Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has a serious issue with cheating, whether it be wallhacks or aimbots. For every obvious cheater caught on video having their targeting critical snap to unseen foes, there're more players who are subtle. It's rare that incontrovertible evidence that these subtle players are cheating is found, but one Modern Warfare player has managed to reveal themselves for the cheat they are.
TwitstedBear, the self-proclaimed "top Modern Warfare player," recently started a stream on Twitch. For TwitstedBear, it must have been just like any other stream. He was destroying his opponents like normal. For viewers, however, an entirely different TwitstedBear was presented. A TwitstedBear that forgot to make his wallhack cheat software not visible on his livestream.
In the stream, viewers are able to see the in-game "skeletons" of every one of TwitstedBear's Modern Warfare opponents, regardless of where they are located on the map. This is a relatively common wallhack that scrapes player locations from Modern Warfare's server communications and visualizes them on-screen. Obviously, this kind of information is never supposed to be visualized, but that's why it's cheating.
It's also obvious how TwitstedBear is able to capitalize on the information they get from cheating and how talented they are making it look like they aren't cheating. Despite having the skeletons on-screen, TwitstedBear is able to never move their reticle to the skeletons' locations when they aren't visible. They do, however, position themself to be the perfect place to capitalize on the exclusive information they have access to.
It's easy to see how someone like TwitstedBear, who is clearly a very talented player, would be difficult to guess is a cheater. Without cheats, they'd still be incredibly capable -- a great player, even. Cheats just improve their gameplay that much more. Where a poor player doing incredible things would be easily caught, TwitstedBear has been able to avoid being caught.
Obviously, that's all over now. TwitstedBear's forgetfulness has led to his own punishment. His Twitch channel has already been banned and his Modern Warfare account is likely to follow suit. What's perhaps more important is the awareness of these kinds of cheats in Modern Warfare and how important it is for Infinity Ward and other Call of Duty developers to handle this from the development side of the equation. Because, clearly, there's very little that players can do to catch these cheaters unless they out themselves.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.