Call of Duty: Warzone hacking once again hits the headlines as high-profile players quit over cheating
Retreat.
Call of Duty: Warzone hacking has hit the headlines again after a glut of high-profile players quit over cheating.
The BBC reported on YouTuber Vikkstar's decision to quit Activision's free-to-play battle royale after he released a video saying Warzone was in "the worst state it has ever been".
Vikkstar, whose real name is Vikram Singh Barn, has over seven million subscribers on YouTube. His video declaring his decision to quit has been viewed over 1m times.
"Activision isn't addressing how many hackers there are in the game," Vikkstar said. He revealed he ran into a hacker who was live-streaming themselves actively hacking on Facebook Gaming. "The playerbase of the game is now so saturated with hackers, you tend to find them in every single lobby."
Vikkstar's decision to quit Warzone comes at a troubling time for the game. Prominent players have called into question Activision's supposedly ineffective anti-cheat, with some casting doubt on the viability of tournaments in which hundreds of thousands of dollars are up for grabs.
"Unfortunately without anti-cheat, authentic Warzone tournaments just aren't possible anymore," FaZe member Nicholas "NICKMERCS" Kolcheff said on Twitter recently.
Twitch streamer Jaryd "summit1g" Lazar also took to Twitter to complain about Warzone cheating, although later apologised for questioning developers' commitment to solving the problem.
Call of Duty YouTuber Drift0r, who has over 1.5 million subscribers, recently published a video titled "Hackers are KILLING Warzone! Why no anti-cheat!?" In it, Drift0r reveals he runs into hackers in the game on a regular basis.
Ever since Warzone came out in March 2020 it has faced a cheater problem, with some console players disabling crossplay with PC gamers in a bid to avoid running into hackers.
While Activision has issued bans in the past and said it has a zero tolerance for cheaters, it seems now, nearly a year after launch, Warzone is no closer to shedding its reputation as a game that has a hacking problem than it was nine months ago.
Indeed, the issue has ramped up in recent weeks, and stories hitting mainstream news websites such as the BBC put Activision under increased pressure to announce new measures designed to curb cheating.