Visit the official Call of Duty: Warzone subreddit any day and you’re going to find at least a handful of clips showing blatant hacking and cheating. Though the problem is likely smaller than it appears, the constant barrage of posts makes it look like cheating is rampant, and certainly does nothing good to Warzone’s reputation. Rather than post clips of their own, Reddit user TNGSystems instead tried to attack the problem from a different angle: by going after the cheat makers’ source of income. The idea is fairly simple, by finding the official sites and Discord servers of the people creating these cheats and inquiring about them, you’ll inevitably be asked to pay for them. This is usually done through Paypal, and as you might have already guessed, Paypal doesn’t want its platform to be a mediator in the buying/selling of cheats. What TNGSystems did was infiltrate these dens, get as much information as they could and present all the evidence to Paypal support, which promptly got these accounts shut down. “Google Warzone cheats and find Discords that send links around. Become a little detective. Pose as a piece of shit gentleman looking to get a competitive edge. Sign up with a fake name, fake account name, etc. Talk to moderators. Get Paypal payment links and then go straight to Paypal customer chat,” the Reddit user wrote, outlining the process.
This is indeed what they had done, to great success. When checking back on one of the sources of Warzone cheats, they found that the creators had switched to Cryptocurrency payments after their Paypal accounts were removed. It goes without saying that converting money into Cryptocurrency and then sending that to someone online is a lot more convoluted than simply using Paypal. By doing this, TNGSystems hopes to hurt cheat makers where it really counts, and deter many of the buyers unwilling to wade into the world of Cryptocurrency. The Reddit user isn’t even stopping there, and has contacted Mastercard and Coinbase to clarify their stance, and potentially take out other cheat makers who use their services. “If we can cut off Paypal, Coinbase & credit card then short of sending cash through the post I have no idea how they would get payment. This is the most valuable tool we have to fight cheaters. The power of snitching, lol.” Warzone developer Infinity Ward previously announced banning over 70,000 cheaters, but hasn’t really said how it plans to attack the problem long-term. We’re meant to be getting updated reporting tools, but that may not be enough when the game is free-to-play.
