Competitive Call Of Duty: Warzone players are cheating their way into bot matches
A new exploit promises easy pickings for high-skilled players.
A Call Of Duty: Warzone exploit may be letting players fudge their way into matches filled with bots and newbies.
Not long after a third-party app was reportedly letting Warzone players skew matchmaking in their favour, a new Call Of Duty YouTuber Drift0r claims that a new cheat is letting a small group of competitive players ditch it entirely, guaranteeing spots in matches filled with low-skilled players.
While he doesn't explain how the exploit works for fear of adding fuel to the fire, Drift0r claims he was able to get into games filled with AI-controlled opponents "about two-thirds of the time". The remaining third may contain more actual human players, but they're likely to be new players, with average K/D ratios skewing as low as 0.72 in some games.
"You’re not just removing skill-based matchmaking, but you’re actually going the other way, way back down into low K/D territory and getting very easy first time players that have no idea what’s going on."
Despite this, Drift0r does note that his team came across other unusually high-skilled players in these lobbies, likely abusing the same exploit. But while he accepts this must seem tempting to folks who want some easy games to stomp around in, the result of this exploit becoming widespread is ultimately damaging—low-skilled lobbies comprised of equal parts new players and "really sweaty tryhards".
"It's not gonna be fun for the content creators because they're going to have to actually fight other content creators equally sweaty as themselves, and it's not gonna be fun for the [low skilled players] caught in the middle."
Having been sent various versions of the cheat by other competitive players, Drift0r notified Activision before publishing his video. Hopefully, the problem will be sorted before it becomes the game-ruining issue the YouTuber reckons it may become.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Even if this one issue is sorted, it won't resolve the increasingly polarised subject of skill-based matchmaking in the Call Of Duty space. As this exploit proves, some folks will go to any lengths to make sure they don't have to try too hard to bump up their Warzone stats.
20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time, and she's not stopped thinking about games since. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, she comes from three years of freelance reporting at Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, VG247 and more. Embedded in the European indie scene and a part-time game developer herself, Nat is always looking for a new curiosity to scream about—whether it's the next best indie darling, or simply someone modding a Scotmid into Black Mesa. She also unofficially appears in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.