The Impact of the Bomb Glitch

With less than three months left of CoD Ghosts’ lifetime, players are still experiencing a very frustrating glitch in the game that almost has a lifespan of two months. In certain situations, players have found themselves unable to plant the bomb in Search and Destroy, a game type that has been in existence for more than seven years now. It has been over a month since Infinity Ward tweeted that a patch would be out soon, but players are still experiencing this issue today during LAN events.

UPDATE: We’ve figured out the S&D plant/defuse issue in #CODGhosts and will have a fix out tomorrow.

— Infinity Ward (@InfinityWard) July 1, 2014

They did release another tweet the next day stating that the bomb glitch had been fixed. Unfortunately, and disastrously, it was not fully fixed and the issues are still occurring today.

MP UPDATE: Thank you for your patience. We have resolved the Search and Destroy issue [ https://t.co/zDdUKYEMRK]

— Infinity Ward (@InfinityWard) July 3, 2014

Immediate Impact — When this glitch occurs during an event, the game usually is brought to a screeching hault. Officials end the game and restart it with the same score before the round the glitch occurred. As many players know, composure and positivity is the key to good communication, as well as a good team. Not only is this glitch frustrating, but it’s annoying. As a result from this glitch, many teams have ended tournaments in frustration. However, other teams have benefited from the momentum they got after the bomb glitch reversed the flow of the game. At UMG Dallas, several teams experienced this issue including OpTic Gaming. Many people believe that the glitch actually helped OpTic and caused them to go on and win the game after being down. Now I’m not a game designer or coder, and I can’t speak on Infinity Ward or Actvision’s behalf, but it seems like an easy fix considering the game had been out for six and a half months prior to encountering the glitch. Also, the game type has been a staple of Call of Duty Multiplayer since, well, forever. It is strange that something like this could even happen in the first place. Long Term Impact — Through the course of the glitch’s lifetime, over $100,000 has been played for. This astounding amount of money has come from Gfinity, UMG, AEL, MLG online tournaments, and other local LAN tournaments. To think that this much money has been played for on a broken game is mind blowing. CoD eSports heavily relies on the game mode of Search and Destroy and it is even featured twice during the best of five series. These players have been playing a broken game for two months and some of them have their livelihood depend on it. With Advanced Warfare coming up quickly, we may not even see this issue resolved any time soon. It has already been two months, so it could go on for another two or even more. With another UMG tournament and the MLG Season 3 finals, only more money will be played on a broken game unless Infinity Ward can get it together and fix it. When does this glitch happen? — One question you’re probably asking is, how does it happen? Well, nobody knows what really causes it. However, rumors are quick to flood the internet. Some people say it happens when you class switch on Freight. Or when you class switch from having a frag grenade to a semtex grenade. In my opinion, I think when the developers were creating the patch that featured the Vector’s headshot multiplier, they messed up the coding in some way that affects the bombsites as a whole. Obviously they haven’t figured out what happened or else they should have been able to fix it. The “why” is one of those weird anomalies that we as gamers may never know. However, for the reputation of CoD eSports, we better hope that this is fixed before any more substantial amount of money is played for on a broken game. — This is the part where we want your opinion and interaction. Tweet us @eSportsNation and open a discussion about what you think.