Black Ops Cold War Anti-Sniping Features Explained

Call of Duty: Cold War Black Ops has only been out for a day and it’s already one of the biggest games on Twitch. But every time popular streamers attract tons of viewers into a multiplayer game, the odds of stream snipers increase dramatically. While snipers can sometimes create entertaining moments, Treyarch wants to make sure that Cold War Black Ops streamers can choose how easily their games are shot.

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, stream sniping is when viewers attempt to enter the same game as the streamer they are watching. While this may seem innocuous, it is most often used as a way to upset the streamer in the hopes of ruining their game and causing a strong reaction while streaming.

The most common method of stream sniping is to simply queue for a game’s matchmaking at the same time as the streamer you’re watching, which is exactly what Treyarch is aiming for. In Cold War Black Ops, there is an option to hide the matchmaking timing.

This means that when a streamer clicks the button to start looking for a match, the matchmaking timer starts to increase, but the game doesn’t actually start looking for a match until a random number of seconds later. This makes it difficult for players to guess exactly when they will need to start their own matchmaking to try and enter the same game.

If a player ends up in the same multiplayer match as a streamer, Treyarch also has a fix for that: Cold War Black Ops allows streamers to make their username a randomly generated anonymous tag and to do the same with the names of all other players in the game.

All of these anti-stream sniping features can be enabled or disabled through the Content Filter area in the Accounts & Network menu in the game.

While these features probably won’t eliminate stream sniping entirely, they should make it much more difficult. More importantly, they give streamers more freedom over their streams and the ability to create the best experience for themselves and their viewers – at least, those who aren’t trying to find them in the game.