COD is full of RATS and we are their CHEESE 

This one was a doozy. But I really enjoyed writing this. Something close to my heart and I'm really passionate about.

Thanks for having me on here Bricky, we must all buy rat repellent ASAP! 🐀

Glad you've brought more publicity to this issue. I've been trying to for years and someone could still imo make a strong lawsuit case against Activision and win if they don't fix selling their broken games.

So I recently returned to a game called Day of Defeat Source. It is a Valve game; WW2 shooter. Released around the same time as Counter Strike Source. The maximum amount of players on Steam was around 2000-3000 people near launch. Nowadays it is a few houndreds. In 2021, this game got a security update along with stability things. Valve care more for their game that fewer people played than people in a small town, than Activision does for one of the biggest franchises on the planet.

It warms my heart that despite Bobby's untold wealth, he still can't get laid because he's just such a contemptible goblin

The fact that bobby actually has issues with his dating life due to being photoshopped as the devil just brought a smile to my face.

I used to work for EA as a Code Analyst. I worked on Apex Legends from the release of Revenant to the early beta testing of Ballistic (or is he called Caliber now? Not sure he had many names) I worked very closely with the Devs, and spoke at length with them about everything from various quality of life improvements they wanted to make, to heinous shit in the source code that needed to be fixed, as it could one day lead to exploits. These devs do not become devs because they want money. They chose this profession because they fucking love videogames, and creating them/making them work is their passion. The companies, ALL companies, simply will not allow them to do what needs to be done to deliver quality products. These guys do not have free reign over what they work on. They have orders that come down straight from the top, and they have no choice but to comply. They are sacked with thousands of bugs, potential exploits, impossible deadlines, random lines of code just breaking for no fucking reason, and constant pressure to meet timelines for all of it under threat of losing their jobs. Something needs to be fixed? They have to ask for permission. If whatever the issue is, isn't gamebreaking, and won't cause a significant shift in the revenue of the game, they are told to ignore it and get back to "real work". Its a fucking crime how these devs are treated. I never met a single one that wasnt uber-stressed, near tears, at the end of their sanity, or ready to fly off the handle at the slightest inconvenience due to constant pent up frustration. These issues will never be solved until we stop letting big corporations make games. We need to make the art of making games a closed community, come together and shut out anyone we know who isnt in it for the passion. Create a market of devs who are their own bosses and pour their passion into every game they make, then make that market large enough to compete with, and eventually strangle the life out of big corpo games. The only way big corpo stops fucking us and our wallets over with release after release of steaming piles of dookie, is if they realize they can't sell it to us anymore, because there is a better alternative. Oh, and if youre wondering why I left EA, its because they did the same thing Activision did, and fired all of their employees for Apex that werent absolutely essential for the function of the game. Testers, analysts, basically everyone except the main dev teams. So yeah. Fuck big game companies. Fuck em all.

Nobody except a rival company or the government could actually sue Activision. Companies like these don’t conventionally win cases, they just stall until their opponent runs out of money and stops.

I dont understand why Activision won't use steams built-in warning system. It makes a big red box on the store page with a quick description on what's broken

It was a pleasure to draw Bobby as the devil before, but now... it's an honour

Steam needs to add a "Confirmed Abandonware / Unsupported" banner at the top of games like the old CoD games, the games are unsafe to play and aren't being patched, and at worst, literally unplayable, so they either need to be forcibly taken off the marketplace, made incredibly cheap, or at least given a way to convey to a potential buyer that the game is NOT safe to play.

That one guy who played IW with you guys and came back to his PC being controlled by somebody else is honestly pretty fucking terrifying

I remember being the victim of an exploit on 2009 mw2 multiplayer. I killed a guy and that immediately crashed my game and took me directly to the menu to uninstall the entire game in just one click. Stay classy Activision.

I can't believe that Activision hasn't been sued for selling a trojan.

I don't play first person shooters, let alone COD but hearing all of these issues is really heartbreaking. These games were BUILT on the backs of its multiplayer mode, it's what made the series go on so long as it has, it's the series biggest selling point - and yet that can all be revoked with a blink of an eye, doomed to become abandoned media. Again, it's just really sad, and ever more the reason for game preservation and game unionization.

good job making a public service announcement about this horrible security issue. sent this to my friends who plays these games

I was never ready for the rats.

Hearing DK explain something in a very serious and professional manner is not something we’re used to

Man, Activision sucks. How anybody still willingly gives them money is beyond me.

Steam should add a specific alert that pops up when players flag an online game as "Safe" or "UNsafe"

Hearing M3rk in this was like an aluminum baseball bat straight to the stomach, but it’s a very sentimental and nostalgic aluminum baseball bat.

I heard that they prey at night, and that they stalk at night, and that they're the rats.

REALLY reminds me of the Titanfall situation with unplayable matches and needing the use of clients to bypass people. Not necessarily lose you data level like this, but still very similar.

Fucking Activision. Not even warning their customers about security issues

The chest crushing anxiety I felt as Bricky EDGED my brain to think I was about to watch a Nord VPN sponsor during the entire RAT explanation

I always knew I was a rat. Thanks Bricky for opening my eyes

35:06 Btw, BO2 was costing 120R$ last year (equivalent to 60 Dollars in 2012), now that cost 270R$ (60 Dollars in 2024)... Our minimal wage is 1300R$. 21%!!! OF OUR MINIMAL WAGE FOR A RATTED GAME FROM 2012.

Shitting on Bobby "wish he was in prison" Kottik is my religion.

50:57 "do me a favor, dont buy it on PC" as someone who never planned to buy it, I see this as an absolute win

RIP to Ender, no one should have to go through such a scare during what is meant to be a chill night with your buddies

Shutting down X labs is a perfect example of willful negligence as you are purposely risking players safety now to protect profit margins. Aka my safety and security is less important than your money gain.

One of the most smoothbrain things i dont understand is spending 100+ dollars on skins in a first person game

Bricky, Activision possibly pulling the games from Steam is NOT worse than the situation we have right now. The situation we have right now is ACTIVISION IS KNOWINGLY SELLING A DANGEROUS PRODUCT. If Activision pulled the product, it would be BETTER FOR EVERYONE INVOLVED. We SHOULD legally challenge them. We SHOULD force them to take such a drastic action. Maybe it would draw enough attention to actually make them change something.

More people need to see this. This is so important not only to CoD fans but to the videogame industry in general. This is like the Emperor revealing himself to mankind at the end of the Age of Strife.

It's actually pretty hard to turn IP address into a physical street address. You can think of it as a phone number. Just your IP or a phone number can tell a person your rough area at best (country code + area code). To get your exact address they would need to rely on data leaked from your ISP, and ISPs have decent security, so unless they know someone they can bribe to get the data (let's be fair, it's not that easy to do), they are unlikely to trace you by your IP.

This is pretty much some of the most solid journalism I've listened to in a long while, well done, sir.

So the overall message of this hour long video is to make more Devil Kotick photoshops?

When Activision becomes the law, piracy becomes duty.

I never knew about the RATS in older COD titles. I played a couple pub matches in BO3 last summer and I'm very glad that I didn't run into any malicious person. I'm glad I'm aware of this now

So many gaming companies need to face legal repercussions.

the " mouse moving by its own " gave me chills . Because these situations made me study computer engineering , because i was this afraid of these situations . ( also hifi rush when?)

I am almost certain that you could sue Activision at this point.

Three things that I find super wild about this: 1. Microsoft has apparently pushed for new servers for all the older cod games on 360/XBX. I wonder if they will fix this issue for PC. I highly doubt it with how MS does business but hopefully this does shift things in the better direction in the future. 2. The Engine breakdown is so wild because while I didn't know about the Quake to IW/T engines this feels so much like Bethesda and the Gambryo to Creation engine insanity. It makes me wonder because there hasn't been another guy like John Carmack in the games industry is the rehashing of engines just something that's gonna continue till the end of time. I'm sure there are other engines not like Unreal, Idtech, e.t.c. that will last the test of time but it's kinda weird you can probably draw ancestry lines to the majority of game engines to ones from way back when. With all the exploits and fuckery lying in wait in the code. 3. I am shocked no one has ever read those small print disclaimers on the back of boxes or the EULA/Private Policies of different games. Like Crash Team Racing's remake had a whole section mirroring Bethesda with Fallout 76 where they outright tell you you can be completely thrown off of a game at their discretion. Which for F76 is fucking insane because you can't play it offline. Maybe I'm wrong about all this but those were my takeaways.

2:56 COD players want some change -> COD changed -> players angy

Im honestly suprised Bricky didnt bring up how the old CoD games are fixed on Xbox only after the merger went through. It proves that not only is it possible they can fix it but that it is hilariously easy considering how quick the update happened after the FTC case was settled

Poor DK probably thought he was going to read about The Skaven when Bricky asked him to "read about these rat guys in gaming."

This quote! You really are great at writing man! "Things like this remind us all that video games are becoming products of the here and now. The only games that will stand the test of time are single-player story games. The inevitability of a live service title is death. The servers will eventually shut down and all the money you put in the CoD Warzone, Apex Legends and everything in between ends up meaning squat. It also shows that when it comes down to it and decision is either player security or the bottom line, these types of companies will choose the dollar every single time."

Bro thank you for talking about this I've been feeling like a broken record trying to tell people about this and a lot of them don't believe me, and it's crazy to me that the games are all still at positive reviews on steam store page. These games are not safe to play on PC and never will be knowing activision.

I just wanna point out probably the saddest thing about this is how it started in the first place. There is someone out there who put their time and effort into making game unnjoyable for someone else JUST because they get a kick out of someone else's misery. That person could've gone to code and develop something for people to actually enjoy and instead they use their skills to bring agony.

PERFECT

I've been watching you on and off ever since your "So you want to Main" series. Always a treat when RU-vid decides to show you on my feed. Keep chugging along king

Thank you bricky. I am so glad you did this video. In the past I thought of getting all the old call of duty games and play with my friends. Seeing this video I feel happy that I didn't do that, even though I have experienced the zombie maps.

This has no right being this good and informative. Honest to god, you killed it Bricky

35:32 This is why I subbed to you. You shine the light on issues/opinions that we seem to have quite a bit in common and it makes me really happy. Someone actually gives a "Rats" ass. This video is for that "Dad gamer" that wants to simply relive his early video game memories. I'm not a dad but I can't thank you enough bricky for doing what you do in hopes that we can someday safely go back to playing old CODs. Also Infinite Warfare WAS absolutely underrated and looking back I was too occupied with the Behemoth launch of Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1 all around the same time. I do kick myself at times for not giving it more love.

Great video, really enjoyed it the whole way through. Thanks for making videos like this, keep up the awesome work!

I got into your channel through your Warhammer videos as my interesting Warhammer started to peak. But having now found this video just one month into the knowledge of your channel and watching it to end, you have instantly put yourself as one of my top five favourite RU-vidrs. Absolutely top-notch excellent stuff with good research and factual backing. Really good stuff.

What's makes all this so much more frustrating is that they can't say they don't have the resources to fix these issues when the folks who made those clients have already made the infrastructure to get them working safely. While we don't know the end goal, Rockstar recently acquiring 5M is a promising move for the community because, ideally, they could get direct support from Rockstar to better their RP service. Imagine a perfect world where Activison brought in Xlabs and said, "OK, we have all studios current on projects, but if you want to maintain the online services for Legacy titles, you can have it." Considering how the player base for the older titles ballooned after the servers got lightly patched up on consoles, there is clearly a market there.

Activision will never acknowledge it, because that will be admitting culpability and open them to huge liability.

Thank you for getting this video out, I hope this gets millions of views and Activision changes, but one can only hope❤️💀

I actually had to throw this video link in my discord as many of my friends play COD on PC. Thank you for educating me on this Bricky.

This honestly might be one of the best videos you've ever made

Theres no way they can't be sued for selling dangerous products when they are aware that its dangerous.

Shoutout Jev for putting this video on my radar such a great video with good jokes, editing, gameplay, and very valid points

I hope those who worked on SM2 can hopefully get together and make their own game

This is a genuinely great explanation of cod and rats and this kind of stuff. Loved the DK tunnel metaphor

Thank you for addressing all of this Bricky. I was incredibly worried for you when I saw you playing COD on public lobbies (as far as I was aware) without a client in one of your recent uploads The fact that you have to warn people not to go online in the store bought version of a game without downloading a third party client, and that game CONSISTENTLY gets promoted and put on sale by Activision, is borderline flagrant negligence of consumer safety. You could literally get your entire system taken over just because you trusted that Activision wouldn’t put you at such horrible risk with this product they’re promoting to you

I my self would never have sat through an hour long video showing the state of this but this was a well put together and informative video I enjoyed it and I chuckled at a few bits. Sub well earned

this vid realy mad emee think off my black ops 2 days,first multiplayer game i got realy into for couple months,joined my first clan had my first clan battle 1v1's etc,its saddening to know that one day it may just not exsist anymore

IW zombies is mad underrated. Zombies in spaceland is one of the best maps released and the boss fights in the game are excellent. Its goofy/different setting was a breath of fresh air and the mechanics and movement were great unlike bo4. Just a shame the later dlcs got worse and worse (especially Beast from beyond) Would love to hear your take Bricky! Have been watching your content since the early episodes of "so you want to main" and your new videos are in depth and well made :)

Getting someone like Merkmusic in this video was a really good choice, he's been with the series since COD4 and has stuck with it through some of the toughest years for the series.

First video I've ever watched from you, recommended by Jev. This was very informative and really opened my eyes to how low Activision have stooped as a company. Great video!

As somebody born in 91 I was super excited for and loved how they handled infinite warfare particularly with expanding the campaign as well as how they handled multiplayer progression specifically in a way that was very atypical of their series.

I just wanted to point out that this video solidifies the fact that DKDiamantes truly is the Rat expert, and knowing one of AdRic's current goals is for him to discuss the Skaven to Bricky is even funnier now after watching this

I could not for the life of me tell you why, but watching clips of Black Ops 2 in the background of this video fills with me so much nostalgia that it nearly brings me to tears. I’m not a big CoD fan anymore, but I played the SHIT out of Black Ops 2. Like, I got the diamond camo for nearly every gun type. At LEAST a thousand hours were spent playing the game with friends I haven’t spoken to in a decade after school which I haven’t even seen in that long as well. It’s good memories.

thank you for making this video ive played mw2 online for like 5 years and am shocked noone told us about RCE etc

I've been the victim of an RCE attack years ago, leaving my Steam account with a permanent VAC-ban on it. I haven't played a CoD game ever since. I'm not dealing with that headache again.

I say it is better to have these games pulled than to have them not get fixed and continue to put people at risk. Sucks to see them go but it would be better

thanks for linking me in your video!!!

I just took my PC hard copy to look on the back about the pulling of online services. Weirdly enough, the thing about pulling the online services seems to only be on console copies on PC there is no mention about it on the back of the box

Now I gotta go on the way back machine and see if and when the multi-player tag was removed or if it was never there to begin with Imagine the hacker of your private match was just Gabe himself seeing if the games were still exploitable and removed the tags after he confirmed it

This was absolutely fascinating. I do not care about COD and I know nothing about hacking, but the delivery, writing and animations of this video was like watching a Netflix Documentary. Except if the documentary was written, directed, and produced by a bro. 10/10

would be nice if there was some law that stated that if you pull a game from services that you can't get mad if there is a 3rd party revive

Great video Bricky! Thank you a lot. And no, I never planned on buying CoD, but hearing you talking about it is always amazing.

I guess the call of duty server managers need to be sued in order to wake tf up and fix their shit. 🤷‍♂️

This is probably your best video, Bricky. Props, seriously, this was so good.

I do love it when Bricky goes on rants that involve the direct safty of a player base, and how scumy triple A has gotten, well done video man.

why does nobody sue activison for negligence by this point? if they REFUESE to acknowlage it that would count as negligence

Another banger of a video. What was that lil jig you played when listing the things accessible RCEs?

Rats, rats, weeeeeeee're the RATS

from years gone, tf2, CoD and many others, the will to play will drive heroes to build playgrounds.

this reminds me of the old day with friends thank you for that one of them is gone for good so its nice to know people still play like this

I love the effortless transition into the gamersupps ad I wanted to like and subscribe twice

There is the option to report a product on Steam. I think we should "report bomb" the older cods to AT LEAST Steam do something about them, even if it is just a few changes on their store page to be in more accordance with the actual state of the game, but we can not just stand by as this happens. This is CRIMINAL. The industry has been increasingly stepping on the consumer in detriment to corporative gains and what they believe is a "sucessful product". This can only go so far until we get to a breaking point.

This is why I have not played CoD since the Xbox 360, I tried MW2 on a free weekend around then and everyone in the game was hacking.

I really hope the SM2 guys take the work they had already done and turn it into a standalone game at some point in the future. It'll be hard, but after how much work they put in to begin with I believe they could maybe do it.

I legit just watched a video of someone going over non zombie game modes, and then watched your video on the ghosts and I started to install it and then I got to this video and now im honestly kind of scared cuz I have played a few of these games a few years ago

Bricky! Thanks for covering this issue. I know that I should talk about the issues with CoD, but I do want to commend you for saying something nice about rats! I've been adopting them for a few years now and try to help dispel the stigma they have. It makes me happy to see people talk about them without disgust, even if it's for a joke.

Thank you for making this video, too many people dont know about this issue and it needs more publicity.

Sometimes I question if companies like having cheaters sometime to profit off smurf accounts, subs and other monetary means.

This reminds me of the shenanigans that have been going on with Titanfall 1 and 2. A person or group of people have been preventing multiplayer from working for both titles. A RU-vidr by the name of Upper Echelon covered it in a few vids.