Minnesota ROKKR CoD pro Dillon ‘Attach’ Price has described competitive cheating in Black Ops Cold War as a major issue facing the professional Call of Duty scene.
With the second Call of Duty League season fast approaching, players and fans have been turning their attention to how competitive Black Ops Cold War might look.
One of the biggest changes the CDL has undergone during the off-season is the transition to playing on PC, as opposed to previous seasons that have been played exclusively on PS4.
While players are generally still using controllers, the switch to PC has seen a significant rise in the number of players cheating – or attempting to.
It has not been much of an issue at the very top levels of the esport, but Attach highlighted many players being beaten in Challengers as a result of cheating, and its repercussions for the rest of the competitive CoD scene.
Speaking to H3CZ during an episode of the Eavesdrop Podcast, the ROKKR pro and Advanced Warfare world champion said: “You just don’t know who’s legit. Everyone is like the best player in the world all of a sudden… People are coming out the woodworks and are just the best in the game. And I’m sure there are a lot of legit people doing that, but there are definitely other people who are very sketchy.”
While this mainly effects the online/amateur scene now, it poses a risk to even the professional level, as unknown players trying to rise through the ranks will have to contend with cheating suspicions. Or even, a cheater may trick their way into the upper levels of play.
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“I’ve seen hundreds of clips and played a bunch of tourneys,” he continued, “and just been like ‘alright that was a little bit weird’. Then a week or two later all those players get exposed because they were hacking… that’s what really hurting the CoD scene right now. Hopefully, there can be some kinda anti-cheat, not only for us, but for the Warzone players as well.”
H3CZ echoed Attach’s comments, stating the frustrations of some of the CDL organizations’ ownerships. He said that, given the significant financial investment being made by organizations, there should be an effective anti-cheat system in place, or else the competition reverts back to PlayStation where cheating is much harder.
Attach then went on to highlight the Challengers scene as particularly problematic. “I feel terrible for the Challengers scene,” he said. “I’ve seen so many tweets about people who have played against cheaters early on in the tournaments and lost, and that ruins their whole year for getting pro points.”
Both Attach and H3CZ’ points have been echoed by the wider CoD community, calling on a massive company like Activision to do more to protect their game from cheaters. While it was mainly affecting the casual scene in past games, the move to online competition and PC play has resulted in it spreading to the pro scene, in a way no one wants to see.