British Call of Duty: Warzone streamer NitroLukeDX, aka Luke Pickering, has responded to allegations of cheating.
As outlined by ModernWarzone, NitroLukeDX appears to have been hit with one of Activision’s new Ricochet anti-cheat counter measures live on stream:
This clip has racked up 5m views in less than 24 hours at the time of writing this article, with many in the community making comments about the situation.
Activision recently posted an official Warzone Ricochet anti-cheat Season 3 update, saying all accounts caught cheating may be permanently banned across Call of Duty titles, and that a new replay investigation tool will ‘help protect the integrity of Modern Warfare II multiplayer and Warzone 2.0’.
“Since our previous progress report, #TeamRicochet has developed and tested a detection for third-party hardware devices that alter the Call of Duty gameplay experience,” the update said. “These devices act as a passthrough for controllers on PC and console and, when used improperly or maliciously, can provide a player with the ability to gain an unfair gameplay advantage, such as reducing or eliminating recoil.”
NitroLukeDX on cheating allegations: ‘These people have been hunting me down for years, they want to cancel me’
NitroLukeDX has since responded to the allegations in a video by BadBoy Beaman, another content creator who is friends with Luke.
Luke claimed that he is ‘absolutely not’ cheating. He said that the clip of him shooting invisible players was made on Monday March 27th, before Season 3 and its anti-cheat released, and that he’s got identified because the system is in its testing phase, for all of the match reports he’s received by stream snipers and because he’s in UK lobbies and doesn’t use VPN, so he gets kicked out.
He did admit to using a Cronus mouse on its tournament mode, and that he has evidence to prove when he set this up – February 12th – showing the screen in the video. He said he used this as he felt it was smoother with its refresh rate and that he hasn’t used blueprints.
Luke believes the Cronus mouse is ‘a great reason why’ he’s been encountering invisible players.
“I don’t know make the anti-cheat, I don’t know how it works, but I know anti-cheat has never really worked and never bans the right people, and if you know someone that knows someone, they get unbanned. I’ve been legit from the beginning to the end and that’s why I’ve suffered the most,” NitroLukeDX said.
He added that the accusations of him cheating are ‘an act of desperation’.
“These people have been hunting me down for years,” he said. “The amount of times these people have written bad comments about me, fake lies and allegations that don’t make sense is unbelievable. When you’re striving for success, all these people try and shoot you down everytime, they’re non-stop making rumours and bullshit about me all the time.
‘People put me down to make them feel better. Because I’ve called out people in the past, they’re trying to sucker-punch me and throw me under the bus, they want to cancel me at any opportunity. I’ve done nothing to anyone.’
NitroLukeDX
“I’m one of the most-hated people in CoD because I used to call out a lot of people. Because I’m autistic, I would call out anything sus and it was used as an entertainment factor.
“I should have held my tongue, people have grudges against me and they’re using this moment to say I’m cheating and hacking,” Luke added. “It’s disgusting.”
BadBoy Beaman added in his video that he ‘disagrees’ with Luke’s use of the Cronus, and described Cronus as ‘a cheating device’.
“If you own it you can easily download scripts to it and cheat,” Beaman said. “This is something I’ve always stated and I am against.”
BadBoy Beaman also called out hypocrisy, saying people described the invisible players as ‘a bug’ for Speros but a cheat when it’s NitroLukeDX, and said he wants more unbiased opinions from the community.
ModernWarzone also responded to NitroLukeDX and BadBoy Beaman’s video today, saying it was “a truly pathetic response and a ridiculous defense”.
Rara also created this video saying that NitroLukeDX has been permanently banned for the past two weeks on PC and had to make a new account on PlayStation. Rara also claimed Bad Boy Beaman is ‘biased’ towards Luke and expanded more in these tweets.
Related article: What is Overworld, the education business linked with UK streamer NitroLukeDX?
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
