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In a win for console players fed up with Call of Duty’s cheating problem, Activision will finally let players turn off crossplay in regular unranked matches starting in Black Ops 6 Season 3. The long-requested feature comes six years after crossplay became a core feature of Call of Duty in the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot.
Until now, players have only been able to limit crossplay in Call of Duty’s ranked modes across standard multiplayer and Warzone, but Season 3 expands the feature to include “Multiplayer Unranked,” and unless I’m misunderstanding Activision’s meaning here, that should include every other multiplayer mode in CoD. After Season 3 begins on April 2, the crossplay options will be as follows:
- On: Enables matchmaking with all gaming platforms when playing in the selected playlists.
- On (Consoles Only): Enables matchmaking only with other consoles when playing in selected playlists.
- Off: Restricts matchmaking to your current gaming platform only in selected playlists.
Activision warns that the “consoles only” option “may negatively impact queue times,” while admitting that setting crossplay to “Off” will surely slow down matchmaking. Why would you cut off a huge chunk of the CoD population from your matches? The most obvious reason is to even the playing field by limiting your opponent pool to the same control scheme, but I reckon the majority of PS5 and Xbox players who flip off crossplay will be doing it to avoid cheaters. As Activision recently admitted, the vast majority of cheating happens on PC, even though 60% of reported players are on console.
The severity of Call of Duty’s cheating problem is up for debate—it’s not hard to find people flaunting their circumvention of CoD’s Ricochet anti-cheat online, but it’s also among the most popular games in the world, so the percentage of matches spoiled by cheaters is likely low.
But Call of Duty’s frequent perception as a hacking-riddled mess means enough players might hop aboard the “get me out of the PC player pool” train to make a dent in queue times for all the legit PC players. That’d be a shame, or maybe a boon, depending on who you ask.
“As a PC player… Hate this change, but I get it. I hope it doesn’t affect queue times for the game in the long run so I’m not forced to buy the game on PS5 to have a good experience,” wrote Reddit user exjr_ in response to the change.
A fair worry, but user DeminoTheDragon shared a different outlook:
“-play PC
-most of the sweatiest of players will enable Console only crossplay
-still get most of the player base aside from sweats and a select few that even care enough to enable that specific cross play
-sure aight”
A salient observation communicated in the fewest words possible. If we assume only the most active, informed, and possibly skilled console players will care enough to disable PC crossplay, maybe the matchmaking impact will be minimal, and I know more than a few PC players who wouldn’t mind encountering fewer console “sweats” who know how to get the most out of CoD’s extremely generous aim assist.
User NothingSeemsToSpeak also made a point I hadn’t considered: If consoles can selectively banish PC players from their lobbies, PC players should get to choose which consoles can enter theirs.
“As a PC player, I just want an option to disable PlayStation because of how often their controller mic is playing music with a baby crying in the background,” they wrote.
That controller mic really is obnoxious.
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Kurt Indovina
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