Cheaters are an inevitable fact of online gaming and this very likely won’t ever change. What can change is how many cheaters there are in a playerbase, and right now there are way too many in Warzone. Players are voicing growing displeasure with the way hacking is being handled in the game, and if the situation isn’t resolved soon, we fear that the rising star of Warzone may soon plummet.
Activision has tried stepping up and managing the crisis. Over 50,000 hackers have already been banned, and an official blog post was published condemning cheaters and laying out the publisher’s plans to resolve this issue. A lot of damage has already been done, unfortunately. The highly anticipated Warzone Wednesday event, a competition hosted by popular streamer Keemstar where other popular streamers and content creators would join up in teams of three and fight to gain the most kills in different matches of Call of Duty: Warzone, was just about ruined by hackers. Most competitors were cut down early on by unkillable aimbotters and wallhackers. Several of the participating streamers called out both the hackers for ruining the game, and Activision for their perceived lax measures. Well-known streamer Ninja, who participated in Warzone Wednesday, tweeted about the sour experience. CouRage and Nadeshot are other content creators who voiced their disappointment.
— Ninja (@Ninja) April 2, 2020 These days, a lot rides on the opinions of these influencers when it comes to trendy, games-as-a-service titles in terms of marketing. Millions of players base their decisions on what game to spend time and money on based on what their favorite streamers are playing, and if hackers drive content creators towards other titles, Warzone will suffer for it. Even discounting that, people will simply grow tired of most of their matches being ruined by a hacker, so Activision needs to step up quickly and implement some strict anti-cheat measures before Warzone bleeds too many players, and ends up being eliminated from the on-going battle royale of games.
