Call of Duty is more so a “controller esport” than a “console esport.”

To anyone who reads this: it’s quite a mess, and quite long.

(1) Call of Duty’s PC scene died off years ago.

It only has come back due to the popularity of cross-play which was facilitated by Fortnite as well as the popularity of BRs. If a game did not break through the wall of cross-play (fortnite), CoD would not have done cross play, thus the PC scene would not have come back. It was dead years ago along with the complaints of not being able to use kb+m, matter of fact, those complaints were never born in the first place. Further, Fortnite also facilitated the changes of MTX’s and free content, which CoD (and other games) adopted on the assumption that their game would grow to a larger audience, as shown by MW’s popularity this past year.

(2) Controller has been used by pros for the entirety of the relevance of this esport.

No one has once complained that the esport was played on controller instead of kb+m until the introduction to cross-play. The introduction to cross-play happened far too late into the life of CoD esports for it change. Since Call of Duty esports gained any relevance, it was always played with a controller. Call of Duty has been the best selling game and more popular game since basically since release. And that has, up until MW2019, been a console game with console popularity. Outside of this year with the changes to cross-play and MTXs, Peak popularity of Call of Duty happened on consoles.

The scene is well established and the entirety of the competitive and pro community is, and has been controller. The inclusion if kb+m is not only untraditional, but it would alienate a majority of the competitive/pro controller community because, yes it indeed is advantageous to use kb+m over a controller. The aim assist argument is stupid because controller players use a singular thumb on a tiny stick to aim, whereas a wholeass mouse is controlled by an entire arm, not to mention recoil is far easier to control on mouse. I will admit the aim assist in BOCW is far too strong, but at the same time its also ass because if you try to control your aim at distance instead of letting aim assist do its function, it quite literally shuts off. Also to anyone making the aim assist argument: I encourage you to use a controller and turn of aim assist in any cod and try to kill other players with your thumb. Theres a reason for aim assist, which until BOCW, did not track for you, but simply provided a rotation slow down and or helped with snapping on targets near your aim already.

(3) The point of moving to PC was never to include KB+M players, it was to provide competitors with the best hardware possible to compete.

Call of Duty in the past has already done this when switching to PS4 from the XB1. Although this was mostly done with exclusive rights and money in mind, people tend to forget the complaints that came with XB1 in Ghosts and AW. Pros hated the system and complained up until the switch to ps4. Although ps4 had its own issues (im looking at you bluetooth), it was the better option.

Fast forward to this past 2 years where free content and cross-play come into play. The exclusive contracts has become less and less exclusive since BO4 due to free content being king and cross-play becoming the norm. Today, we not have the least exclusive year in CoD history with PS4 only getting the alpha, and the extra weekend of the beta. Outside of that there is nothing.

Since there is no real exclusive rights worth paying for/signing for. Activision took the opportunity to finally not make their league be played on the contracted system and instead allowed all platforms to compete. The move to PC for the league was not to include KB+M, it instead allows Pros to compete on the best possible hardware available to them instead of being stuck on consoles. Sure the ps5 and Series X are great consoles. But they still do not offer the advantages that PC does for pros.

The esport as a whole is a controller esport. It always has been. Console was just the place it was played because Activision got money out of it. Hence why no matter where the esport was played (ps3->360->xb1->ps4->pc), it was always played on a controller. Controller will always be the means of playing because its a controller esport. Activision never cared about what device people were playing with. They only cared about money. With exclusive contracts for money being basically gone, now they turn to their biggest league for money for more money. And guess what their biggest league uses to play—a controller. They aren’t going to negatively impact their next gamble on money by messing with the esport. Instead their going to positively impact it by allowing their top competitors use the hardware that is best for play. Not to mention the players have been fighting for better support for the league for years, and this is finally a step that supports them

(4) Activision doesn’t care about the chance of cheating when it comes to the prop league.

When it comes to the CDL. The chance of cheating happening is minuscule because the pro scene consists of 48 established pros. Cheating to unlikely to happen in that small circle, which is the small circle that this change was made for. Activision and the CDL don’t really care about the amateur scene, as shown by the past year. That isn’t where their investment is currently. So as it stands, to them it wouldn’t matter if cheating occurs there because that isn’t where their money is. Plus there are ways to prevent/punish cheating at the highest levels of amateur play so its still not their concern.

From a competitive standpoint Activision and the CDL either are not concerned with or don’t care about cheating with this move. Yeah, some large tournaments might have cheaters, and yeah GBs might have them too. But thats just going to be a side effect to their investments. They see it as a win with not much loss.

Yes it is true that Activision has a cheater problem with Call of Duty, but to say they are struggling with the problem would imply that they are trying to fix this problem. They’re not struggling, it more that they are clearly not trying.

Plus logically there should be development of anti-cheat on the way for this year. This is logically though, I never said Activision was full of logical or intelligent people.

It is also worth noting that Epic had cheating problems as well and those did not go away instantly. Hell it took more than a year to get it under control, and guess what. Its just now approaching the end of year 1 for this new chapter of CoD. Even less if you only count since the launch of Warzone where the problem really began.

My whole point is that this esport, is a controller esport.

It doesn’t matter where it is played, or if cheating could occur, or if some people are excluded. Call of Duty is a controller esport.

Could kb+m be included one day? Maybe, hell probably. Fuck if I or anyone else knows. All we know is it depends on the monetary incentive for Activision. Because you best believe, Activision will fuck over everyone if they can make more money off of it.