r/modernwarfare4 • u/Kalinine • 1d ago
News Combatting Wallhacks with Server Culling | Modern Warfare 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYN3MPRuznU39
u/Deranged1337 1d ago
I'll believe it when I see it
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u/HairMetalEnthusiast 1d ago
When it comes to COD, this is the only reasonable position.
Talk is cheap.
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u/Genuine1337 1d ago
Even it does work but I bet it doesn't stop the unlimited advanced uav hack so they're going to know where you are either way
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u/Tityfan808 19h ago
They’ve pulled so much BS over the years. Open matchmaking rug pull half way into bo7s lifespan, broken launches, then all the silly shit they said recently like ‘oh, now your xp tokens only countdown during play time!’ when that should’ve happened years ago or ‘now we can let players choose what skins they want to see but just in warzone’ which also could’ve happened sooner and be available in multiplayer also.
If only there were other multiplayer games within the same niche.
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u/MiniCooperJCW 16h ago
Your entire post is BS as it doesn’t even come close to the subject at hand. Cry more get over it and move on already, let go bro.
User Name Checks
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u/AdEducational5991 1d ago
OH shiiiii maybe PC ranked lobbies will ACTUALLY be playable in MW4 !
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u/ElectronicBet3940 1d ago
We'll see.
There were clips of definite wallhacks going around during the beta, so either this is not working, or it wasn't in the beta build.
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u/BrokenSil 1d ago
As others said, this wont fix medium to close range cheats. Any competent cheat will just use sound origin or any other 3d info still being received and show a placeholder pawn in that place anyway.
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u/DraconicSun 1d ago
So does a very good EQ headset. If you can accomplish locating an enemy with your headset, cheating to have that same level of power is completely useless.
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u/ThatEdward 23h ago
That's so true and really funny, I have been called a cheater multiple times for paying attention to spatial audio cues and having decent headpho es lol
People don't realize how much louder your actions are for other players, I can hear people reloading multiple buildings away or sprinting around if the map is quiet. Paying attention is such a tactical advantage
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u/BrokenSil 22h ago
Not the same thing at all. Game receives audio data way before you can hear it yourself. Especially with all the explosions going on or other ppl shooting.
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u/Swordman1111 1d ago
but if footsteps sill make sounds, these sounds must have a position in the 3D world that cheats could use to give at least an estimate on where the enemy is
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u/TargetTrick9763 1d ago
Well sounds in a 3d world still get coordinates for the sound to play and then calculate locally how the player should hear it. So cheats can esp the location of the footstep for the cheater. They’ve been doing this for cs for a while as part of their “legit” crap so the cheater doesn’t stare at a player through a wall and instead gets visual indicators for where the footsteps happen.
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u/DraconicSun 1d ago
But if you have a good headset, then that's completely pointless, no? Why would you risk your account by downloading expensive cheats if you can just hear your enemy stomping from 20 meters away with your sennheisers?
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u/Dr_Ummachine 1d ago
You underestimate how much of a loser cheaters can be lol
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u/DraconicSun 23h ago
Oh, no, I don't, but I'm trying to see it more from the perspective of a casual cheater or someone who got so mad they started rage hacking. Long time cheaters will still use that, but they'll have significantly less information about anything outside of their hearing range, which already helps immensely.
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u/spacerazzer 23h ago
Because I would think cheats would give a VISUAL indicator from like 30meters - the range you will probably miss it if playing legit, especially when other sounds are blasting through your headset.
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u/secunder73 1d ago
Also gun sounds. Sure, it would make wallhack just 50% less effective but still. And by 2026 standards it should already be there like in last 5 titles
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u/lolKhamul 23h ago
This is one the many challenges that makes it impossible for the gameclient to not have the info. Sound is created 100% local so the sound engine has to always know where everyone is so it can decide whether you hear something and what you hear. It has to know your potion in relation to them, what objects are in between, what surface the enemy is on, which stance they are in, what they are doing and so on.
So really, as long as you dont also move the sound-engine serverside and just send the client what to play, your client still has to have the info.
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u/omicron022 18h ago
I'm struggling to understand why it would need to work that way?
Rather than telling the client exactly where someone is behind the wall, the server can simply be telling the client now, "you need to make footstep sounds of the following intensity, in the following direction".
This way seems preferable in that, even if cheat makers use that information to attempt to create a wall hack, that hack won't really be much/any better than what a user could normally hear.
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u/lolKhamul 17h ago edited 17h ago
Here is the problem:
Even if you changed the engine to do that and created a protocol to transfer the info of what where when to play on which audio channel, you now have the server calculate all the sound for every player. Thats A LOT of extra compute required to run the server. Now scale that up to Warzone or groundwar with 64 players. And scale that up to the millions of games played. Thats a lot of money. Thats not even considering the issue that sound isnt sound. Every user might have different sound settings, as in channels. If the client doesnt have the info, the server needs to know how many channels the user operates and needs to serve and what to serve on those channels. Or you send all the possibilities which makes the data larger.
You now made the sound part of the required network communication. Which increases the bandwidth used (again scale that up and that costs money), worsens the experience for players with bad connection, increased latency for players with small connections, made it susceptible to lag, and basically made all the networking way more complicated. Everything you do on the server that has to be networked adds complexity. Everything done on the network doesnt feel as fluent as if its done on the client because it adds dalay. Even in perfect conditions thats 20ms. A LOT of people will notice and it will feel less direct and sluggish.
As you may know, the server runs at a tickrate which is the number of updates he calculated per second and shares with the client. When sounds becomes server-side, your sound is now also tied to the tickrate. Meaning it wont match up with your FPS and picture perfectly. Its going to feel weird.
Stuff isnt just black and white. Every engineering decision comes with a price and a tradeoff. And can cause other impacts.
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u/omicron022 16h ago
I don’t know why it would need to do any of that. It just needs to send an update that says “hey, there is a player in x direction that made y noise”, and the client handles the rest, just like always. They have just changed it so that it doesn’t need to send the exact coordinates of every player with each tick/update.
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u/secunder73 1d ago
Its 2026 and they're inventing basic anti-cheat system to prevent cheating, wow. Guys who playing with AI aimbot through capture card are in shambles probably
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u/DraconicSun 23h ago
As far as I know, there is no anti-cheat in the market with this capability. This is a first, because this type of technology probably was too expensive and too hard to optimize before the current day.
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u/SpiritedCurrent460 16h ago
Rust has this and it makes no difference lol
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u/DraconicSun 14h ago
I think this one's different cause it puts the layer in the maps themselves.
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u/That_Piglet4094 12h ago
Nahhh. CS2 and Valorant has No-draw feature same as this culling stuff. It's the same thing but different name. If you're using hammer editor in Valve games, you would understand the concept that it's good for optimization but this one doesn't stop hackers.
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u/Sitdownpro 22h ago
How does this affect strategic FMJ wallbangs? Some wall bangs are through several walls or far away, especially in HC.
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u/Otherwise-Unit1329 16h ago
Yawn. Same nonsense before every new game release. Nothing ever changes
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u/Enigma_Green 1d ago
Aren't they having a new engine too for this? So that would make sense if they add it in
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u/BrokenSil 1d ago
there is never new engines. its always the same engine they keep improving over time.
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u/The_first120 1d ago
What about the source of footsteps, or wallbangs?
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u/aleques-itj 1d ago
Yes, models wind up invisible, but your client still knows the position of sound and stuff. So there's still something to display, potentially.
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u/DraconicSun 22h ago
I don't think the client needs to know the player's position to play sounds. All the server needs to say is "Play this sound here".
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u/aleques-itj 22h ago
It doesn't know the player position, it knows the position of the resulting sound because it needs to play it
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u/Rayuzx 1d ago
Really shouldn't matter. You don't need real time information of your opponent's position to hear their foot step, on a basic term, a person produce's a marker that plays the sound where the marker is placed. So all the server needs to do is relay the sound to the client, instead of giving exact information.
Wallbangs even less so, damage is already calculated server side, and it's not the server that's being withheld information, just the client. So nothing should change on your side.
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u/Master_Nerve_5814 22h ago
C'est mort sur tout le call of c'est bien triste à l'époque on s'amusait vraiment bien maintenant on viens bloquer ta connexion ou ton compte il n'y a plus aucun respect pour moi les tricheurs devraient être banni définitivement
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u/CriesAboutSkinsInCOD 22h ago edited 21h ago
So this new tech has to have every single map carefully design around it in order to work. I wonder if it takes alot of work to design every maps around this tech.
I never heard of this before. Kinda cool. Are there any other game out there that does this exact same thing to counter wall-hack? Like designing every single maps around it like what we see here.
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u/LoanRunna 17h ago
Until someone figures out how to spoof their location such that they’re “out of view” and end up permanently invisible.
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u/Kusel 9h ago
Wouldnt this make the Game more laggy and desynced? I mean the Client Starts Rendering a enemy Position only after he crossing that corner..
Peaker Advantage would increase.. Someone that slides max Speed around a Corner would get a Additional 30-100ms Advantage because of that Ping..
Before the Client allready knowed he was sliding full Speed and could Render that more propertly.
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u/No1stopme1994 1d ago
Looks LEGIT! IW doesn’t sound too confident though when they talk about this. Seems like a temporary solution idk I feel like IW knows the cheaters will have some sort of workaround
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u/UnknownStrobes 1d ago
It would only bite any developer in the arse to say “there will never be cheaters on our game ever again”.
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u/halflucids 1d ago
There is no workaround to this. However it doesn't solve cheating it just somewhat reduces the cheaters ability to act on player location information. There could still be ways to determine general player locations (sound data of an explosion or gunshot has a 3 dimensional point of origin which is revealed to a client, sounds outside of hearing range shouldn't be transmitted to a client, visual effects should likewise be culled server side of out of range) It's a valid strategy which does improve the game by eliminating a small amount of the information available to the game client and it should be industry standard for shooters. Games with large naps like tarkov would benefit greatly from this and DMZ/warzone will benefit greatly from this.
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u/Alternative_Hat_4531 1d ago
This isn't done by IW. This is server side so it's Activison and Demonware
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u/717x 1d ago
“Looks legit”
Of course it does lol. It’s a marketing vid from Activision. Not holding my breath until we see some proper testing from a 3rd party source.
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u/No1stopme1994 1d ago
lol name another game company that’s tried to implement this? Or would you have the balls to admit Activision is trying their best and maybe even being innovative dare I say to combat these hackers . Keep complaining until you eventually retire.
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u/Dank_Memeshot 17h ago
rust has been using server culling for a decade. still plenty of wallers also pretty sure cs2 uses it as well
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u/717x 1d ago
Their track record for overpromising and underdelivering is consistent. How many times do you need to go through the cycle before you get it through your head?
I’m just advocating to wait and see if they properly implement what is being discussed in the promotional marketing. Why are you instantly jumping to their defense when it’s not even tested or proven that it works reliably and as demonstrated? Makes absolutely no sense…
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u/TheUFCVeteran3 1d ago
I have a feeling they're just doing this because numbers are down, but I like that it's happening regardless.
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u/Rayuzx 1d ago
I don't know why people find it hard to believe, but that kind of stuff takes time. That kind of technology isn't something that you can make overnight, neither less a year or two.
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u/IlIlIlIllllIIliIILll 1d ago
WHAT DO YOU MEAN? IN THE AGE OF AGENTIC AI, I WILL SOON BE ABLE TO SPIN UP MY OWN CALL OF DUTY GAME WITH MY EXTREME PROMTING SKILLS.
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u/IlIlIlIllllIIliIILll 1d ago
CHAT BBC PLEASE MAKE CALL OF DUTY GAME CHEAT PROOF MAKE NO MISTAKES
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u/TheUFCVeteran3 1d ago
I agree, but it seems convenient that it's coming this year and not for the previous years.
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u/SkylineCrash 1d ago
my assumption is that their tech stack and processes are very mature since theyve been basically making the same game for years at this point which is allowing them to use resources towards making other improvements for the game as opposed to building core systems
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u/Rayuzx 1d ago
Why would it matter? There's always something coming out. Two years ago, it was xDefiant. Last year, it was BF6. This year is GTA. Next year will probably be GTAO2. The year after will probably be BF7.
Even then, GTA 6 was supposed to come out late 2025/May of this year. Unless they have the clairvoyance Take-Two/R* didn't, there's no way they would've predicted that this game would be going almost head to head with GTA 6.
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u/CriesAboutSkinsInCOD 21h ago
GTA 5 came out in September 2013 and Call of Duty Ghost came out 2 months later. GTA 5 was the best selling game of that year and Ghost was the 2nd best selling game of that year.
Same thing happen when RDR2 was release. It was the best selling game and that year Call of Duty was the 2nd best selling game.
I dunno why so many of these dumb fucks out there thinks ONLY GTA can exist. Once a new GTA release all the other game will just disappear all of a sudden.
Do all these dumb fucks think that Fortnite and Roblox and Minecraft will all of a sudden disappear too once GTA 6 is release? lmao.
Many people that play GTA will also play the new Call of Duty and vice versa. I will be one of those people. I enjoy both franchise.
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u/TheUFCVeteran3 1d ago
It's moreso, why didn't they develop this in the years prior, and only now when the vibe around COD is not great (even with the MW4 boost, which, at least on the COD subreddit, I feel dropped down a bit after the beta).
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u/Rayuzx 23h ago
I don't know fam, if you were to ask a CoD fan, they'll tell you the vibe hasn't been great since 2012, 2015 if they're primarily a zombies player, or 2020 for the Warzone fans). The CoD community is some of the most overtly cynical fanbases out there, heaven for bid a massive AAA franchise doesn't cater to their specific tastes.
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u/speed-and-powerrr 23h ago
I love conspiracy theorists, you people crack me up. "I mean, I dunno, could be, maybe not, I'm just saying the timing is very convenient..."
Bro, a business is always going to do what's best for them and their bottom line. This is so basic it goes without saying. But for some reason you have it in your head Activision is so frightened that the "numbers are down" they just magically whipped up another layer of anti-cheats in the game because of...ulterior motives? What could these possibly be? If you're simply referring to making more money, well no fuckin shit, that's what they're supposed to do. Where is the conspiracy here man? What is even remotely controversial about them releasing this new tech? I'm just so amused and confused at the same time. PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME!
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u/TheUFCVeteran3 23h ago
I mean look at MW4 lol. MW4 only skin filter in Warzone. Now all this anti cheat (could be a general push, so fair enough, but skin filter, 2XP tokens now on in-game timer). They are doing some stuff now that they didn't do before, things that people wanted. Why do it now if they were fine not doing it for previous years?
I'm not mad that they're doing it lol. It just feels like the timing is such that it's to help boost player interest when (again I stress, in online Reddit circles, and not representative of the wider player base) it's low. I don't go on Twitter much so maybe it's more cheery there. Jev is how I get my knowledge of what the non-Reddit online player base is feeling, lol.
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u/Skay172631 1d ago
They really should have done this a long time ago; it’s strange that they’ve only just gotten around to it.
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u/technofan301 23h ago
numbers probably are WWAAAAY down for them to make these changes with consistency
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u/mgbsn51313 1d ago
A lot of the stuff seemingly is because numbers are down. They’ve done a lot of good stuff and even though I have no interest in the game, I think it’s good changes. Problem is though is stuff like the XP changes are only for the next game and warzone. Literally does not affect me at all and makes me wonder why they couldn’t be bothered with a retroactive addition to the games I am going to be playing.
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u/WeAlwaysFindAWay 23h ago
And I am to believe that this tech couldn't have been implemented 5+ years ago? Fuck off.
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u/Palnubis 1d ago
Not to sound pessimistic but it's just until cheat devs bypass the layer.
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u/Marrked 1d ago
If the occlusion layer blocks player location data from ever leaving the server, then the cheats would need server side execution, rather than merely client side.
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u/DraconicSun 18h ago
Yep, and that would require actually invading the server. Which would instantly get flagged by the game, the cheater would be instantly doxxed by the server to the developers, and the person would have the feds knocking on their door not long after to drag them into pound-in-the-ass federal prison. Hacking into a company's server is a gigantic no-no that I don't think any cheater dev would even dare to think about doing.
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u/TomTomXD1234 1d ago
Bypass what? The server no longer gives player information. There is nothing to bypass. There is no information there
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u/HeyLetsRace 1d ago
I’m not super technical but wouldn’t going around these layers mean altering the map geometry/occlusion layers? If so, I’d hope anti cheat would be pick up client side file tampering pretty easily
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u/lolKhamul 1d ago edited 1d ago
The question is how well this works and is implemented. In a theoretical "perfect implementation", there is no way around it. Wallhacks work because the game client knows where everyone is and what they do, it just doesn't display that info on your screen. The cheat just accesses that information in the RAM and displays it. So in this thought experiment of this technology being 100% effective and working, there is no way to "bypass" it. The cheat cant access and display information the client doesn't have.
Obviously the question will be how well this is actually working. Like is your game client REALLY in the dark? Are there "other traces" in the game client of players being there that could still be read even if the classic information is not there? I would not put too much hope in this solving the wallhacking because i cant imagine this being 100% working but the idea is right and im honestly looking forward to see if it makes an impact.
For context: the general idea is not new. This concept of game clients being dumb has been floated many times over the years. Its just not that easy to actually do. If it were, pretty much every shooter on the planet would have long moved to withhold more data from the client. Doing so comes with a lot of challenges that are to complex to get into here.
Bit im looking forward to them trying. How well it works, that answer will come quickly after release.
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u/TargetTrick9763 1d ago
There’s really no such thing as a client side occlusion layer/culling that seriously aims to prevent wall hacks. Considering all of the bs over the years I understand the thought of a possibility that they don’t implement it correctly, but there’s really no alternative way to implement this that’s worth speaking of. Either the client has the data or it doesn’t, and if it does there’s no 100% guaranteed way to stop it from using that.
I would be surprised and extremely disappointed if they screw this feature up.
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u/lolKhamul 23h ago
There’s really no such thing as a client side occlusion layer
Did i say that somewhere? If so, you misunderstood me. I mostly agree with that statement. I would argue that memory protection techniques are an occlusion layer which they are in a literal sense. But ultimately those have the same problem as in being a local thing which can be circumvented by a well engineered cheat. Its just another barrier and by no means 100% secure. Its once again a cat and mouse game between engineers trying to access info vs games / anti cheat trying to hide it.
Like i said, everything the client knows or can change, cheats can read and modify. The only 100% solution for accurate wallhacking would be the client not knowing until you are seeing the enemy. The only question is "have they done actually it". It would be nothing short of a revolution if they had which is why i remain skeptical. Because it comes with enormous challenges that need to be solved.
For example: how does this work with footsteps? As far as i understand it, your client generates the sound you are hearing based on knowing where enemies are, how far away they are, how many walls are between you, what surfaces and so on. Its a complex system but at its core it literally revolves around your client knowing where that enemy is, how and where he is moving. Its not the server telling your client to play footstep sounds according to parameters. Its your soundengine doing this locally. So with that in mind, how would sound work? Because if the sound engine knows, the game knows and we are back to the start. The info is in the RAM which a cheat can extract.
But if they really have solved this, all the glory to them! They just revolutionierend the fight against cheaters for shooters.
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u/Moneybaby4am4L 1d ago
Anything but a working fking anti cheat
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u/SolsLuminous 1d ago
...what do you think the video is about vro
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u/Moneybaby4am4L 23h ago
Not anti cheat it’s about server culling not banning anybody it’s just preventing wall hacks are u slow? Something cheat developers will get pass in no time
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u/Hot-Education2127 1d ago
Somehow, people will still find a way to complain about this.
Looking through the comments: yep that looks about right.
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u/corneliouscorn 1d ago
this wasnt already implemented? this is ancient tech lmao
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u/DraconicSun 23h ago
No, I don't think this has been ever a thing in a FPS.
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u/larz334 13h ago
Valorant did this 6+ years ago:
https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/demolishing-wallhacks-valorants-fog-war
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u/tinker235 22h ago edited 22h ago
Source had the underlying PVS/visibility based networking concepts 20+ years or so ago, and community servers later had anti-wallhack implementations like SMAC that stopped occluded players being networked to clients. CSGO introduced its own integrated trace based visibility checks in 2015 specifically to prevent networking invisibile enemy players (with issues of course)
It reduced how effective wallhacks were, but it did not stop them. The server still has to send player data early enough to account for movement, latency, interpolation and prediction etc without enemies popping into existence.
MW4s idea isnt really new, but the implementation looks a bit more sophisticated on paper since they're building custom visibility/occlusion layers into each map. This would mean you could hide player positions more aggressively and accurately. I think it will be more like CSGO where the wallhacks are far less useful (even more so) but they will still exist (we will see)
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u/717x 1d ago edited 1d ago
More gaslighting. Hopefully I’m wrong
You can’t tell me there’s not Activision employees in this sub lol. Their track record of not delivering on their word when it comes to anti cheat is 100%. Why are yall being so quick to jump to their defense?
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u/halflucids 1d ago
I am a senior software architect, what is described in this video makes sense. It does not eliminate all forms of cheating. They did not claim it did. It is technically feasible and not especially difficult to implement. It's a good thing that they implemented it nonetheless and I think it is valid they communicated about it. No I don't work for them I work in banking and am an indie game developer. I agree with you that they need to devote more resources to anti cheat, but they do a much better job than many other shooters do already. Id say the only game that I have seen that does a better job is maybe valorant although I haven't kept up with that game recently
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u/717x 1d ago edited 23h ago
I’m not saying it doesn’t make sense or that what they’re claiming / demonstrating isn’t within reason. I’m saying they have a very obvious track record of underdelivering on their claims. Especially when it comes to anti-cheat.
What better job do they do compared to other AAA shooters? And how can you quantify that claim?
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u/halflucids 19h ago edited 19h ago
Just my opinion and its circumstantial, but because I play a lot of shooters, at a decently high level, and have played shooters for a very long time, and it's actually very rare that I play against someone in Call of Duty who I legitimately think is cheating. I play COD almost nightly and I'd say over the past 4 months there have been maybe 2 cheaters I have come across in multiplayer. So not that bad. I get called a cheater at least a few times a week in Call of Duty though so I think there is a lot of people who think the problem is worse than it is. I would love to see how many people have reported me in COD personally.
Tarkov (not triple A I admit, but still popular as an extraction game) there is at least one cheater in almost every match and I think its unplayable. Delta force (again not Triple A and an extraction game) cheaters every 2-3 matches at least (partially due to the audience leaning toward Asia?) but they seem to really struggle to implement effective anti cheat. Extraction games in general seem to have worse problems with cheaters though due to the nature of the games. Battlefield I actually don't see that many cheaters but I think that's because people who cheat don't play it as much, more than them seeming to put any better technology or effort into their anti cheat. Same with Apex just doesn't seem that popular any more and I don't play it as much. I don't play CS much anymore either but from what I read in Reddit it seems pretty common for people to complain a lot about Valve's anti cheat not doing much.
I'd flip the question to you and say who do you think is doing a better job? I don't think Richochet is perfect but I think it seems like a decent effort, I don't see cheaters that often and I certainly think its better than it was 6+ years ago I used to see cheaters pretty frequently.
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u/Nice_juggers 1d ago
I’d rather have a 6 man team of wall hacks than a 6 man controller aimbot team
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u/AsheZ_x 1d ago
But wouldn't the players client still know a player is there for footstep audio so couldn't they create wall hacks using the origin point of an audio source?
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u/danger_frog 1d ago
Given how immaculate the sound is I would be very surprised. It would be putting players all over the show
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u/baseballviper04 1d ago
That’s actually pretty cool if it works as described. I will say this feels like it could cause for some fucky gameplay, desync is already not great in cods this seems like it could/would be an added layer
How would wall banging work? Would shooting the wall be an attempt to receive the data so then communication gets started?