World Series of Warzone implodes after hacking accusations

The World Series of Warzone is the pinnacle event in the calendar for the Call of Duty battle royale, where hundreds of thousands of dollars are up for grabs between the best players in the world.

But maybe it is time we started using the tag of "the best" less figuratively, as the integrity of the online qualifiers has just been called into question.

During the last-chance qualifiers in North America, one player who finished second in the kill-scoring has now been accused of hacking, and it seems pretty damning.

World Series of Warzone second-place player confesses to cheating

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Of course, when players qualify for the finals like that of last year in London, or other international LANs akin to the Esports World Cup in Saudi Arabia, players have developer-certified PCs with nothing but the game installed, making cheating impossible. 

But for online qualifiers, it is different, as players have their own set-ups from home and Activision's anti-cheat system remains sub-par (to be generous).

In this year's WSOW LCQ, one player "Vexoh" admitted to using cheats to try and qualify, as he sat second on individual and team kills, but missed out on qualification due to the placement multiplier.

In a now-deleted tweet, the player said, "Yeah I did that s**t no way of fighting against it."

"Just got greedy. Not that it's an excuse," they added.

The user also pointed fingers at other unnamed players, claiming that they were "good at hiding it," and other players were too.

The hack-usations have now spurred Warzone esports fans to call for a shift away from PC gaming and to only allow console players in online qualifiers until a time comes when Ricochet can detect new hackers much more efficiently.

"What do we do for the future? Is there anything we can do better to avoid people to cheat their way into tournaments?" quizzed Warzone streamer iSmixie.

"There [are] currently 0 repercussions to joining a big tournament and getting caught cheating. There’s no replay, no consequences to the cheating team. What’s to stop teams in the future from attempting to get away with it? We need to try and find actual solutions," she added.

Not all Warzone pros cheat though, despite claims, as the likes of current WSOW champion and EWC title winner Hunter "Shifty" Pendygraft had his fair share of accusations before doing the business on LAN.