Call of Duty Vanguard players fuming as hackers dominate free weekend

Jaret Kappelman

Call of Duty: Vanguard had its first free-to-play weekend and players are fuming as hackers dominated the game. 

Ever since Call of Duty moved toward more popular PC releases the game has seen an increase in hackers across Warzone, Vanguard, and other titles.

Sledgehammer Games gave everyone, including cheaters, access to the new Call of Duty by hosting a free-to-play period.

While it gave new players a chance to test out the game and determine if they wanted to buy it, this also gave hackers a chance to take over the community and ruin matches.

Call of Duty Vanguard Russian Sniper Winter Outfit Final
Vanguard players want an anti-cheat soon as hackers overran the free weekend.

Vanguard free to play weekend overrun by hackers

While players patiently wait for Season 1 of Vanguard and the RICOCHET anti-cheat to be implemented into the game, they are stuck dealing with hackers.

This Reddit post by ‘bidful’ has players raging as most of them were running into cheaters during the free access period.

Players claimed that they experienced at least one cheater in the free period and sometimes more throughout the same lobby. “I literally had 2 hackers in the same lobby of Hardcore Free-For-All,” a user said.

Prior to Vanguard’s release, Sledgehammer Games informed the community that RICOCHET, a new anti-cheat would be coming to the game but not on release. This has players praying that this new system will end cheating once and for all.

One Redditor added, “Here’s to hoping RICOCHET actually does something once that comes out and upcoming free weekends won’t look the same again.”

While the RICOCHET anti-cheat isn’t scheduled to be released until Season 1, the devs could have used data from this period to see if hacking is a huge problem in Vanguard. This could allow them to perfect the anti-cheat and exterminate hackers from CoD.

About The Author

Jaret is a former writer at Dexerto based in the United States, who covered Call of Duty and other gaming news. He also has a deep passion for esports, following the CDL, LoL pro scene, and many others.