As many may already be aware, Activision has caught a bit of flak recently regarding the addition of Call of Duty: WWII to Xbox Game Pass. This is reportedly because players of the PC version of the title were getting their computers hacked and compromised while playing the title!
The publisher announced that the FPS shooter Call of Duty: WWII was “brought offline” on Friday, while they were investigating these reports from hacked players. The outage is currently only affecting PC versions of the game on the Microsoft storefront and PC Game Pass subscription service, while the game still remains playable through Steam on PC, along with Xbox and other platforms.
While Activision didn’t directly announce why the game was taken offline, it comes from a wave of reports on social media from players having their gaming rigs hacked while playing the game. Streamer Wrioh posted a clip of the hack in action, which caused the game to freeze, show command line and text box windows pop up, followed by their desktop wallpaper changing. The text box then warned that Wrioh had been “RCEd”, referring to a remote code execution vulnerability, in which a hacker plants malware that allows them to run malicious code and take control of the device.
This is all stemming from an older and less secure version of the game being uploaded to the Microsoft storefront, which is quite an oversight that I’m sure they are not likely to repeat. This is a very unfortunate situation for fans of the game, and with any luck, Activision will tend to the issues promptly and accordingly.
