any age and get away with it. But just because there are no hard checks now, doesn’t mean there can’t be later. This has created something of a catch-22: underage players cannot play the game without parental consent, although an underage player can still lie about their age, but if they are later asked for proof, it could expose that they lied. While this convoluted web could trip up many teenageCoDplayers, it actually has a sneaky, double-use for targeting cheaters.
Call of Duty’s Age Verification Lays the Groundwork for Targeting Cheaters
The need to add a valid birthdate to everyCoDprofile could bring with it two potential effects. While it may be intended for legal compliance reasons, the mechanism opens the door to Activision requiring proof of age fromCoDplayers, whether through physical ID or face scans. This would tie a player’s real identity to theirCall of Dutyaccount, making it much harder for someone to be verified across multiple accounts.
Obviously, this would be a very restrictive measure, and its use to target cheaters could actually be more important than the legal side of things. Unless they had a way to spoof the system, it would be next to impossible for a cheater to provide the same ID or face scan for a new account, andActivision could even monitor knownCoDcheatersthrough this data.
Whatever New Measures Activision Introduces, Cheaters Will Try to Find a Way Around
Even if this scenario does not arise, the implementation of age verification shows thatCall of Dutyis getting serious about players adding identifiable information to their accounts, which threatens cheaters. The ability to operate somewhat anonymously is often what cheaters rely on, and hopping from account to account is often done to skirt bans. Obviously, without real proof of age, cheaters should still be able to keep doing this, but it may get some cheat makers thinking about how to innovate on ways to bypass hard checks before they arise. It isn’t too surprising to think that, as manyCall of Dutyplayers are already trying to avoid age verification, and if normal players can do it, cheaters definitely can.
This could create an arms race between Activision and cheat makers, as the former institutes more Draconian measures to manage its community, cheaters will develop tools to counter them.New cheat tools keep outpacingCall of Duty’s Ricochet anticheat, and this puts extra pressure on developers to come up with new ways of sniping cheaters that don’t harm regular players. However, if Activision runs out of viable ways to deal with cheaters, methods like age verification could be a blanket way to turn the screws on cheaters by hitting all players with the same increasing requirements. If left unchecked,CoDplayers could potentially find more barriers to entry that cheaters can walk straight through, as both cheat makers and devs try to one-up the other.
Strict Age Verification Might Be Too Controversial for Call of Duty This Time, but It Has Opened a Can of Worms
Age verification by ID has been a slightly controversial issue recently. Until now, platforms have been fairly hands-off when it came to checking players' ages. Steam is well known for asking its users to submit their age, but without a thorough mechanism, a user can tell Valve they are 18 one day, and 108 the next. Now, though, several major game publishers have ramped up in-game security through thorough age verification steps. The needs for age verification vary a lot:Robloxjust announced it will use AI to determine a player’s agein response to continued pressure from online safety advocates. In the case ofCall of Duty, the reasoning is slightly less clear, as Activision has stated the change will “deliver a positive community experience.”
It has not been confirmed that age verification methods will be made stricter yet, although more multiplayer games are now requiring more in-depth verification in 2025.
The age verification thatCoDwants has already raised concerns about privacy, and a move to a stricter, hands-on version would be likely to cause a lot of upset. Unfortunately for players concerned about their privacy, this all lines up with various newly instituted online safety laws around the world that could seeage verification become a norm on many gaming platforms. These regulations are generally intended for, unsurprisingly, online safety, but there are ways that a publisher could make use of them for other reasons. Sticking with an example used earlier in this article, a company could just as easily establish a database of identification data that could be used for more than just verification, and the thought that a cheater might want to use another person’s identity is not off the cards.
In Activision’s war against cheaters, there will always be new ways to subvert any system put in place. For now, players and cheaters alike will grumble at the changes, butCall of Dutyis still likely to be one of thebest-selling games of 2025. Doubtlessly, Activision wants to keep it this way, and rocking the boat too much seems unlikely in the near future. But it has started a conversation, and whether cheaters prepare a response to increased methods, more players than ever could be looking to unconventional methods to avoid handing over personally identifiable information.
