Infinity Ward released their first-ever Battle Royale game mode in the Call of Duty series on March 10th. We bet you’ve heard of it; it’s called Warzone. Shortly after that, the world went into a lockdown due to the coronavirus, and Warzone has quickly grown into one of the most popular ways for millions of people to pass the time. It rivals Fortnite in its gameplay format, but brings Call of Duty weaponry and environmental settings to the table instead of the cartoonish, fictional world setup in Fortnite.
As the popularity of Warzone has grown exponentially, so have the growing pains. The game has seen an increased number of hackers made possible by the crossplay functionality between PC, Xbox and Playstation systems. Many players have stopped playing out of frustration, specifically due to the increased number of hackers coming from non-console users. Infinity Ward has not managed to develop a great solution to the problem, despite implementing some creative ideas.
Their recent idea was to only match hackers with hackers, so they can just hack away at each other. Conceptually, a pretty good idea, but in execution, much more complicated and hardly sufficient. First off, it requires that they accurately determine who is a hacker and who isn’t? The company defines a hacker as “a player that receives excessive cheating reports and have had exceptional results.”
Well…
There are people who are just good at the game, who will be dubbed as hackers because of how easily they are running through competition, which could lead to a frustrated group of lesser players to simply label a player or a team “hackers” who in reality is winning fairly. Then that person, or those people, get penalized. That of course is happening because the reporting system is extremely flawed. Many pro-gamers have complained to Infinity Ward about being put into “hacker rooms” when they do not belong there.
Overall the game has been a huge success, but this hiccup could prove a challenge to its longevity. Infinity Ward has to take further measures to limit the problem before more users get put off.
