CDL Challengers forces amateur team to play match against cheaters

An amateur Call of Duty team was apparently forced to play a recent CDL Challengers Cup match against a team that just had a player get caught cheating the round prior.

You never want to run into cheaters while playing CoD, be it in Team Deathmatch or Warzone, but being forced to play against a team that’s already been caught doing so is on a whole other level.

Apparently, this is just what happened to Challengers Cup team Hope Esports, based on a post from player Chris Abbott, who tweeted images of a conversation with a Gamebattles tournament administrator, confirming that situation.

“The kids we’re supposed to play in our next round just got banned for cheating 10 minutes ago!” he wrote.

Since the other team had a member that had literally just been caught breaking the rules, Abbott asked if his team could be given a free win. Instead, the admin simply replied that the match would be going ahead as scheduled.

“So, we have been informed that they can finish this tournament, but he will be banned from the site after this,” the admin replied. “So you’re good to go.”

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One wouldn’t exactly call being forced to play against confirmed cheaters, “good to go,” and Abbott felt the same way, tweeting that conversation as well saying he “refused” to play against cheating teams back to back. The good news is that Team Hope managed to win both matches on December 12, even if they were forced into a game they felt they shouldn’t have played.

Based on communications with Abbott, the two teams were letstrythisagain and FF, the latter being the team that Hope was forced to play second, even after having been exposed.

A good number of CoD players and fans replied to Abbott agreeing with him that the situation was pretty ridiculous, including Atlanta FaZe’s Alec “Arcitys” Sanderson, but it also sparked a larger conversation about the need for an anti-cheat in Black Ops Cold War.

This is just another instance of what’s been a very turbulent start to the CDL Challengers season, particularly when it comes to the uber-sensitive topic of cheaters and hackers.

In the first Challengers Cup, which was held December 5-6, numerous players who appeared to be using third-party software were exposed, leading to a massive outcry from CDL pros about the need for better moderation at the amateur level.

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They’re not alone; the player-base has been calling out for Activision to create their own anti-cheat system — in the same vein of Valorant’s Vanguard — in order to deal with the hackers that have plagued both multiplayer and Warzone ever since its release.

The best we’ve got so far is that the publisher has said they’re working on an anti-cheat software, but when it will be released and how it will operate remain to be seen, and until it does come out, these kinds of issues and problems will just keep popping up in the Call of Duty competitive scene.