With Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 arriving this year, the World Series of Warzone tournament was supposed to be big, and it is. With a prize pool of $600,000, competing players had a shot at the life-changing amount of money starting with the open qualifiers on August 12. Unfortunately, things haven't gone smoothly since. After close examination, some players found out that others had cheated to get their placements in the tournament.
Fifakill, a popular content creator who is also a skilled Warzone player, alleged that the open in-game qualifiers for the World Series of Warzone saw rampant cheating. In a tweet, Fifakill revealed about "people VPNing, people streaming sniping other qualifier teams, and worst of all, people getting into their friend's games and dying to their friend repeatedly."
Check out the rest of Fifakill's tweet below:
This sends a terrible message to people genuinely trying to qualify and others looking to begin competing as well as sponsors looking to get into Warzone comp. Furthermore, it makes it more likely that open qualifiers for big events will be removed which is heartbreaking.
— Fifakill (@Fifakill_) August 14, 2022
Professional sports should never condone cheating, but people will constantly find ways to work around the systems set in place. In this particular case, players are taking advantage of the official tournament rules where one kill is worth a single team point. On the other hand, the first-place team gets double points while the runner-up gets a 1.5x multiplayer. As a result, participants are believed to have worked together to pad their numbers by having others die on purpose.
Some are speculating that the first- and second-place teams are in cahoots with each other. There's no hard evidence to back up this serious claim but it would explain why the former had two players with nearly 70 deaths combined.
Most likely, we'll get a response from tournament officials soon. The top 40 teams from the North American and European regions are expected to advance to each region's respective qualifies on August 20 to 21, with the EU and NA finals set to take place on September 6 and 7, respectively.
Speaking of September, Call of Duty fans can look forward to something next month. The publisher confirmed that it will hold the first Call of Duty Next event on September 15.
