Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War changes multiplayer challenge tracking, and it's making the community uneasy

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
(Image credit: Activision)

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has made a contentious change to the way challenges are tracked.

Black Ops Cold War developer Treyarch released a small update for their shooter last night. With this new update, the way multiplayer challenges are tracked has been changed, so that if you progress a challenge and then quit the match, your progress will still have counted, despite the fact that you bowed out early.

For example, if there's a challenge to get five headshots with the XM4, and you complete that challenge in a match, you'll receive a pop up notification telling you that the specific challenge has been accomplished. Previously, you'd then have to finish that match for the challenge progress to count, but with this new update, you can quit the match straight away without any penalization.

It's made the Call of Duty community slightly uneasy, and it's not hard to see why. Ordinarily, players would have to see a match through to the end for their multiplayer challenge progress to count, but now, many fear that once a challenge is complete, players will simply quit a match, leaving their team down one player against the opposing squad.

Shortly after the new update went live yesterday for Black Ops Cold War, Treyarch community manager Josh Torres clarified one issue. As seen in the tweet below, Torres states that some multiplayer challenges will now require a player to specifically finish a match, making sure that the player in question is seeing a game through to the end. It's an indicator that Treyarch seems to want a combination of challenges that do and don't require you to finish a match.

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Just last week, Black Ops Cold War Season 3 went live, introducing a slate of new multiplayer maps, as well as several new Operators, to Treyarch's ongoing game. Additionally, the popular Sticks and Stones mode finally made a comeback in the new seasonal update, and famed franchise character Captain Price was added in as a free Operator for all. It wasn't exactly a quiet period for one of the biggest games on the face of the planet, and that was before Treyarch changed challenge progress in this major way.

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Hirun Cryer

Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.