Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War players are already encountering cheaters

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War players are already encountering cheating players before the full game has even released.

As reported by our network partners at Eurogamer, the Cold War beta recently went live across consoles and PC, with cross-platform play enabled by default and, as has become increasingly common in Modern Warfare and Warzone, players are already encountering cheaters.

The issue of aimbots and similar cheats is made even more significant considering PC players can play against those on consoles – and only PS4 users can disable cross-platform matchmaking.

On Reddit, many Call of Duty players have recommended turning off cross-platform play, to avoid PC users utilising hacks for sale on third-party websites.

In April Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward pledged to operate a “zero tolerance” policy on players who use aimbots, wallhacks and similar cheats with the deployment of dedicated security updates.

It claims that over 200,000 Modern Warfare and Warzone accounts have been banned for cheating since the games released in October 2019 and March 2020 respectively.

In an attempt to curb cheating on PC, new free-to-play Warzone players have been required to authenticate their accounts using SMS. Additionally, matchmaking was updated in May to match suspected cheaters together, and report-a-player functionality was added to the killcam and spectator screens.

“Since launch, the team has banned over 200,000 accounts for cheating across #Warzone and #ModernWarfare, including a new wave this week,” Infinity Ward said earlier this month. “We are continuing to deploy additional security updates and added backend enforcement tools.”

The Black Ops Cold War beta was originally due to run until Monday, October 19 at 1PM EST, but it has now been extended to Tuesday after fans successfully completed a website ARG.

Cold War is described as “the direct sequel to the original” Black Ops. Its campaign, which is being developed by Raven Software, will take place during the 1980s and see players battle alongside Woods, Mason and Hudson in East Berlin, Vietnam, Turkey, Soviet KGB headquarters and more.