With the launch of Season 3 this week, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Warzone get a significant change that some within the PC community have said could hit their matchmaking queue times.
Activision published the Season 3 patch notes and with it confirmed a big change coming to regular Multiplayer. It’s separating the Multiplayer Ranked Play and Call of Duty: Warzone Ranked Play settings and adding a new Multiplayer-only setting for Quickplay, Featured, and Party Games matches.
Each of these three settings (Multiplayer Ranked Play, Call of Duty: Warzone Ranked Play, and Multiplayer Unranked) will include the following crossplay options when Season 3 goes live on April 4:
- On: Enables matchmaking with all gaming platforms when playing in the selected playlists.
- On (Consoles Only): Enables matchmaking only with other consoles when playing in selected playlists.
- Off: Restricts matchmaking to your current gaming platform only in selected playlists.
Activision made a point of warning those who select On (Consoles Only) may experience negatively impacted matchmaking queue times. But Activision outright said Off will negatively impact matchmaking queue times.
It’s the console-only crossplay coming to regular Multiplayer that has some within the Call of Duty PC community spooked. They’ve said that console players having the option to essentially strip out matchmaking with PC players for regular Multiplayer may mean longer queue times for them. And you can see why they’d be worried.
Call of Duty has a reputation for cheating (it comes with the territory of being such a hugely popular shooter and having a free-to-download battle royale). Cheating is more prevalent on PC (Activision recently confirmed as much, to the point where it said if you believe you’ve died unfairly to a console player, it’s much more likely that they’ve used ‘intel advantage’ than cheats). So, some console players head straight into Call of Duty’s settings and turn off crossplay across the board, just to take the potential for PC cheaters ruining their day out of the equation.
“As a PC player…. hate this change but I get it,” redditor exjr_ said. “I hope it doesn’t affect queue times for the game in the long-run so I’m not forced to buy the game on PS5 to have a good experience.”
“This is awful for PC players because this just killed PC,” added X / Twitter user @GKeepnclassy. “Terrible idea because now PC players that ARE NOT cheating are being penalized. This is bullshit.”
“My lobbies barely fill already to being with on PC due to sbmm,” said @CBBMack. “This will withought a doubt make it worse. Time to plug in the console I guess.”
Some PC players have reacted angrily to the change, saying Activision should instead do more to make its anti-cheat more effective so console players aren’t driven to turn crossplay off in the first place. “Maybe they should fix their anti-cheat instead of isolating PC players,” redditor MailConsistent1344 commented.
Activision, as IGN has reported, has spent millions of dollars in the battle against Call of Duty cheat makers, cheat sellers, and cheat users, with a number of recent high-profile successes. Earlier in March, Phantom Overlay announced it was shutting down, with fans reacting in disbelief that such a prominent Call of Duty cheat provider would fall by the wayside. And just last month, IGN reported on four cheat providers that were shut down ahead of next week’s hotly anticipated return of Verdansk to Warzone.
But it is an uphill battle that may be impossible to win. Activision has promised improved anti-cheat tech with the launch of Season 3, so it will be interesting to see if PC players feel any changes there, especially with the influx of players the return of Verdansk will bring to Warzone.
However, as many have pointed out, the ultra mainstream, super casual Call of Duty audience on console may never make use of these new settings because they may simply not be aware of them. Most Call of Duty players likely do not fuss over patch notes or spend much time in the settings. They jump into unranked Multiplayer, have some fun for an hour or two, then leave. These players may never know console-only crossplay is an option, or know why it would be needed in the first place. And so, the majority of console players may continue to play Call of Duty as they’ve always done: with crossplay off by default.
This is a point made by Call of Duty YouTuber TheXclusiveAce, who reacted to PC player concern in a post on social media.
“I see a lot of pushback with this change from PC players concerned that they won’t be able to find games in lesser played modes or that matchmaking will take too long,” TheXclusiveAce said.
“To be clear, PC players will still be matchmaking with the largest pool of the playerbase since that majority of players won’t even notice this setting exists so they’ll stick to the default or even if they are aware of it, many will choose to leave it on.
“If anything, it’s the players that decide to turn console-only crossplay on that will be limiting their matchmaking pool but that’s a choice that’s now in their hands for the first time in Pubs and it’s a tradeoff that many of us will be happy to make.”
With Season 3 nearly upon Black Ops 6 and Warzone, it will be interesting to see if these changes move the needle, as Activision’s war on cheaters continues.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
