Esports Betting / Esports Betting News / Call of Duty Black Ops 7 anti-cheat catches 97% of cheaters within first two beta days

Call of Duty Black Ops 7 anti-cheat catches 97% of cheaters within first two beta days

Andrew Boggs

Sports Writer

Publish Date: 25/10/2025

Fact checked by: Mike McKean

Key Points

Team RICOCHET stopped 97% of detected cheaters within 30 minutes during the first two days of the Black Ops 7 beta.
Fewer than 1% of cheating attempts made it into a live match, with most removed in minutes.
By the end of the beta, 99% of matches were cheater-free with a median detection time of just three games.

Black Ops 7 Beta Anti-Cheat Results: Team RICOCHET’s Strongest Numbers Yet

You could feel it this time. Lobbies felt tighter, cleaner, fewer sketchy flicks, fewer wallbangs through nonsense cover. For the first time in years, the Call of Duty beta didn’t feel like a hack-fest.

Now we know why. According to Activision, Team RICOCHET’s anti-cheat system booted 97% of COD cheaters within 30 minutes during the first two days of the Black Ops 7 beta. Less than 1% of them even made it into a match, and by the end of the test window, 99% of matches were reportedly cheater-free.

Call of Duty Black Ops 7 anti-cheat catches

The numbers Activision put on the board

During the early access window, Activision made a rare move. It publicly dropped hard COD cheaters numbers from Team RICOCHET’s internal detection logs. The headline was big. 97% of cheating attempts shut down within the first 30 minutes of logging in.

Less than 1% of those attempts reached a live match. And even then, most were detected and booted in minutes. By the end of the beta, the broader picture looked even stronger. 99% of games didn’t feature any cheaters at all, and the median detection time had dropped to just three matches. Those aren’t just better-than-last-year stats. They’re the strongest anti-cheat numbers Activision’s ever shared during a public test.

💡 Metric	🚀 Reported Value	🔎 Context
Cheaters stopped in 30 mins	97% (first 48 hours)	Detected before they reached a single match
Cheaters who reached a match	Less than 1%	Most were banned within minutes of playing
Median detection time	3 matches	Measured across full beta window
Clean match rate (end of beta)	Nearly 99%	Highest ever reported by Team RICOCHET
Cheat vendors shut down	40+ since BO6	Marketplace crackdown alongside in-game enforcement

How RICOCHET says it worked

The Black Ops 7 beta stacked a few more cards in the anti-cheat deck than usual, especially on PC.

The key systems RICOCHET used during the beta:

Kernel-level driver still running behind the scenes
TPM 2.0 requirement: Trusted Platform Module support added a hardware-level check
Secure Boot enforcement: Ensures the system boots clean and secure before loading game files
ML-assisted detection: Machine learning models trained to spot suspicious behaviour faster
Automated enforcement: Ban decisions rolled out live and mid-match where needed

All of these combined to form a kind of double-barreled defense. First, harder for known cheat tools to even load. Second, faster flags and bans when something did slip through. Activision also pointed out that they’d been prepping players with TPM/Secure Boot guidance well before beta. If you weren’t compliant, you couldn’t launch on PC.

Cod Black Ops 7 anti-cheat catches

Still some clips, but far fewer

Let’s not pretend it was completely clean.

A few aimbot clips floated around on socials, especially during the early access days. Some players ran into what looked like wallhacks or weird silent aim during match replays. But the difference this time was speed. Activision said many of the accounts shown in those viral clips had already been banned by the time the videos made the rounds. And they claim detection improved daily throughout the test period. From experience, I only ran into one lobby that felt suspect, and it got shut down fast. For a COD beta, that’s almost unheard of.

Read the COD cheaters numbers with a clear head

There’s no denying the anti-COD cheaters results were impressive, but there are a few things worth keeping in mind before we throw a parade.

1️⃣ Detected cheaters

The 97% figure is based on detected cheaters. It doesn’t cover people who may have slipped through undetected. A handful of players might’ve slipped past the net entirely, especially early on.

2️⃣ Median = not max

A median detection time of three matches is solid. But it still means some players might get five, six, or even more games in before being flagged, depending on their cheat’s signature.

3️⃣ Kernel-level debates still exist

Some PC users are still wary of kernel-level drivers and hardware enforcement. Privacy and system integrity questions have been raised in the past, and Activision hasn’t completely eased those concerns, though it seems most players were willing to accept the trade-off for cleaner lobbies.

What it means heading into launch

This doesn’t mean cheating is gone forever. It never is.

But it does mean the launch window for Black Ops 7 should be far more playable than what we saw in earlier titles, especially Modern Warfare 2 and Cold War, where lobbies were compromised almost instantly. Fast, automated bans and tighter hardware enforcement make it harder for random script kiddies to spin up a cheat and drop into casual lobbies. It’s not bulletproof, but it raises the barrier enough to keep most matches fair.

Expect more ban waves and feature updates from Team RICOCHET as launch day approaches on Call of Duty betting sites. Activision’s made it clear they want to keep the pressure on cheat sellers and distributors too, claiming over 40 outlets have shut down since BO6.

Call of Duty Black Ops 7 anti-cheat

For better launch day lobbies, do this

Here’s what I’d recommend if you’re planning to hop into multiplayer or Zombies day one:

Make sure your PC is compliant

TPM 2.0 must be enabled in your BIOS/UEFI
Secure Boot should be on

If those aren’t set up, you’re either going to get blocked at launch or flagged unnecessarily.

Don’t ignore suspicious behaviour

Even with fast auto-detections, player reports still help. RICOCHET uses manual reports to fine-tune their detection models and investigate fringe cases. So if you see something sketchy, tap that report button. You’re not being dramatic, you're helping the system improve.

RICOCHET cod

A promising direction

We’ve all been through betas where cheating was so obvious it made you log off. This wasn’t that.

Whatever combo of hardware checks, detection speed, and vendor pressure Team RICOCHET pulled off, this beta felt playable, competitive, and more than anything… hopeful. If they can keep this same pace into full launch and Season 1, Black Ops 7 might finally hit that sweet spot where casuals aren’t rage-quitting and ranked isn’t a hacker haven. It won’t be perfect. No anti-cheat is. But if this beta was any indication, we’re finally heading in the right direction, and that’s a win worth celebrating.