While one new multiplayer games in Marvel Rivals flourishes with gamers everywhere, 2024’s largest series is struggling in the eyes of its community in the early days of 2025.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Warzone both have a serious hacking issue, and it feels worse than previous years, with cheaters able to crash lobbies and Ranked Play on console being decimated with hackers thanks to crossplay being a requirement. One of the best CoD esports pros and top personalities of all time, OpTic Scump, voiced his concerns recently as he has pivoted away from streaming the game like many other top content creators.
“Call of Duty’s just in such a bad spot right now, dude,” Scump said on his stream this morning. “I don’t think Call of Duty has ever been in a worse spot than it is right now. It’s kind of depressing, to be honest.”
“I was already concerned, like, them releasing Ranked so early, and CDL started up, and then we had like a month break from the CDL, so I was already a little bit concerned about all of that,” he continued. “Because I was like ‘okay, I don’t know, they’re kind of bustin’ all their load all over the place a little bit early.”
While BO6 delivered Ranked Play earlier than previous CoD titles, which launched the competitive ladder mode in January or February, this year’s game kicked things off in November, and the former pro considers it a possible negative.
“Ranked Play, they usually make us wait… they make us chase that carrot for like two months into the game’s release,” he said. “They dropped it so early… and it was so bad because of all the hackers.” Scump noted that Ranked Play “itself isn’t bad” and that the gameplay and systems are “fine,” but it’s been ruined by cheaters, and that’s been the game’s biggest pain point thus far after a promising launch made fun by omnimovement, Zombies, and a solid campaign.
Treyarch and Activision have said that fixes are coming for the game’s anti-cheat, but not until seasons two and three, unfortunately. Season two is still around three weeks away, and the game will need a big buff from its offerings to get some gamers like Scump back online.
The streamer did warn, though, that he was not hanging up the Scuf to stop playing CoD altogether in favor of his current favorite game, Marvel Rivals, so that’s good news for CoD fans and the game in general.
“We’re not completely straying away from CoD either,” he said. “Let’s not overreact. I’m not gonna be not playing CoD at all, we’re just gonna be switching things up a little bit more. I’m gonna be a little bit more free with what I wanna do on stream.”
Scump said that OpTic Texas star Shotzzy confirmed he’d be streaming the team’s scrimmages soon, and he would be tuning into that for the time being until BO6 turns things around. The CoD League returns from its month-long hiatus for matches this weekend on Jan. 10.
