Infinite Warfare's new Proteus rifle accidentally included an aimbot

If you found yourself being unexpectedly and repeatedly smoked in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare online combat over the past day or so, you can blame the new Proteus rifle that was added in the June 27 update. It's sniper rifle/shotgun hybrid that enables the user to select highly-concentrated long-range fire or a heavy up-close punch as the situation warrants. It also, for a brief while, came with its very own built-in aimbot that enabled shooters to kill up to three enemies at once, just by pointing it in their general direction. 

The video above, via PCGamesN, clearly illustrates how the Proteus worked when it went live, which is absolutely not how it was supposed to work. As you'd expect, users of the Infinite Warfare subreddit, and the Call of Duty and Steam forums, were less than happy with the development. It's the sort of thing that's fun for a few minutes, but quickly stops being fun once it becomes clear that everyone's doing it, and nobody's going to stop.   

Fortunately, Infinity Ward quickly took notice of the problem and issued an update, including patch notes that are almost comically understated: "Fixed an issue with the sniper mode of the Proteus having Target Assist enabled." It sounds so innocuous, doesn't it? 

Naturally, some players aren't happy now that it's no longer a point-and-click murder stick: Redditors in this thread are calling on Infinity Ward to bring it back, or create a can't-miss weapon in the same mold, for use in custom game modes.