Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is the 2024 entry in the series, co-developed by Treyarch and Raven Software and released on October 25, 2024. It is an early-1990s spy thriller with a campaign, multiplayer, and round-based Zombies, and it introduced Omnimovement, which lets players sprint, dive, and slide in any direction. It runs on the shared IW EngineEngineIW Engine (Activision / Infinity Ward)The IW Engine is Activision's proprietary engine line for the Call of Duty franchise, originally derived from id Tech and substantially rewritten across iterations. Modern Call of Duty titles run on IW 9.0 and its successors.8 games in this family → lineage. It launched on Battle.net, Steam, the Xbox app, PlayStation 5 and 4, and Xbox Series X|S and One, and day one on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. Warzone integrated into it with Season 01 on November 14, 2024, and moved to Black Ops 7 on December 4, 2025.

Going by ActivisionPublisherActivisionActivision is the publisher of the Call of Duty franchise. Since 2021 the Call of Duty competitive experience has been protected by RICOCHET, Activision's in-house kernel-mode anti-cheat.8 games in this family →'s current requirements list, Black Ops 6 is the most recent Call of Duty that runs without TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot, though RICOCHETAnti-cheatActivision RICOCHETRICOCHET is Activision's in-house kernel-mode anti-cheat, deployed across the Call of Duty franchise since 2021. The kernel driver loads while a protected Call of Duty title is running. Since the Black Ops 7 beta in October 2025, Activision has also required TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot for Black Ops 7, for Warzone since December 4, 2025, and for Modern Warfare 4, checking the settings by attestation against Microsoft Azure servers; earlier titles are not named in that requirement, so this guide records the ask on each title rather than on RICOCHET as a whole.8 games in this family →'s kernel driver still loads whenever the game runs. Warzone no longer lives on this client: it moved to Black Ops 7 and carries that game's firmware requirement, so the two footprints are not the same, and since July 7, 2026 they no longer share a launcher. If an in-game notice tells you TPM or Secure Boot is off, it is information, not a block, in this game.

On PC, Black Ops 6 is protected by RICOCHET, whose kernel-level driver Activision says turns on when you start the game and shuts down when you exit; the game launched with an updated version of that driver. Black Ops 6 does not require TPM 2.0 or Secure Boot. In August 2025 Activision switched both checks on in the background and showed in-game notices to PCs without them, but said it would not enforce them during that season, and its current requirements list names Black Ops 7, Warzone, and Modern Warfare 4, not Black Ops 6. Activision also says a phone number linked to your account may be required to play. Since July 7, 2026 it installs and launches as a standalone game, outside the shared Call of Duty HQ launcher, cod.exe.

Black Ops 6 launched eight days after a public RICOCHET false-ban episode. On October 17, 2024, Activision said it had disabled a workaround in Modern Warfare III and Warzone that "impacted a small number of legitimate player accounts" and restored them; on November 7, TechCrunch reported a hacker's claim that a whisper containing a detection string such as "Trigger Bot" had banned "thousands upon thousands" of players; Activision did not respond to TechCrunch's request for comment. Activision's own launch report said its beta detections "came in a little hot" on the first weekend, and in December 2024 it wrote that it "did not hit the mark" integrating RICOCHET at the Season 01 launch, particularly for Ranked Play. The record also shows what followed: the August 2025 groundwork for the firmware requirement that Black Ops 7 would make mandatory.