The more that video game streaming becomes popular, the more stream sniping is becoming a major issue. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is taking steps to prevent stream sniping, something that fans and content creators will likely appreciate.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is off to a solid start, receiving strong reviews and being downloaded and played by fans all over the world. Along with being enjoyed by players, Cold War is also a title that is highly streamed and viewed. At the time of writing this, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is the highest-viewed game on Twitch at 280,000. All those streams could easily mean a lot of stream sniping, but Treyarch has a feature to put a stop to that.
Within the settings of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, streamers can find a few options that they may find very useful. Players can turn off the username of both themselves and players they have in their party, ensuring it's not visible to others in-game. For the purpose of stream sniping, the biggest feature is one that allows players to put a delay on matchmaking. The delay options range from 3, 5, 10, 15, to 20 seconds, and even random.
Stream sniping is the idea that a viewer will join into a match the same time the streamer starts the matchmaking process. If they time it right and get lucky, the viewer will join the same exact match as the streamer, and then have access to their whereabouts and every move by continuing to view the stream. Some developers have put in measures to combat stream sniping, and this move by Treyarch is the most recent example. Setting the delay option to random would probably be the best choice, as it would be extremely difficult for the viewer to find a rhythm or get lucky with starting their search at the same time.
Stream sniping doesn't always work, as one Fortnite player learned while trying to stream snipe Ninja, but it is an immoral move and something that many games consider cheating. Knowing the exact whereabouts of a player in a one-life battle royale is the equivalent of screen hopping in games like GoldenEye or Halo while playing local multiplayer on the same screen.
For Treyarch, this is a wise move. Not all of the choices the developer, and publisher Activision, have made have been received well, as fans have complained about the pay-to-win nature of Cold War on PlayStation with the "Advantage" promotion. But this anti-stream sniping option is one that should be recognized by gamers, as it is a good way to stop one version of cheating that can haunt streamers.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Source: PCGamer