It was a season debut like no other, and owing to some memorable and somewhat tragic moments, it’s one that won’t be forgotten for a while. For OpTic Texas, it was a heartbreaking season opener, with a complex and (in the eyes of some) potentially malicious situation bringing about the decision to forfeit the fixture against Minnesota Rokkr. It doesn’t matter if you’re blaming the stability of the game or the decisions of Rokkr’s Cammy, it’s a sour situation all-round.

In the closing seconds of the third-round match, a Control on El Asilo, Cammy summoned an SAE – a GA’d killstreak. There’s a known bug concerning the SAE at present, and it causes the player to freeze in place upon kicking it off, and that’s exactly what happened. There were single-digit seconds left in the game when Cammy called it in and owing to the bug surfacing, the COD League rules determined that the entire round should be replayed.

At that point, OpTic Texas had already won the round.

Controversial, To Say The Least

This isn’t how Scump wanted his final season to begin. (Image Credit: COD League)

There are several key pieces of information to take away from this situation. Firstly, given that the SAE killstreak is GA’d, Cammy shouldn’t have been running it in the first place. Furthermore, as a top-tier professional competitor, he should have recognised what it was that he was about to deploy, as the in-game menu does allow for a preview. Unfortunately, owing to limitations in the Modern Warfare II platform, once Cammy had set the SAE up, he couldn’t remove it again.

For now, there are arguments hailing from all sides of the debate. There is the party that believes Cammy was playing maliciously, deliberately using the SAE to trigger the bug and force a replay, especially considering there was no way that Rokkr could have won at that moment, and triggering the bug did bring a replay order around. There’s another party that believes it’s an unfortunate series of events made up of several mistakes and shortcomings of the platform.

Fortunately, Cammy was on hand after the match to explain the situation from his perspective:

A Question of Competitive Integrity

This situation has cast a dark cloud around day one of the new season, and it’s clear that this will be a year riddled with drama. It could have ended several different ways, but unfortunately, it went the most miserable way imaginable. For instance, OpTic Texas could have agreed to the replay and won the round again, or Rokkr could have respectfully forfeited the map or match owing to the use of the GA’d killstreak, mistake or not.

In actual fact, what has now happened is that Minnesota Rokkr fought tooth and nail for a replay, alienated a portion of its fanbase, and sent OpTic Texas off in a rage. This was easily the juiciest event to come out of the launch of the 2023 season, and it easily overshadowed the fact that Atlanta FaZe lost 1 – 3 to Boston Breach. As the memes targeting the OpTic Texas forfeit situation rolled in thick and fast, the Call of Duty community was sent reeling by what could just be called the latest in a long line of mishaps.

This is going to be a busy year – will Scump have his happily ever after as he heads toward retirement?

For more Esports.net Call of Duty news, check out our report on the League streaming exclusively on Twitch in 2023.