Vikkstar is a content creator with over 7 million fans on YouTube, where he recently made a channel ad: He’s leaving Call of Duty: Warzone. The Battle Royale game, he says, “is in the worst state ever,” to the point that cheaters sometimes feel confident to broadcast their antics live.
It is remarkable because War zone performs well for him on YouTube and also won tournaments. But apparently, the saturation of people who use tools like targeting botters is so bad that playing War zone it became “painful”, he says during the video. The footage then shows a match in which he plays against a cheater. Although he says it is possible that he will return to the game if a major update occurs, he is not the only personality currently complaining about the state of the game.
The problem seems to be more common on the PC, which is why content creators like Jackfrags are currently asking viewers to turn off the cross game. That way, fans who play on consoles do not need to be overwhelmed with potential hackers running illicit programs. The game will actively encourage you to continue, sometimes asking you several times if you are sure you don’t want to cross-play.
Activision seems to be well aware of the problem, recently announcing a War zone ban on 60,000 cheaters. (Activision did not immediately respond to the press.)
“We have zero tolerance for cheaters,” says a blog post detailing the publisher’s actions against anyone who breaks the rules. In the post, Activision promises to “increase our efforts” against cheaters, improving its anti-cheat software, adding detection technology and dedicating more resources to monitor the state of the game.
“We know that cheaters are constantly on the lookout for vulnerabilities and we continue to dedicate resources 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to identify and combat fraud, including aimbots, wallhacks, coaches, stat hacks, texture hacks, leaderboard hacks, injectors, hex editors and any third party software that is used to manipulate game data or memory, ”continues the post.
Bane waves have surfaced periodically, with the developer clearing thousands and thousands of accounts – sometimes even forcing hackers to play against each other. A cheater was even pressured to apologize to the community for causing “pain”. But despite these efforts, the problem appears to remain persistent enough for content creators to resolve the problem on their own.