‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’ Booster Posts Mammoth Score [Updated]

A controversial video made the rounds this weekend featuring a “Call of Duty: Black Ops” player racking up a whopping 501 kills in a single match. Possibly a world record -  if it wasn’t fraudulent.

The player – eViLxGoYaBeans – took part in a Demolition match in which his clan demonstrated a “spawn trap” – essentially, covering the opposing team’s spawn point so completely that they can be killed nearly instantly each time they spawn. It’s a difficult (if controversial) maneuver – unless your enemies are complicit.

The video from his perspective illustrates a text book spawn trap: lock down the enemy team’s general spawn area and simply shoot them as they pop back onto the screen. As the match continues, however, it becomes clear this is no ordinary spawn trap – and not only because the player racks up just over 500 kills. At one point, he brazenly stands right behind a spawn point and simply knifes enemies the second they appear – something that simply cannot be countered.

One discerning gamer realized something hinky was going on and launched a black op of his own – befriending one of the players who was on the receiving end of the brutal match (ii DEVOUR sklz) and thus gaining access to his playercard. Housed within it are a player’s combat record – wins, losses, accuracy and other stats – and more importantly their recently played matches recorded automatically into theater mode for anyone to view.

Foraging through the illegitimate player’s recent games for proof of illicit activity, he noticed a few other matches with similarly lopsided results. While he couldn’t locate the original slaughter which saw the cheat finishing with 1 kill, 336 deaths, another match he discovered features the same boosters up to the same trick: ii DEVOUR sklz firing his gun blindly in the air to alert his friends on the other team of his location for an easy kill. He proceeds to do this for 20 minutes.

A quick check of his Friend List proves a connection between him and the “eViL” clan. One member of that group even boasts of his “accomplishments” in his profile.

While it’s easy to point the finger of blame at Treyarch for designing the game this way and in a sense allowing such a tactic to be employed, this is more about a few unscrupulous players gaming the system and ruining the experience for others. Disregarding the insane ‘kill’ number and game type, boosting is possible in any game mode. It was also a big problem in both “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” and “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ – the latter notorious for ‘boosting lobbies.’

Theater mode, along with the surge of online “Call of Duty” videos, gives Treyarch two helpful tools with which it can combat such flagrant and pathetic behavior. So far, however, the company has yet to act: all accounts remain active.

UPDATE: The original uploaded 501-8 video has been rendered private by that user. It can still be seen here, however.

UPDATE #2: One site is reporting that the offending players have been temporarily banned and received stat wipes. The news is based on a Tweet from Treyarch Community Manager Josh Olin. We couldn’t independently verify this, but the two players’ “Black Ops” playercards show they haven’t played a “Black Ops” match since early yesterday afternoon. However, their in-game stats and ranks were unchanged as of this writing.