It's incredibly embarrassing. We get invited to play some Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War (opens in new tab) with our buds on their consoles, and what do we do? We infect them with lice. Yep, a new Call of Duty means that once again scoundrels using hacks on PC are ruining it for everyone.
The Cold War beta is open to all at the moment, and has been extended until October 20, but this opening of the floodgates has allowed the cheaters to experiment with disruptive behavior before the game's even released. There's quite a bit of footage of hacks in action doing the rounds already, and as Eurogamer (opens in new tab)'s noted, console players are responding by turning off crossplay (opens in new tab).
The MOST blatant and ridiculous aim hack I've EVER seen in a video game 😂 from r/blackopscoldwar
Crossplay is great. It keeps populations up, improves skill-based matchmaking, breaks down arbitrary platform barriers, and it's something loads of people have passionately advocated for—especially when Sony dug its heels in—so it sucks to see it undone by the presence of a comparatively small number of killjoys. It happened in Modern Warfare (opens in new tab) as well.
Once the beta ends tomorrow, everything will be wiped clean, making it even more pointless. It's not a shortcut to progression, because there is no meaningful progression, leaderboards or any kind of glory. While no doubt frustrating, however, this will hopefully give Treyarch a better idea of what it needs to prepare for when Cold War launches on November 13.
