Call of Duty: Warzone has long struggled with tons of bugs, glitches, and most infuriating, cheaters. The issue was so bad that many players disabled cross-play so as to avoid playing with PC players that have an easier time enabling cheats. One Redditor has now found a way that cheaters are getting into the game.
A short while ago, Call of Duty: Warzone began requiring accounts to be verified before allowing them to play online. This did wonders to stop cheaters for a while, as once an account was banned it was very difficult to create a new one without a new phone number.
But of course, cheaters are nothing if not determined (to cheat that is, not get better at the actual game), and despite cheaters being very upset with SMS Verification initially, they seem to have found a way around this barrier. Redditor aur0n has discovered that some users are selling verified accounts online for as little as $2.
This has some pretty big implications, as it basically negates the verification altogether for anyone who is willing to spend a few bucks to get around it. Any player who is caught cheating and banned can simply buy a new account for a relatively low cost and continue with their nefarious habits. Unfortunately, this SMS verification now becomes more of an issue for the people it is intended to protect than the ones it was meant to stop, with one user even mentioning that they don't have a working phone number at the moment.
This is nothing new, however, as bypassing SMS verification has been around for years now. In most cases, it isn't used for the purpose of cheating at a video game, but that's what's happening here. Fans may have noticed an initial drop in cheaters after the SMS verification requirement was added, but many have been complaining recently of increased encounters, and this is likely the reason. Aside from coming up with a new sort of verification method, there isn't much which Infinity Ward or Activision can do with SMS verification at this point, although at the very least cheaters will need to spend more money to cheat now.
This kind of thing, while disappointing, isn't surprising in the least bit. People will always look for ways to get an unfair advantage and to bypass whatever is stopping them from doing so. It will be interesting to see if Infinity Ward or Activision responds to this discovery, but it's likely they already knew it was happening.
Call of Duty: Warzone is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Source: Reddit/Aur0n