Pro Community Comes Down On Call Of Duty Devs For Lack Of Support
It wasn’t merry for too long in the Call of Duty esports community. Immediately back to business after Christmas, President of OpTic Texas Hector "H3CZ" Rodriguez called out several issues he encountered in the pro community over the last couple of years, stating that the esports community was only an “afterthought”, especially for developers.
“It is the developers that are the ones that are falling way behind and are letting us down,” H3CZ stated on the most recent OpTic Podcast. While holding back (presumably to avoid a Call of Duty League fine), Seth "Scump" Abner threw in the most recent issues with the Christmas event and its Krampus feature being present even in private lobbies, the lobby setup CDL teams use in order to practice. The rest of the panel agreed that it was an issue with H3CZ pointing out that the developers should’ve given players the ability to turn Krampus off at least in private lobbies.
The Krampus feature around the demon from Central-European folklore had been a nuisance even to casual Warzone players. One can imagine how infuriating it must be for professionals having to play with this feature implementation when it impacts their day job.
Furthermore, H3CZ took issue with the timing of CDL events, pointing out that he had been told in the past that the league would be having matches around each annual Call of Duty game launch which three years into the endeavour has yet to take place. With Call of Duty: Vanguard having launched in early November and the CDL currently being on a winter break, there wouldn’t be any matches for another two months after launch with the CDL only coming back in January 2022.
During one of his streams, Ian “Crimsix” Porter also weighed in on the issues he saw with the competitive format surrounding the CDL. According to him, the league were close to moving the third map and decider of a match to be played out in Call of Duty: Warzone, a vastly different competitive experience that the CDL had hosted events on before but were at least previously kept separate from the actual competition of the CDL.
Crimsix weighs in
During one of his streams, Ian “Crimsix” Porter also weighed in on the issues he saw with the competitive format surrounding the CDL. According to him, the league were close to moving the third map and decider of a match to be played out in Call of Duty: Warzone, a vastly different competitive experience that the CDL had hosted events on before, but were at least previously kept separate from the actual competition of the CDL.
In a response on Twitter, Player Relations Manager of the CDL, Spencer Peterson denied Crimsix statement though didn’t clarify which part of the minute-long clip was inaccurate.
Since its inception, the CDL had varying levels of success in its ability to attract large viewer bases, though with no recent upwards trajectory to be found. Being known for their outspoken pro community, both players and team management have been very vocal on the shortcomings of the league and pushing issues into the public discourse. Whether or not they will be building enough public support to move the developers on their strategy remains to be seen.