One of the biggest annoyances that streamers face when streaming online multiplayer games is stream sniping. If you're hearing the term for the first time, a viewer is said to be stream sniping if they join the same game as a streamer and use the streamer's video to determine the position of the streamer. This ruins the game for the streamer, who could be streaming in front of a large online audience.
However, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War seems to have a solution to combat stream sniping. The solution works by masking the matchmaking time and displaying a fake matchmaking timer on the screen. The important setting can be found among a list of other matchmaking settings within the Options menu. These settings enable players to delay matchmaking and hide personal and other players' names, making it almost impossible to stream snipe a player. By enabling the matchmaking delay feature, players can delay their matchmaking by 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, or random seconds. Moreover, these timings are hidden from the viewers.
Black Ops Cold War isn't the first game to receive a matchmaking delay option. Two years ago, Epic's Fortnite introduced a similar matchmaking delay feature that greatly reduced stream sniping for most Fortnite streamers. It seems that Treyarch has understood the effectiveness of such a tool and decided to implement it in Black Ops Cold War as well.
Since the feature has made it to Black Ops Cold War, streamers can expect future Call of Duty games to continue to implement the feature. It'll also be interesting to see if other online multiplayer games will adopt a similar feature to combat stream sniping.
On a related note, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is out now, and the game has already received mostly positive reviews from fans and critics.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
