Déjà vu is a hell of a drug, because the company behind Call of Duty and its anti-cheat system says it’s cracking down once more on hackers and cheaters. Modern Warfare 4 is launching in a few months on Oct. 23, but Activision says it’s once again upping the ante in the never-ending battle against cheat providers who ruin the experience for players across a variety of CoD titles. Image via Activision In a new RICOCHET Anti-Cheat update today, Activision said “hardware bans just got stronger,” meaning that “if you cheat, returning to Call of Duty just became significantly harder” since your actual PC won’t be able to run any CoD game, it said. “Call of Duty is built for competition and fun,” Activision said today. “Winning should come down to mastery, teamwork, and creating moments, not downloading cheats. From now through season one of MW4, we’re committing to weekly RICOCHET Anti-Cheat updates. Each week, we’ll share new detections, enforcement actions, and the work Team RICOCHET is doing to make Call of Duty a harder place to cheat.” With the news, Activision said that 70,000 new system bans were issued today alone, and those systems are now fully locked out of playing CoD, meaning “the easiest way for repeat cheaters to return has been disrupted.” Most cheaters make accounts to play games like Warzone or Black Ops 7, but once the account is banned, they come back on a new one. Banning the hardware behind the account aims at slowing the cheaters’ attempts, if not ending them entirely. Although nothing is ever flawless, this should make things more difficult for the worst offenders to continue being an annoyance, in theory. RICOCHET will undoubtedly be tested once again when the MW4 beta begins in a few weeks, but the hope is that these stricter hardware bans will weed out potential bad actors from ruining the fun when the full game launches in the fall.0The post Activision promises ‘stronger’ hardware bans in Call of Duty, with weekly updates on progress vs. cheaters appeared first on Destructoid.