Does Modern Warfare 3 have an Anti-Cheat on PC?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is officially playable on PC, and players are experiencing the game’s multiplayer for the first time. However, before some players really decide to sink their teeth into Modern Warfare 3, they might be curious about the game’s potential Anti-Cheat software.

Cheaters have become a notorious problem in the online video games industry, as cheat-makers have continually pumped out different programs to avoid a developer’s Anti-Cheat software. The issue has become a bigger problem in Call of Duty than in other games, especially in Warzone since it’s free-to-play. Of course, cheaters also make their way into the mainstream multiplayer title as well, and MW3 players are worried about cheaters ruining their experience in-game.

In this guide, I will go over everything we know about the Anti-Cheat software in MW3.

The PC Anti-Cheat software in Modern Warfare 3

Fortunately, MW3 does currently feature a full Anti-Cheat software for its multiplayer mode. This software is known as RICOCHET, and it’s been a part of Call of Duty since 2021.

However, over the years, Activision and RICOCHET have continued to update to combat the new hacks that cheat-makers have come up with. For MW3 specifically, an update to RICOCHET went live when the game launched on Nov. 10 that introduced a new host of protections against cheaters.

These new updates to the software will hopefully make it so very few cheaters make it through to an actual online match. The goal is to ban any cheaters before they can even create a loadout, but this isn’t always easy due to the new hacks cheat-makers continually pump out for their customers. As such, it will take more updates to RICOCHET to fully combat cheaters, which will likely arrive throughout the next year.

For now, though, we can hopefully rest easy and let RICOCHET do its job. You can also help RICOCHET out by reporting any cheaters you suspect in-game. However, it’s important you don’t report someone unless you 100% know they are cheating, as this will simply bog down the system if the player you report isn’t in fact cheating.

As far as cheating goes during the launch of MW3, I haven’t run into too many on PC. While your experience might differ, it looks like RICOCHET is at the very least doing a decent job of catching cheaters before they can cause any real harm in-game. We’ll have to wait and see if new cheats come about that force RICOCHET to deliver more updates, though.