Warzone Companion could let players manipulate lobbies in Call of Duty: Warzone. While the third-party app wants players to flag potential cheaters, the app might be abused because of too much intel. This gained the attention of many players who took the situation on social media.
The Warzone Companion App
This app could show in-depth stats of players in lobbies, including the figures of possible cheaters. Although the key features are great, there's a problem. The issue is the exposure of K/D ratios before a match begins, something the game doesn’t do officially.
Here’s the big picture. When used, a player could see the ratios of other players in a lobby. If they believed the lobbies were up to no good, they could easily back out and avoid matches. This cheats the skill-based matchmaking system (SBMM) in Warzone. Thus, the Warzone community tagged the feature as problematic.
Because the transparency is too much, players can ditch a match and leave others with the fallout. On top of that, the app may have potential in stream-sniping and tournament exploits. On Twitter, XSETgaming’s Jared posted how such an app can badly impact the game.
Yep it's Official Warzone is Chalked
— JaredFPS (@JaredFPS) January 3, 2021
This app ruins the game completely and now makes a lot of things make sense? pic.twitter.com/6J5hwYKtvw
The Developer’s Response
The Warzone Companion developer team, COD Stats, responded to the problem. They released a patch to neuter the app's key features and limit what players can see. Instead of displaying exact numbers, the app will now show estimates.
The app’s owner Dmitry Shymko clarified a few things. They said that the discussion online got focused on the app’s potential for abuse, but not its benefits and positive effects. Yet they understand that the chance for abuse shouldn’t be ignored. So, they implemented the changes to prevent the apps from becoming an exploit tool.
“We wanted to help the community and highlight those players that are having extremely high metrics in their previous matches and at the same time give an instrument for players to see that they just might die to the lucky shot,” Shymko said.
The updated Warzone Companion now removes the ability to flag potential cheaters before a match starts. Player stats will only appear after the pre-match lobby closes, and other stats will appear as approximations.
