Call of Duty pro Matthew ‘FormaL’ Piper has explained the already notorious slide-cancel movement glitch to Dr Disrespect, stating that Dallas Empire were the only team to know about it during the early days of Modern Warfare.
Modern Warfare has seen its fair share of bugs and glitches since launch, but perhaps none have frustrated professional players as much as the ‘slide-cancel’ exploit, which gives those who use an advantage in gunfights as they remain in a sliding animation while able to fire their weapon.
While Infinity Ward are hard at work fixing their list of snags, the esports community has uncovered a controversial movement exploit which has been a hot topic of discussion of late.
Ever since Lamar ‘Accuracy’ Abedi’s Tweet triggered a debate among pros, there have been two questions on the tip of everyone’s tongue. What is the slide-cancel movement, and who was using it to “stay ahead” (as JKap pointed out)?
Dudes knew about the slide cancel (an obvious unintended movement bug) since day 1 and rather than make it public to try to get it fixed, they kept it a secret to stay ahead
— Jordan Kaplan (@JKap415) January 4, 2020
According to NY Subliners’ Dillon ‘Attach’ Price, slide-cancelling is utilized by pros to draw your weapon a fraction of a second earlier.
The Chicago Huntsmen’s main assault rifle player FormaL echoed these words when explaining the crux of the “abused mechanic” to Dr Disrespect. The 2017 World Champion explained the situation to his teammate during the January 7 Code Red tournament, saying: “You hit a bunch of buttons – like you slide and you pop up,”
“It basically makes it look like you’re still doing the slide animation, but you’re shooting mid slide animation… It’s really f**king annoying actually. Every [SMG] player is starting to do it.”
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Slide-cancelling was a prominent exploit used in Black Ops 4, which allowed SMG players to run riot in close-quarters combat and, as a by-product, the game’s entire meta revolved around it. Now, it has transpired that a similar glitch has made its way over to Modern Warfare — mere weeks before the Call of Duty League is scheduled to debut in Minnesota.
After explaining the movement quirk, FormaL added that it was Dallas Empire, a team that dominated scrims after the game’s release, who first started using it to their advantage: “You know what’s funny, Doc? The only people that knew about it for a while were Empire.”
Of course, the Dallas Empire squad are a talented bunch in their own right, with legends like James ‘Clayster’ Eubanks and Ian ‘Crimsix’ Porter guiding youngsters like Indervir ‘iLLeY’ Dhaliwal to potential greatness.
It’s no surprise that these veterans were looking for every advantage they could add to their already-impressive arsenal, but it seems that other SMG players are beginning to learn the trick and are aiming to level the playing field before CDL action begins on January 24.