In the wake of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard that closed in late 2023, the Xbox and Windows maker has been slowly bringing the Call of Duty games — some of the best-selling titles in the world — to its globally popular buffet-style Xbox Game Pass service. This began with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 last year and continued with the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, followed by Modern Warfare 2 this May and now Call of Duty: WWII on Monday.
Players have begun flooding into the 2017 FPS on both Xbox and PC since then, no doubt spurred on by Game Pass availability on both platforms for a title they'd have to pay $60 for otherwise. Unfortunately, though, what should be an exciting revival for the "boots on the ground" shooter has been marred by widespread reports of concerning RCE hacks in online multiplayer.
RCE exploits — short for "remote code execution" — allow hackers to, as the name suggests, execute code on another player's PC remotely. Though generally pretty rare, RCE hacks have been the cause of data breaches and malware injections before, and are indicative of glaring security vulnerabilities in anti-cheat systems. You may recall when all the Dark Souls servers were taken down until after Elden Ring's launch due to an RCE exploit FromSoftware had to fix.
I JUST GOT HACKED PLAYING WW2! EVERYONE DO NOT PLAY WW2 ON GAMEPASS! @Xbox @XboxSupport @Activision @charlieINTEL @CODUpdates @FaZeScope @Mobbing pic.twitter.com/I5pehK1kHKJuly 3, 2025
Evidently, it seems something similar is going on right now with Call of Duty: WWII, as players have posted multiple examples of what appears to be these hacks in action on social media. In the above clip from user Wrioh (also viewable here), for example, their game freezes after they're killed by "FlyingBell76523" — the kind of nonsense string of words and numbers you'd expect for the name of a burner alt account — and code appears to run that opens up a Notepad document with a mocking message before their Call of Duty: WWII client crashes to desktop.
TDAWG, a large Call of Duty content creator, also shared an image sent to him by a fan in which an error caused by an RCE hack displayed an ominous "Get hacked by adrian5909 your pc is now mine" message.
"Just a friendly reminder to not play cod wwii on pc gamepass," TDAWG wrote. "You can literally get your pc hacked. This was sent to me by a subscriber. RT to spread awareness."
Interestingly, user Lasagne Manne — self-proclaimed "Cheat Engine connoisseur" and "video game cheater" — even shared a screenshot of what they claim is the program people are using to perform these RCE exploits. The image shows options for everything from forcing a player's microphone on or off and playing sound effects to far more concerning actions like triggering a blue screen of death (BSOD) or outright causing a PC shutdown.
"Talked to a guy who had access a while back and got a sneak peak/chance to buy the source, its not just ww2 its actually most cod games that are effected," they said, suggesting that other Call of Duty games are vulnerable as well. "There is a current p2c [product-to-consumer] selling with these features and people are getting their pcs turned into botnet zombies."
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Indeed, some quick searches indicate that RCE hacks have been a problem in other Call of Duty titles on PC in years past, though reported cases seem more sporadic than the several you can find on social media about WWII right now. Still, it highlights that there's very much a problem here.
Of course, it's hard to say concretely how dangerous and widespread these exploit programs are at this point, but given that Call of Duty: WWII is eight years old now, I wouldn't be surprised if its anti-cheat systems are far too outdated to combat them. And with loads of players flocking to the game to check it out now that it's on PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, that's a major issue if true.
Publisher Activision and the developers at Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software haven't responded publicly to player reports at the time of writing, but hopefully they're working to patch this apparent glaring vulnerability soon. In the meantime, I'd avoid playing Call of Duty: WWII online on PC if I were you.
