https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-04-18-call-of-duty-warzone-console-players-are-turning-off-crossplay-to-escape-pc-cheaters

 " Cheating is an increasing issue for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare across both traditional multiplayer and Warzone, but it feels pronounced in the battle royale mode. This week, developer Infinity Ward said it had issued over 70,000 bans worldwide to protect Warzone from cheaters. "We are watching. We have zero tolerance for cheaters," the studio tweeted.

However, players continue to complain about cheaters who are able to automatically hit enemy heads, shoot through walls and play without recoil, among other prohibited abilities. The various Call of Duty subreddits are packed with clips of cheaters exposed via Modern Warfare's killcam and Warzone's spectate mode.

Traditionally, competitive multiplayer cheating is more of a PC problem than it is a console problem, due to the difficulty in running console games with cheats enabled. But console players are running up against PC cheaters because of Modern Warfare's crossplay feature.

Crossplay is of course wonderful for any multiplayer game, Call of Duty included, because it means friends can play together across platforms, and larger player pools mean quick matchmaking, full lobbies and low latency matches.

However, a negative side effect of crossplay in Call of Duty is console players are exposed to PC cheaters - and as a temporary fix, console players are turning off crossplay to stamp it out.

Most Call of Duty players are of course legitimate players, but it only takes one cheater to spoil a game session. It can be incredibly frustrating to die to a Warzone hacker after spending 45 minutes soldiering towards the final circle.

What else could Activision do to prevent Call of Duty hacking? Some have called on Activision to require PC players link their account to a phone number (Counter-Strike offers this as a free option for prime matchmaking), thus putting off cheaters. Some console players have called for console-only crossplay, allowing PS4 and Xbox One players to play together without PC players."

https://youtu.be/SG-PV2pKpvo

I kinda feel bad for shooters in general. They are by design easy to cheat in, so it will always be an issue.

I feel blessed to play Rocket League, where it is impossible to cheat by design.

Personally I have only had 1 or 2 games since the launch of Codmw where I suspected the person was hacking and I play only on PC. I have actually been called a hacker a few times even though I never cheat/hack.

The key difference with me though is that I don't play Cod Warzone and instead, only focus on regular multiplayer. The problem with WarZone is that it's Free to Play vs regular mode which is locked behind a owning the full game... So a game that's free is gonna have a ton more cheaters, specially since there's not much of a consequence if they get banned.

It's good IW is doing something, but I'd like to know what constitutes a ban, and how easy it may be to circumvent. And regarding those who cheat in video games instead of simply engaging in a friendly, or ever hostile, competition on a level playing field:

Sad little monkeys. And kinda scummy.

Achievement/Trophy cheats too.

I've been playing CoD since the very first game and the MP religiously up from Modern Warfare (2007) to Black Ops 3 and I can tell you that people accuse practically every one of being a hacker or cheater. I could probably start up Modern Warfare (2019) right now and play a dozen matches and probably get a handful of cheater/hacker accusations.


Anyway, cheating has always been a thing in CoD (and probably most FPS games). Activision/Infinity Ward won't be able to catch them all. At least they included the ability to disable cross-play as I'm sure if there is a high amount of cheaters in the game, most of them are coming from the PC side of things.

I've rarely come across a cheater in a game, save for a recent one in Battlefront II, but they were banned soon enough, when we filed numerous reports against that person.

I still remember my days when people used lag switches, back in the MW2 days on 360. 

Pretty much. The whole PC = Hackers everywhere thing is overblown imo otherwise people wouldn't be playing many online games on PC. Yet we have things like CSGO, LoL, Dota 2 and tons of other online games reaching new peaks. It is there and it is a thing but most matches shouldn't have cheaters at all and the ones that do... Report and Start a new match.

I'm actually glad we've got some semblance here, because hoo boy, looking at ResetEra's thread on the article, yipes, that don't look civil at all. 

I too think it's quite overblown. I've played many a game on PC, and I've only run into a cheater only 3 times within the past 4 years. It also helps that I don't play games like CoD, or BR games, where cheaters likely hail from, because those types of games are both popular and ultra competitive, which becomes a breeding ground for toxicity and hostility. 

Exactly spot on about the reaching new heights part. We've also got other games out there with far better anti-cheat systems, while Activision is doing nothing about their situation. People should honestly be wringing Acti's neck for this, not the complete ousting of an entire platform, as well as accusing an entire platform being filled with nothing but cheaters.

Btw, page 1-3 is where it starts to hit the fan: https://www.resetera.com/threads/cod-warzone-console-players-are-turning-off-cross-play-to-escape-pc-cheaters-eurogamer.187461/ Just in case you wanna see how things break down for a few users (that site is definitely clueless on this subject, as well as PC gaming in general, so the hostility doesn't surprise me in the slightest, though it does make me cringe). 

This is the reason my brother stopped playing online shooters on PC. He said the amount of cheaters is staggering.

Sounds about right. Was one of the first things that came to mind when cross play started becoming more accepted. Gotta have the game set up so every ecosystem/brand is an option to add or remove. Turning off cross play was one of the first things I did for this game.