Call of Duty: Vanguard had a multiplayer beta over the weekend. These betas are always a great opportunity for the developers of the game to stress test their game with some actual players. Unfortunately, these betas also highlighted a big problem: Cheaters have already found their way into Vanguard and were doing some stress tests of their own throughout the beta.
Unfortunately, hackers and cheaters are just a part of online multiplayer games these days, but Call of Duty, in particular, has been dealing with an incredible amount of them. Seeing players find a way through any anti-cheat devices they have set up must have been very unsettling for both players and developers. Unfortunately, it has the potential to get even worse, because according to Waypoint, hackers are already selling their cheats for Vanguard to anyone who wants to buy it. Vanguard, for reference, does not come out until November 5.
“Our new COD Vanguard Hack will be better than our Warzone Cheats and all the features will work with the new Warzone map releasing with Vanguard,” another cheat developer, called IWANTCHEATS, wrote in its official website.
…“The core of the [Call of Duty] engine hasn’t changed much during the life of the franchise so porting a cheat from one game to another has always been very easy,” the source, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not authorized to speak to the press, told Motherboard. “Cheat developers have extra incentives to get that working during beta: it’s good publicity for them to be the first and that allows them to capture screenshots and videos for marketing. Most usually give the cheat free to their existing customers. Some even go free for everyone.”
When we got our hands on the beta for Vanguard, one of our immediate reactions was how similar it felt to the previous Call of Duty games. That familiarity is part of why they are able to release these games yearly, but it also means that when one game’s code gets exposed to hackers, it can impact all of them. This could be disastrous for the developers if they do not find a workaround soon.