Last week, Activision released PlayStation 4 and PS5 ports of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2. They cost $40, don’t include the paid DLC maps, and feature no quality-of-life improvements. That didn’t stop a lot of people from buying them. But players returning to BLOPS 1 or 2 all these years later are running into hackers and cheaters using exploits to ruin matches or hit max level. Things are so bad that Activision has even turned off some playlists infected with naughty players.
On July 9, after some leaks and a previous confirmation from Activision, Black Ops and Black Ops 2 arrived on PS4 and PS5. While Xbox players had been able to play these two popular CoD games for years via backward compatibility, PlayStation owners had been unable to enjoy 2010’s BLOPS or the 2012 sequel. Now, players have flooded PSN to relive the glory days of Black Ops, but because these releases appear to just be slightly modified versions of the original PS3 games, people are already hacking and cheating en masse in these new ports.
Yāa un glitch pour ĆŖtre prestige max sur BO1 qui ruine complĆØtement les lobbys. On a le moyen de revivre BO1 et BO2 en partant de 0 comme si ils venaient de sortir et les gens prĆ©fĆØrent tout avoir instant au lieu de profiter. Bande des gros dĆ©biles mentaux pic.twitter.com/ESVI1GORAv
— Rida (@BigNeo_) July 13, 2026
Across Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube, you can find players sharing stories of Black Ops 1 and 2 lobbies on PS4 and PS5 being filled with various cheaters. One of the most popular cheating methods involves players modifying their PS4 save data, joining matches of Domination, and then blowing themselves up to get a shit-ton of XP and reach max rank and prestige.
You can find clips of people joining CoD: Black Ops Domination lobbies on PS5, quickly followed by a kill feed showing numerous people blowing themselves away with grenades as soon as they spawn. This often leads to the match having to pause and reconnect to a new host and then filling back upāif it fills back up at allāwith new players who also proceed to do the exploit.
While that’s annoying, an even worse problem involves players killing hacked players and getting a massive amount of negative XP that effectively locks them to negative level one. And because you have to be at least level one to matchmake with players, this softlocks you out of multiplayer access.
“Part of me was afraid this was gonna happen. Another massive L for CoD,” posted one Reddit user.
“Exactly the same experience here…anyone arguing this doesn’t ‘hurt’ anyone should watch this clip,” posted another user under a video of people using the exploit in a BLOPS match.
š¢ Call of Duty: #BlackOps on PS4/PS5
Select playlists have been disabled as we investigate reported issues.
— Call of Duty Updates (@CODUpdates) July 13, 2026
Things are so bad that on Monday, Activision confirmed it had disabled some playlists in Black Ops so it can “investigate reported issues.” Likely, it has turned off playlists that contain Domination or the large-scale mode Ground War, which can reportedly also be exploited.
Frustratingly, as players have pointed out online, these exploits, hacks, and cheats have been a problem for years on the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Black Ops and its sequel. And many CoD vets were worried that these new ports, being basically bare-bones transfers of the PS3 versions, would inherit the same flaws and be hacked and ruined in days. And that’s…exactly what happened. While some are hopeful Activision will fix things up, other players aren’t so sure, seeing as the Xbox 360 versions of the games are still broken and borked all these years later despite being playable again on modern Xbox hardware.
