After yet another stream sniping incident in Warzone, 100 Thieves star Thomas ‘Tommey’ Trewren took to Twitter, showcasing the state of the Call of Duty battle royale, as well as pleading with the developers for a better Streamer Mode.
Stream sniping has historically been a major issue in the gaming industry. A number of popular titles over the years have fallen victim as popular streamers are hunted down by viewers around the world.
In order to prevent this from happening, select games have introduced streamer-friendly modes. This provides a unique set of options to mask identity in-game. When combined with a slight stream delay, no one should ever have to deal with pesky stream snipers again. At least that’s how it works on paper.
While Warzone does have a Streamer Mode, stream sniping is still a major issue. Without actually hiding player names, the mode does little to help the biggest personalities.
Tommey has felt this frustration time and again, finally reaching his breaking point on March 14 after pleading with the developers for a big change.
This is exactly why I'm not having fun in tournaments. pic.twitter.com/cKEhm8tkny
— Tommey (@Tommey) March 14, 2021
“This is exactly why I’m not having fun in tournaments,” the former competitive CoD player tweeted alongside a clip. The video is from another group of players specifically targeting Tommey in the midst of a tournament.
“Tommey’s just been brought back,” one of them said urgently. “He’s at Fire Station.” Having kept a close eye on his stream, they were able to call out his position the moment he came back into the lobby.
“They’re in our streams calling our locations and hard playing for us as Warzone has no actual working streamer mode,” Tommey explained, before begging the devs, “Please can we have a working streamer mode in Warzone?”
Please can we have a working streamer mode in WZ, @RavenSoftware? The current one that's been in since the beginning does not work properly. It changes everyone else's name and not your own, which defeats the point of the feature in the first place.
— Tommey (@Tommey) March 14, 2021
This example is just one instance of one team trying to put an end to his tournament run. There could be dozens of players in any given day that turn Tommey’s stream on for a competitive advantage or purely just to tick him off. The same can be for all manner of popular streamers.
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With the state of Warzone’s current streamer mode, it simply doesn’t do the job, according to Tommey.
“The current one that’s been in since the beginning does not work properly. It changes everyone else’s name and not your own, which defeats the point of the feature in the first place.”
“I’d rather die to a hacker than having Jimmy and his cousins chasing me around the map,” he added.
- Read more: Why Warzone PC players dominate console fans
It wasn’t long before a number of fellow Warzone players joined the conversation. “I’m backing this,” Jukeyz replied.
“What losers, it’s like that almost every game now,” Newbz added.
You know what's crazy? This is the little kids messages to me on Twitch. pic.twitter.com/MOgs8fWNJh
— Tommey (@Tommey) March 14, 2021
Devs are yet to issue a response though a young player from the stream sniping team did.
A 13-year-old reached out through Tommey’s Twitch DMs to apologize for the behavior. “My teammates told me to stream snipe,” they said. “I just didn’t want to get dropped so I did what they said.”
Immediately feeling “bad for the little kid,” Tommey accepted the apology and moved on. The apology doesn’t change, however, that the issue of stream sniping is more common today than it’s ever been, and it’s fair for pros to demand change.