Plenty of us are playing ye ol' Call of Duty again, and by that I mean the Xbox 360 games. Since servers were updated and repaired, plenty are flocking to the classics thanks to the Xbox One and Series' backward compatibility, but things haven't gone smoothly for everyone. As you can probably guess, these old games have a hacking problem.
This has always been an issue with old Call of Duty games. Around the time of Black Ops 2's launch, I got into World at War only to have a hacker max out my profile, meaning that I couldn't progress anymore in multiplayer. And they did this while I was playing Zombies--nowhere is safe. Jump ahead to 2023 and the same is happening to people in Black Ops 2, the main offender of the classics going by anecdotes lifted from the XSX subreddit.
"The older CoD titles may have been revived but hackers are still rampant," ragingseaturtle posted. "Just a heads-up for those that see the tweets/articles and want to try them. They work but are absolutely filled with hackers".
Others in the comments backed up this sentiment: "I've been switching between [Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3, Black Ops 1, and Black Ops 2]," BobbyJG888 said. "BO2 is probably the most filled with hackers out of those but I just back out and find another lobby."
"In my experience BO2 is the only one that's been bad," nuttageyo said. "Only because you can get a mod menu through theatre mode now."
"I'm on Series X and have only ran into consistent hackers on BO2 and my buddy played a lot of MW2 last night and didn't see a single one", therealstickysheets said.
The Black Ops 2 subreddit tells a similar story, with several posts decrying the hacking problem, asking Activision to sweep in and stop them. Don't hold your breath though - these are old games dating back over a decade, and the theatre clip mod menu strategy has been exploited for five years.
The problem lies in how simple it is to do. You download a two-minute thirty-second clip in the theatre, watch it until it freezes, and then end the film. Voila, you have a mod menu. God mode, infinite ammo, noclip, clones, permanent UAV, teleporting, swapping teams, wallhacks, unlimited KS, and double speed--you can do it all. There's no need for third-party apps or elaborate downloads to your console, which means it's painfully simple to become a hacker in Black Ops 2.
Given that this exploit only works in BO2, it's no surprise that it's the problem child among the classic games now that the servers are seeing a boost. But given that it has been a problem for half a decade, it's unlikely to change now. If you're after a classic Call of Duty to dive back into, maybe try one of the others.