Call of Duty Black Ops Ports Hit PS4, PS5 With Widespread Cheaters

Activision's recent launch of PlayStation 4 and PS5 versions of the classic first-person shooter titles Call of Duty: Black Ops and its sequel, Black Ops 2, has been marred by widespread cheating and hacking. Released on July 9, these ports, priced at $40 each and lacking DLC content or significant updates, quickly attracted a large player base eager to revisit the popular games. However, players soon discovered that the new versions are rife with exploits, leading to ruined matches and unfair progression.

Reports have flooded social media platforms like Reddit and Twitter, detailing numerous instances of cheating in both Black Ops and Black Ops 2 lobbies on PlayStation consoles. A prevalent method involves players manipulating their save data to gain massive amounts of experience points (XP) by deliberately detonating themselves in matches, such as Domination. This exploit allows cheaters to rapidly achieve maximum rank and prestige, disrupting normal gameplay. Players have shared video clips showing kill feeds filled with self-inflicted deaths as soon as matches begin, often forcing the game to pause and attempt to reconnect to a new host, only for the cycle of exploitation to repeat.

Beyond the immediate disruption, a more severe issue affects players who encounter these cheaters. Killing a hacked player can result in a substantial negative XP gain, effectively locking the legitimate player into a negative level, which prevents them from accessing multiplayer matchmaking. This glitch, known as a softlock, can render the multiplayer component of the games unplayable for affected users.

Activision Responds to Exploits

The scale of the problem prompted a response from Activision, which confirmed on July 12 that it had disabled certain playlists within the Black Ops games to investigate the reported issues. It is widely believed that modes susceptible to exploitation, like Domination and Ground War, were among those taken offline. This situation has reignited frustrations among long-time fans who recall similar hacking and cheating problems on the original PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of these games.

Many players had anticipated these issues, given that the new ports appear to be largely direct transfers of the older PS3 versions with minimal enhancements. Concerns were voiced that the susceptibility to exploits present on the original hardware would carry over, undermining the new releases. The current state of the Black Ops 2 ports seems to validate these fears, mirroring the persistent flaws that have affected older Call of Duty titles.

While some players hold out hope for future patches to address the rampant cheating, a significant portion of the community remains skeptical. The ongoing issues with the Xbox 360 versions of these games, which remain problematic despite backward compatibility on modern Xbox consoles, fuel this pessimism. The developers now face the challenge of rectifying these long-standing exploits in Call of Duty's latest console offerings to restore fair play for its dedicated audience.