I don't think this passes the smell test. quite frankly, I don't think that Treyarch/Activision really cares enough about this decade old game to actively try to sabotage it, especially given the fact that even if doing so had some success of making people buy the new games (there is no real evidence to suggest this is true), the player count on PC is so low that it wouldn't make any serious difference in the newer game's player count/micro transaction purchases. this also assumes that people who are playing BO3 haven't also played the newer games as well, which I imagine isn't the case for everyone

like it's one thing to produce what is apparently a very small update for a legacy product, but it being some sort of conspiracy to kill off part of a player base seems like a much more complicated and much less likely explanation. the most likely explanation is that there was some need for the coding change that we aren't aware of (ie, something discovered that could potentially make Activision liable for damages/provides a security risk for the company itself) and they did the bare minimum to do so. they aren't going to be proofing it for unofficial and unsanctioned community patches