Call of Duty RICOCHET adds TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot for Black Ops 7

What changes the moment you boot in

Black Ops 7 on PC now starts with a trust check as much as a game launch. If TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are not enabled, you are not just missing a setting, you may be blocked from the protected experience entirely, including the PC beta and the playlists tied to Call of Duty’s new security standard.

That is the daily impact for PC players: the first restart, BIOS trip, and Windows security check now matter before you even hit multiplayer. Activision is treating system integrity like part of matchmaking, which means a modern Call of Duty session begins with your machine proving it belongs there.

Why RICOCHET is adding hardware trust

RICOCHET Anti-Cheat has moved far beyond the old image of a single ban hammer. Activision describes it as a multi-layered system that uses client-side and server-side tools to detect, deter, and remove cheaters across the Call of Duty ecosystem, and the new TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot requirements are meant to strengthen that foundation.

The logic is straightforward: TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot help verify that a PC is in a trusted state from startup to gameplay. Activision says that matters because it makes it harder for tampered systems to slip into protected playlists, and because Call of Duty’s competitive space spans casual multiplayer, Ranked Play, Warzone, and esports, one loophole can ripple through the whole game.

What TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot actually mean for you

TPM 2.0 is already part of Windows 11’s security baseline, so for many players this is less about adding a strange new requirement and more about aligning Call of Duty with security settings that newer PCs already support. Secure Boot adds another layer by helping ensure only trusted software loads during startup, which is why Activision says it helps block low-level cheats before the game even gets going.

For a player, the practical question is simple: is the machine configured the way RICOCHET expects? If your system boots cleanly with TPM 2.0 active and Secure Boot turned on, you are closer to compliance. If one of those settings is off, old hardware, custom firmware tweaks, or a disabled security layer can become the reason you cannot access the mode you want.

How Activision is rolling this out

This did not arrive overnight. Call of Duty began a phased rollout of TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot with Season 05 in August 2025, then drew a harder line for Black Ops 7 by requiring both on PC for the beta. Activision later extended the requirement to Warzone as well, which shows that this is being treated as a franchise-wide security move, not a one-off launch-day hurdle.

To reduce the pain for players who need help flipping the right BIOS settings, Activision said it would provide guides and BIOS updates for the top 10 motherboard makers used by Call of Duty players. That detail matters because it shows the company knows where the friction lives: not in the idea of anti-cheat, but in the messy reality of PC hardware, firmware menus, and boards that all speak slightly different languages.

What the privacy rules really say about the kernel driver

Kernel-level anti-cheat makes a lot of PC players uneasy, and for good reason. The clearest thing Activision says here is that the RICOCHET driver only operates when a protected Call of Duty title is running, and it only monitors software that interacts with those titles.

That means the driver is not described as a constant system-wide watcher. It turns on when you launch Black Ops 7, Black Ops 6, or Call of Duty: Warzone, and it turns off when you close the game. For players who have been burned by vague anti-cheat messaging before, that is the key privacy point: the system is scoped to Call of Duty sessions, not your entire PC life after you log off.

Why the enforcement push is getting sharper

The hardware changes sit inside a much bigger anti-cheat campaign. In May 2025, Team RICOCHET said new accounts were being banned within about four matches when they cheated, and by August 2025 Activision said it had targeted 22 additional cheat developers and sellers with cease-and-desist letters while shutting down nearly 40 cheat vendors since launch.

The pressure did not stop there. Later, Activision said it had shut down over 50 cheat providers and disrupted nearly 300 reseller operations over the last year. That is the backdrop for the TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot rollout: Activision is pairing hardware trust with machine-learning detections, server-side analytics, account enforcement, boosted and teaming detection, legal pressure, and in-game mitigations.

What this means across the full Call of Duty ecosystem

RICOCHET is not just a Black Ops 7 system. Activision lists support across Black Ops 7, Black Ops 6, Warzone, Modern Warfare III, Modern Warfare II, and Vanguard, which makes it clear that the anti-cheat stack is built as a franchise security layer rather than a single-game patch.

That also helps explain why console players are part of the story. Activision says RICOCHET’s protections benefit console players too through cross-play protections and shared backend systems, so this is not just about keeping one PC lobby clean. It is about tightening the entire environment that modern Call of Duty runs on.

What you should take from it before launch

If you play on PC, the new rule set is now part of basic setup, just like graphics settings and shader installs. Check whether TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are enabled, make sure your BIOS is current, and pay attention to the guides Activision is publishing for the motherboard brands most Call of Duty players actually use.

The bigger shift is philosophical. Call of Duty is no longer treating anti-cheat as something that only reacts after a cheater appears. With RICOCHET, hardware verification, live detection, and shutdown-level privacy boundaries are now part of the same promise: if your system is clean and trusted, you get in, and if it is not, the door closes before the match starts.