The free-to-play title Call of Duty: Warzone still hasn’t gotten a grip on its cheating problem in Season 5. Although Infinity Ward has already executed banning waves and kindly asked players not to cheat and hack, cases are once again accumulating in August 2020 where cheaters are causing trouble and frustration for honest players.
This is the situation: The free-to-play version of Call of Duty, Warzone is, like any free-to-play game, significantly exposed to the risk of being plagued by cheaters.
When a cheater is caught and their account is banned, they can simply create a new one: they practically lose nothing. The cheating problem has therefore been relevant since the beginning.
Other providers of free-to-play games rely on more or less effective anti-cheat software. Riot Games uses an aggressive anti-cheat system for Valorant: Vanguard starts up right with the PC. You didn’t even have to open Valorant to already be in contact with the program. This went too far for many and sparked protests.
Call of Duty: Warzone lacks such a present system. People are not happy about that.
If you do nothing, Warzone will die!
This was until now the peak of the cheating epidemic: In early April, there were severe complaints about cheaters in Call of Duty: Warzone. This culminated in a storm of outrage from influencers.
On April 1, Daniel “Keemstar” Keem hosted a tournament with the biggest streamers for Call of Duty. It was worth $20,000. The tournament was held in normal lobbies of CoD Warzone: the streamers were supposed to collect as many kills as possible there.
However, in the tournament, it became painfully clear that cheaters completely dominated Warzone and made normal gameplay impossible. The streamers had no chance against the cheaters. What was supposed to be a fun spectacle for Warzone turned into a debacle.
The organizer Keemstar said at the time: “CoD needs to get a grip on the problem, else Warzone will be dead in a week.”
This has been done since then: In recent weeks and months, “cheating” has been a major topic for the developers:
- In April, 70,000 cheaters were banned – a clear sign
- In May, it was said: This is now an extremely important topic for the developers and Activision. They have a team of people hunting these cheaters. However, this is a race against time
- In May players thought Warzone had the game under control, after cheaters complained about a security update, which made it harder to get back into the game
- Later, Infinity Ward introduced a “report feature” so that players could report malicious cheaters and were informed if the report led to a ban
- In June, however, we reported on MeinMMO that it costs cheaters just $2 to bypass the “toughest anti-cheat measure”
- In July, Infinity Ward released a statement saying that they do not tolerate cheating. Players should please not use software to mod or hack, it was stated. This was somewhat mocked on reddit: “If you don’t stop, we will be very angry,” someone wrote there
This is the current state: Cheaters are still a huge problem in Warzone, which is publicly discussed.
Frustration can be seen in this older video on Reddit. The video shows a hacker who apparently has grinded a lot in Call of Duty and therefore possesses the Damascus skin.
This is unusual because with a ban, all items would be gone. This means that the cheater has either been cheating for a long time and hasn’t been caught or that they started cheating because they think they won’t get caught anyway. In any case, they are risking a ban and thus their valuable account.
The voices of content creators also sound just as frustrated in recent weeks as they did in April 2020:
Streamer Jack Courage Dunlop says: He has played 12,000 games in Fortnite and encountered a cheater 3 times. In Warzone, he has played for 4 hours today and has been caught by a cheater 6 times.
On reddit, reports about the missing anti-cheat tool continue to increase even in Season 5, leading to absurd scenes. One player says their squad was killed by a group of cheaters, then they watched as they were taken out by a second group of cheaters also using aimbots and wallhacks (via reddit).
Apparently, Call of Duty: Warzone, despite many efforts, has found itself back in August 2020 where it was already in April 2020, amidst a sea of cheaters.
In free-to-play games like Warzone, cheaters have long become a part of everyday life and are accepted by many as part of the game, just like bad weather or bad food in the cafeteria. Even though people get annoyed with them, they somehow have accepted them. How to properly deal with cheaters is explained by someone who knows:
A hacker explains how you should best deal with cheaters in CoD MW & Warzone
