Warzone hackers now using in-game leaderboards to promote cheating websites

Theo Salaun
warzone hackers advertise leaderboard

Call of Duty: Warzone’s hacker problem has hit the highest of highs, after reaching the lowest of lows, as players are fed up with the lack of response to the in-game wins leaderboards — which now advertise a number of cheating sites.

If you asked the Warzone community (and specifically the game’s streamers and highest-K/D players) what the game’s biggest problem is, the vast majority would say hacking. Cheaters ruin games and, unsurprisingly, normal players don’t appreciate that.

So, you can imagine how annoyed gamers are that… not only has the title been unable to decrease the hacking situation, but its in-game leaderboard may literally be increasing them. As posted by OPMarked, one of Warzone’s highest-winning players, the in-game leaderboard is filled with obvious cheaters. And, even worse, a bunch of them are using that space as free advertisements for their websites.

As you can see in his tweet, the leaderboard has some streamers in the 10-20 range that are known for getting wins. Guys like OPMarked, Its_Iron, and ShadedStep all slot into the top 20 with over 3,700 wins in Verdansk.

But the top nine all have over… 386 million wins? Warzone released on March 10, 2020 and the game’s legitimate winners haven’t hit 10,000 wins — yet there are people in the millions. Something doesn’t add up.

Most annoyingly though, these cheaters are mentioning various hack websites with their usernames (alongside some generally bigoted ones, which should also be removed). 

With big Warzone figures like JGOD calling this “sad” and other replies dubbing it “pathetic,” it’s clear that the community isn’t pleased with the state of affairs. Many noted that CoD leaderboards have often been filled with hackers, but the situation nonetheless feels worse given Warzone’s cheater-filled context.

As JGOD mentions, maybe this situation can be remedied when Vanguard integration happens (at which point these cheating websites will also, hopefully, be rendered useless).

For now, though, the leaderboards aren’t even on Raven Software’s Trello board for issues to fix — so OPMarked is likely right: this isn’t a high priority for them. It might not even be a priority at all.

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About The Author

Théo is a former writer at Dexerto based in New York and built on competition. Formerly an editor for Bleacher Report and philosophy student at McGill, he fell in love with Overwatch and Call of Duty — leading him to focus on esports for Dex.