Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War lead designer Tony Flame has had his Twitter account hacked. Flame was in control of his Twitter account last night, as he sent a post out wishing his followers a Merry Christmas, including the "Christmas noobs" that typically show up online in Call of Duty. Since then, however, Flame's Twitter has been tweeting out obscenities, racial slurs, and calling out Treyarch parent company Activision about skill-based matchmaking.
Twitter has since locked Flame's Twitter account, though not before the hacker was able to tweet out multiple slurs, as well as advertise a Discord channel and Instagram page. One of the tweets that has gotten the most attention was sent out early on Christmas morning, with the hacker pretending to be Flame. In the tweet, "Flame" calls for Activision to remove SBMM from Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, accusing the company of "ruining the game."
This particular tweet has over 15,000 likes at the time of this writing, but part of that is likely due to not everyone realizing that it wasn't a legitimate tweet at first. Others, meanwhile, probably liked the tweet because they agree that SBMM should be removed from Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and aren't really concerned about whether or not it was the real Tony Flame that tweeted it out.
So far, neither Activision nor Treyarch has made any statement about the incident and it seems unlikely they will do so. Usually when something like this happens, Twitter works to get the account back to its proper owner. Whether or not Tony Flame makes a statement about it remains to be seen, as no tweets have been sent from the account since it was locked by Twitter about four hours ago.
For the uninitiated, SBMM has been a point of contention among members of the Call of Duty community for years now. The idea behind SBMM in games like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is that it keeps players facing others of a similar skill level. However, this has been shown to have an adverse effect on ping, and it has also impacted many longtime players' enjoyment of the online multiplayer. Others don't mind SBMM, as it makes the game fairer for those who aren't quite as skilled at Call of Duty multiplayer.
Many fans have suggested Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War add a ranked mode instead of using SBMM, though no official plans to that effect have been announced at the time of this writing.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Source: CharlieIntel