Call of Duty content creator, YouTube personality and London Royal Ravens co-owner Vikram ‘Vikkstar’ Singh Barn announced he is quitting Warzone, and revealed that only a significant update to the game can convince him to return.
Call of Duty: Warzone took the battle royale scene by storm with its release on March 10, 2020. In almost a year since its debut, the game has achieved impressive milestones including 80 million downloads alongside millions of hours watched on platforms like Twitch and YouTube.
Warzone started off strong, but has suffered from a number of issues since its release. Various game-breaking bugs and exploits, along with a rising number of cheaters, have led to more and more criticism from the game’s pro players and content creators.
The latest creator sharing their concerns is powerhouse YouTuber Vikkstar. Previously one of the game’s top players and content creators, he announced his departure from the BR and confirmed it will take a lot to bring him back.
In a recent video, Vikkstar began by explaining the decline in Warzone-based content on his channel and confirmed hackers are the reason for his move away from Verdansk. “The game is in the worst state it’s ever been,” he noted, calling out the infestation of hackers that have taken over Warzone.
“Activision really isn’t addressing how many hackers there are in the game,” he continued. Further, the streamer recounted that, while playing Warzone earlier in the day, he encountered a hacker that was streaming their gameplay – hacks and all – to more than 100 viewers on Facebook Gaming.
“They’re a Prestige 2 account with loads of hours on the game, and they’re just sat there hacking and nothing is done about it,” he pointed out. “There’s always more and more hackers,” he went on, echoing the feelings of many other creators when it comes to the large number of cheaters in the game.
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“It’s in an awful, awful state. This is sad for me,” the creator said as he looked back on his time as a competitor and host of his own Warzone tournament. He also expressed frustration with the failure to address Warzone’s cheating problems, and reiterated that “the player base of the game is now so saturated with hackers.”
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“You either laugh or you cry at how sad it is, that this is the state of a game that we used to love and grind every single day,” he went on. Vikkstar then dived into his relationship with Activision, and how he hoped this video might help to bring more attention to the cheating issues.
“Even though I’m a CoD Partner, this is a way to reach out to Activision and say ‘This needs to be addressed. Really this needs to be fixed,'” he confirmed. The creator also shared his grim outlook on the cheating situation, and warned that “it truly will be the death of the game.”
With no anti-cheat in sight, some of #Warzone's best may stop competing 😬
Top players @Symfuhny, @TylerTeeP and @jukeyz are, or have considered, taking a break from WZ tourneys — with Sym recently explaining why on stream. pic.twitter.com/oGL7OCQRpp
— Dexerto Esports (@DexertoEsports) January 29, 2021
Like Mason ‘Symfuhny’ Lanier’s recent criticisms, Vikkstar then revealed that playing with so many hackers was simply too stressful for him to continue creating content in Warzone: “Perhaps if there’s a new update to the game, we have some new stuff to cover, a new map that will bring me back, but until then it’s so painful to play.”
“Hopefully you guys appreciate me speaking up and using my platform for that, and we can kinda band together, amplify this and really put out a message to Activision and Raven,” he went on. After showing his viewers footage of the hacker streaming to Facebook, Vikkstar simply commented “What an absolute joke.”
The YouTuber is far from the first creator to voice his concerns about the state of cheating in Warzone, but as a CoD Partner and co-owner of a Call of Duty League team, Activision will likely pay close attention to his criticisms as the cheating problem in Warzone continues to grow.