Fans of the Call of Duty series are very excited for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Its Beta has been a battleground of fun for many players, except of course for the plague of Black Ops Cold War cheaters.
Despite the cheaters, it looks like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is a positive step for the series. Many are looking forward to the multiplayer mode, but the story is just as big a draw. Call of Duty titles thrive on intense, cinematic campaigns filled with action setpieces. They also thrive on intrigue that can only be solved through intense firefights. Cold War promises all of this and more, but players still want to know more about the game.
In order to find out more about Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, many players have begun datamining it. This is common practice for many games, especially big releases. Digging through the game's code can reveal everything from upcoming modes to stat data players aren't privy to. So far, players have come across several files that look very suspicious and interesting at first glance. It turns out they look suspicious because they are; every one of the files leads to a Rickroll.
To be more specific, there are a few labels for very important information in the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War files. These somewhat vague labels hint at info about upcoming seasons, a godmode, lootbox info, and MTX based matchmaking. In reality, the links next to each of these all lead to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." Despite extending the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Beta an extra day to reward players' code breaking skills, it seems Treyarch is not ready to give up all its secrets.
Obviously there are still secrets to be uncovered in the code. When it comes to the Call of Duty games, it's almost a tradition to leak things early from datamining. Very recently a new map was revealed in Warzone through datamining. No matter what pranks are inserted, it is not a practice that players will stop any time soon.
On the other hand, this demonstrates that devs have a ton of control over what players see at every level. It's worth remembering that even leaks can be engineered by companies, or in this case, used for a funny prank. No matter the additional rewards given to the Cold War beta players, there are some things about the game the devs just aren't willing to give away.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will launch November 13th for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.