Activision has announced a new anti-cheat measure for Call of Duty: Vanguard that is certain to frustrate cheaters and give everyone else a hearty laugh.
The company announced in a blog post that a fresh feature called “cloaking” will serve as a hilarious method of exposing and punishing cheaters by rendering them unable to see other players in matches. Everyone else in the match can still see the cheater, though, allowing them an opportunity to dish out plenty of in-game punishment on the helpless scoundrel. Providing the community a chance to get payback against ne’er-do-wells is an interesting move and one that is certain to result in some great fun.
In addition to cloaking, Activision also shared that “any security enforcement that results in a ban to a player will be reflected in the leaderboard for each title.” In other words, anyone caught cheating will be removed and unable to place on the global leaderboards, solving the frustrations many players had with cheaters occupying top-ranking spots.
The post also pointed out that another 54,000 additional accounts have been banned for cheating — news that comes on the heels of another recent ban wave that found and removed over 90,000 accounts. Activision hopes this crackdown lets players know that it is taking things seriously, but the company has asked that players continue to make use of the game’s reporting system, calling the information “invaluable” in the ongoing battle against those who wish to ruin games for everyone else.
These anticheat measures are now available for Call of Duty: Vanguard, and Activision has stated that they will come to Warzone following “a period of examining how these updates are functioning.”
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.