Streamers, rejoice, Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War has tackled stream sniping surprisingly well. Some very useful settings that big streamers will want, such as matchmaking delays and the option to hide your own and others' usernames in-game, are grouped together in the back corner of the options menu.

For those unfamiliar with stream sniping, it's the act of cheating by watching a live streamer broadcast during the same matchup, much like my brother screen-cheating during a Halo match with split screen back in 2001, but more futuristic and terrifying. Streamers in almost every competitive game are plagued by stream snipers, but few games have effective countermeasures to stop them.

For Cold War, Treyarch and Raven Software seem to have taken a page from Epic's playbook: in September 2018, "Fortnite" included a matchmaking delay option, which streamers immediately appreciated; Cold War also had the same setting at launch. When the delay is turned on, the game does not actually start looking for matches until a set number of seconds (3, 5, 10, 15, 20, or random) have elapsed. Since the timer is invisible, the viewer cannot know when exactly the matchmaking will begin.

This way, reserve cheaters who want to stream a snipe can only use their wild instincts or have the good fortune to be in the same game. Additionally, they can hide their own usernames from players in the game or hide players' usernames from their own view. This is another common method of streaming snipe. Not having to see the username makes it harder for someone in the streamer's match to recognize the name, tune into the stream, and start sniping.

Obviously, these settings are only useful for a few well-known streamers, but it is cool that Treyarch and Raven are taking this issue seriously from the beginning with Cold War. I myself have never had to worry about stream snipers, but I have seen them ruin a good time for people who don't deserve the trouble.

After all, griefing of any kind should have no place in CoD. At the very least, it's a smart move to ensure that streamers can play the game comfortably for months to come; Call of Duty: Warzone has a streamer mode that hides usernames, but not matchmaking delays.