In the wake of Microsoft’s seismic $69 billion acquisition of Activision, a cascade of Call of Duty titles, both old and new, has been systematically added to the Xbox Game Pass library. The slow-burn deployment ignited with 2023’s Modern Warfare III, paving the way for Black Ops 6 to emerge concurrently on the platform. Now, the next relic to resurface in this digital treasury is the 2017 iteration, World War II. Yet, what was intended as a nostalgic rekindling has instead mutated into a digital minefield for PC players.
Drawn by fond recollections and a thirst for throwback thrills, legions of users surged toward the freshly added title earlier this week. That wave of enthusiasm, however, swiftly collapsed under a deluge of alarming revelations—an influx of Remote Code Execution (RCE) intrusions, both malignant and unnervingly brazen, began mushrooming across online forums.
True to its ominous designation, RCE exploits permit unscrupulous actors to manipulate vulnerable machines from afar, surreptitiously injecting lines of code to pilfer data or unleash havoc. Although such cyber assailants are not unheard of in the realm of online multiplayer, their current virulence within World War II borders on unprecedented. Social media, particularly Twitter, has become the battlefield for users urging fellow gamers to abstain, citing rampant security breaches and unfiltered intrusions.
The malefactors have grown audacious—forcefully terminating systems, scribbling cryptic or mocking notes via Notepad, and, in an especially jarring episode, summoning explicit content on a secondary display—all without the victim’s consent or awareness. It’s digital trespassing at its most theatrical and grotesque.
These exploitations not only tarnish the standing of Game Pass but cast a bleak shadow over its strategy of reinvigorating legacy Call of Duty installments. If these breaches persist unchecked, they risk eroding user trust, repelling would-be subscribers, and stymying Microsoft’s ambitions for ecosystem expansion. As of now, there is deafening silence from Activision regarding remediation efforts.
Until a definitive fix manifests—one capable of sealing the exploitative rift—prudent players would do well to circumvent Call of Duty: World War II within the Game Pass enclave. Ignoring this cautionary signal may very well render your system the next stage for this unsettling theatre of cyber manipulation.
