Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s beta already beset by cheaters

It’s weekend two of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 beta – and now PC, PlayStation and Xbox players are all getting stuck in, cheaters have entered the battlefield.

And, in response, console players are disabling crossplay in a bid to avoid matching up with those on PC – the platform believed to have the most trouble with hackers.

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If it sounds like you’ve read this story before, it’s because the same thing happened with the beta for last year’s Call of Duty Vanguard and 2020’s Black Ops Cold War.

As you can see from the clip posted to Twitter by MW2 Beta Plug, cheaters are using wallhacks to spot enemies before they should, and aimbots to ensure they never miss.

Clips of Modern Warfare 2 cheaters are also flooding the likes of Tik-Tok – and pointing users to where they can buy hacks.

All this, even before Modern Warfare 2’s official launch, and despite Activision’s much-hyped Ricochet anti-cheat software.

The problem is significant enough that Modern Warfare 2 developer Infinity Ward took to social media to promise action.

Hacking in Modern Warfare 2 now is particularly problematic for Infinity Ward and Activision, given how loudly it has trumpeted the Ricochet anti-cheat software.

Ricochet, introduced for battle royale Warzone and Vanguard, features new server-side tools which monitor analytics to identify cheating. Activision also released Ricochet’s PC kernel-level anti-cheat security driver for both games.

Less than two weeks ago, Activision insisted it had “upgraded and improved” Ricochet for both Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0, “combining a year of updates from #TeamRICOCHET with new features and mitigations to protect the game”.

Of course, no anti-cheat is perfect, and there is no single solution or policy to cheating. But Activision, which has faced a significant reputational issue over cheating ever since Warzone exploded in 2020, will be desperate to prevent the same thing happening all over again with Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0.

If you’re interested in playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 legitimately and looking for help with specific weapons during the beta, we have explainers for the M16 and M4.