Treyarch, popular developers behind Call of Duty’s Black Ops series, are facing community anger at what appears to be a decision to prevent players tracking their stats so easily.
Recent changes have seen avid players of the best-selling FPS franchise unable to access their stats on third party stat tracking sites, such as CoD Tracker.
These issues occurred after changes were apparently made to Call of Duty’s API, restricting the availability of player data. People trying to access this data, who do not have permission, are now met with a “not permitted” error message.
Players used stat tracking websites to see their in-game Black Ops 4 statistics. (via CoD Tracker)
One reddit user, ‘BMilla9’, posted a ‘Stat Tracker shutdown rant’, in which they aired frustration at unkept promises from Treyarch, as well as unwelcome adjustments to the official companion app, which makes stat tracking less in-depth.
These issues occurred after changes were apparently made to Call of Duty’s API, restricting the availability of player data. People trying to access this data, who do not have permission, are now met with a “not permitted” error message.
However, not only were third party sites affected, as the Call of Duty companion app was rendered unusable for stat tracking on March 1, after the changes were made.
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We are currently not able to get @CallofDuty Stats. We are working on alternate solutions but it could take some time.
If anyone from @Activision or @Treyarch could reach out to us, please do, thank you.
— Call of Duty Tracker • COD.TRACKER.GG (@CODTracker) March 1, 2019
It is also unclear whether the decision to alter the availability of this data came from Treyarch or Activision, but, as the developers of Black Ops 4, it is Treyarch who seem to be receiving the majority of criticism for this change.
The tracker community has since been able to develop a workaround, but it is not clear how long this will last and whether Activision or Treyarch will make further adjustments to make this workaround ineffective.
We managed to get stats updating again. Hopefully it works for a while, but who knows. Enjoy it while you can!https://t.co/9iumCA3EGx
— Call of Duty Tracker • COD.TRACKER.GG (@CODTracker) March 2, 2019
Restrictions to API are necessary to avoid third party abuse, but many people seem to believe this is a step too far, and has negatively impacted the overall community.
Treyarch and Activision are yet to respond to these community complaints, so it remains unclear how this situation will develop.
