Have Cheaters Killed Warzone as Players Head to VALORANT as Their New Playground?
Call of Duty: Warzone took the gaming world by storm. In the first week alone, 15 million players dropped into Verdansk. Initially, Warzone looked flawless, perfect gunplay and an incredibly engaging map. Streamers from all games congregated in Warzone, to see who is the ultimate battle royale champion. Tournaments such as Faze’s Fight to Fund and 100Thieves’ Warzone from Home saw all of your favourite streamers compete, adding a successful competitive edge to Warzone. However, in recent Call of Duty news, KEEMSTARS Warzone Wednesday tournament was littered with cheaters, highlighting the real flaw in this much-loved game. Cheaters. Aimbot hackers have landed, and Activision is struggling to combat it. Have they killed Warzone already?
Aimbot is like the cancer of gun-based games. Giving somebody the ultimate advantage of never missing, it ruins the game for every other player in the lobby, you will be getting unfairly shredded by somebody just pressing toggle. There’s no skill, no technique and definitely no ability involved in Aimbot, it is plainly people who cannot play normally and have a dying passion to watch the world burn.
But Activision hasn’t implemented any software into Warzone to prevent such hackers, preferring to have a team of dedicated manual reviewers to check reports of cheating and implement bans. It’s almost the same way Boris Johnson let everybody arrive back from Wuhan and didn’t test for COVID-19 until they all started coughing. Retribution, rather than prevention; not the right strategy.
With Warzone cheaters running riot, many streamers are getting fed up and looking towards other games. After weeks of enjoying Warzone, streamers have reverted to the games that they previously played such as Ninja playing Fortnite, and Dr Disrespect playing Counterstrike.
The closed beta for VALORANT came live as of the 7th March and has already attracted a huge following. Nearly breaking the Concurrent viewers' record on Twitch set by Riot’s own League of Legends, VALORANT hit 1.7million viewers consistently on the first day of the Beta test on Tuesday, proving that fans and streamers have been pouring onto the 5v5 tactical shooter game. With the full game due to be released in ‘summer 2020’, VALORANT is set to completely restructure the gaming scene. For years, much the landscape of gaming has centred around Battle Royale, but with problems running rife with cheaters and hackers in the most recent and popular BR, Warzone, its clear people are bored of perishing to the hands of a cyber-barracuda.
VALORANT has a 24-round 5v5 Search and Destroy format, like Counter-Strike, which offers much more leniency in human error, making it more forgiving if you are killed. Whereas in BR you will have one chance to win, Search and Destroy, or ‘Bomb Defusal’ in VALORANT, you will battle out for up to 24 rounds.
- Read More - What to Expect in the Valorant Closed Beta
Counter-Strike is famous for its longevity, as well as its gripping gameplay and high skilled mechanics, and all of this will be implemented into VALORANT, which has become hugely popular already for streamers. Call of Duty stars such as Nadeshot and Clayster already been streaming VALORANT regularly rather than Warzone, with it looking like VALORANT will surpass Warzone in popularity. This, combined with the concurrent viewers' statistic, shows that there are a plethora of streamers and gaming fans who are congregating to VALORANT in favour of other games, meaning it could very well be the decline of Warzone.
Furthermore, the Call of Duty League Championships is kicking off again this weekend, meaning many of the most famous players will be focused on scrimmages and training before getting back into the competitive scene, rather than the casual Warzone games. Recent reports also indicate that Riot is looking to bring VALORANT into the esports world, and there is likely to be a ranked mode implemented, which will inevitably see more players sway from Warzone to a more competitive scene, especially if the casual elements are being crucified by hackers.
If Activision wants to retain their streamers and fanbase in what has been the most successful Battle Royale game since the boom of Fortnite, they really need to crack down on preventing hackers from being in games, rather than waiting for them to ruin the game and retributively banning them.
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Image via Activision
