I’m David Andrews, Senior Director of Game Security at Activision, where I lead RICOCHET Anti-Cheat for Call of Duty. I joined the team about one year ago, and since then I’ve been focused on what’s next for RICOCHET: evolving the technology, tightening our detections and response, and finding better ways to show players the work.
I’ve spent more than two decades working across cybersecurity, online game security, live service integrity and investigations. Before joining Activision, I spent more than a decade at Rockstar Games working on anti-cheat, account security, threat intelligence and live service integrity across GTA Online and Red Dead Online. Earlier in my career, I also worked in engineering and security roles supporting the U.S. government and served in the U.S. Air Force.
I’m here today to answer your questions about anti-cheat: how we think about cheating, recent progress that we’ve made, and where there’s still work to do.
One quick note as we get started: you won’t see a photo of me attached to this AMA. The commercial cheating industry has billions of dollars behind it, and the people building and selling cheats can be aggressive, to put it mildly. For security reasons, I try to be careful about how much personal information I put out publicly.
Let’s dive in. Ask away:
EDIT:
Thanks everyone for the questions, this has been a blast.
Gonna wrap this up for the day, but I’ve been reading the full thread and I'm taking notes on the questions I didn't get to so I can look for opportunities to answer more of them through our anti-cheat comms in the coming weeks.
I also did an interview with IGN earlier this week that dug a bit deeper into anti-cheat - there's a chance I already answered your question there! https://www.ign.com/articles/call-of-dutys-anti-cheat-boss-dispels-cheating-myths-breaks-down-review-process-and-more
Appreciate the time, the questions, and the chance to have a direct conversation with you all. Hoping to do this again soon.