The presence of cheaters in competitive online games isn't new or surprising in any way, but the sheer amount of them in the latest Call of Duty game (Modern Warfare and its highly successful standalone Battle Royale spinoff, Warzone) is fundamentally undermining the viability of crossplay with consoles and thus the whole concept of a single, unified community.
Here are a few examples that were shared on Reddit.
Sad that crossplay has come to this...
byu/jhmlaitila inmodernwarfare
Yay got killed by more hackers! I'm on PC and advice console players to just turn off crossplay so unfair for you guys and us legit pc players! Such a good game going down the drain 🙁
byu/ig-559gabe inCODWarzone
Now, of course, console players have the chance to turn off crossplay from the in-game settings, though that might considerably lengthen the matchmaking times. Still, this doesn't bode well for crossplay in future competitive online games, which is a shame.
For its part, Infinity Ward is taking a hard stance on the issue. A week ago they've shared the following message with Call of Duty fans, revealing to have already issued over 70 thousand permabans against Warzone cheaters alone. Of course, the issue with Warzone is that players can just create a new account for free and keep playing.
We take all forms of cheating very seriously, maintaining a level and fair playing field for everyone is among our highest priorities. This is an area we have been working on heavily, but it isn’t always something we discuss publicly.
We have been enforcing account bans since Day 1 of Warzone’s release. To date (April 13), we issued more than 70,000 permabans worldwide.
- We employ a number of programs in place to combat both cheaters and cheat providers.
- Our security teams monitor 24/7 to investigate data and identify potential infractions.
- The teams review all possible cheats and hacks, this includes identifying use of aimbots, wallhacks and more.
- We’re working to improve our in-game system for reporting potential cheating. Plans are underway to streamline the UI for a more seamless reporting experience.
- For all reports that are received in-game, they are both analyzed and filtered based on key data.
- Once investigations are complete, we will continue to work as quickly as possible to ban.
Moving forward, we will aim to provide a regular count on the latest number of bans issued, as needed.
Will these cheaters put you off using crossplay?
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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