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A cheating scandal has hit the competitive Call of Duty: Warzone scene, leading to a team being banned from the £180,000 ($250,000) Twitch Rivals Doritos Bowl Warzone event on January 21.
A trios team comprising of players METZY_B, krypric_j0ker and Unifyz have been disqualified from the competition after cheating allegations were made by a number of veteran Warzone competitors.
The official Twitch Rivals Twitter account posted an update on the issue on January 22, saying that they had removed METZY_B’s team from the event as he was ruled to be cheating.
During the Twitch Rivals: Doritos Bowl ft. Call of Duty Warzone Final, Metzy_B was ruled to be cheating. As a result his team was removed from the event.
We take Twitch Rivals Player Conduct extremely seriously. We will continue to investigate any allegations of cheating.
— Twitch Rivals (@TwitchRivals) January 22, 2021
Amongst the people that investigated the claims was a high profile 100 Thieves Warzone player, Tommey. Footage of him commentating on METZY_B gameplay was posted to Dextero’s Twitch account, where Tommey claimed he had caught the cheating in “in 4K”
"I caught you in 4K!"
Absolute scenes right now as @Tommey goes over #Warzone footage with the alleged Twitch Rivals cheater
pic.twitter.com/WaoVdVUDL0
— DEXERTO Call of Duty (@DexertoIntel) January 22, 2021
As METZY_B plays with a Pad on PC, some auto aim is to be expected, but those who were analysing the footage had determined it was too strong and accurate.
Many players and viewers contacted the event runners, and the team in question were eliminated. As reported by Dextero the event host Caleb ‘WavePunk’ Simmons explained that “Based on the evidence submitted from various sources in and out of the tournament, [Twitch has] determined that [their] gameplay was unnatural beyond a reasonable doubt”.
Since the tournament has finished, Tommey has retracted his claims about METZY’s alleged cheating in a series of tweets, saying that “there just wasn’t enough to go by to give my opinion”
I apologise for that, which’ll mean very little to a lot of you and I know that. I didn’t want to take it any further but nobody else seemed to care (bar one or two) and he asked if I’d talk to him so he can prove he was clean, which he did.
— Tommey (@Tommey) January 22, 2021
As a measure of goodwill, he has also said that METZY is more than welcome to take his tournament earnings from those that Tommey made, but hasted to add that he “didn’t get him kicked from the tournament” and that the reports were from people other than him.
I didn’t get him kicked from the tournament, I didn’t report him or do anything of the sort. After he was reported I posted a clip from my chat. He is more than welcome to take my earnings from this.
— Tommey (@Tommey) January 22, 2021
Overall the response to the event and the allegations of cheating has been fairly negative, due to repeated claims that the game does not have robust enough anti-cheat measures for tournaments. FaZe’s Nickmercs took to twitter to say that he felt Warzone Tournaments “just aren’t possible anymore.”
Unfortunately without anti-cheat, authentic Warzone tournaments just aren’t possible anymore. We learned a lot from those Gauntlets & I’ve been tellin’ y’all.. There’s too much cheese & way too many rats. Bob & weave baby.
— FaZe Nickmercs (@NICKMERCS) January 22, 2021
Warzone has had issues with cheating in the past. Back in October 2020, Activision banned 20,000 accounts for using the cheat program EngineOwning, which was the latest of a number of similar ban waves that had been taking place since last April.
Beyond this, other players have reported being ‘shadowbanned’ despite not cheating, which has seen players but in a ‘cheaters bracket’ with queue times of over 15 minutes to play in matches against legitimate cheaters.
Recently Call of Duty’s long serving character “Soap” McTavaish was leaked as an upcoming operator for both Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops Cold War.
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