Call of Duty: Black Ops III

No complaint comes up more often: 15% of longer reviews and 32% of longer negative reviews raise remote code execution exploits, malware, IP grabbing, DDoS attacks or the need for a third-party patch. Players describe hackers joining private lobbies, crashing games, changing names and files, and in a few cases claim stolen accounts or attacks on their home connection. "Playing this game feel like playing Russian roulette with your pc," one writes. Some negative reviewers say they love the game and vote no only for this reason ("Great Game, only reason i downvote is because it's still not safe to play"), and 10% of longer positive reviews carry the same warning, telling newcomers to run T7 Patch, T7x, CleanOps or BO3 Reforged, or to play offline. A couple of players say the risk is exaggerated or that the February 2026 patch secured the base game, while most reviews that raise it point readers to a community patch or offline play.

"Over a decade of being out and its still the same price, unsafe to play without a client," one negative review sums up. Price comes up in 10% of longer reviews and 15% of longer negative ones, and the usual point is that a 2015 game still lists at about $60 (or €60), with the season pass and Zombies Chronicles adding a large sum on top. Players feel the map DLC is part of the core Zombies experience ("you pay for the game (including zombies) then realize you still have to pay for some of the main the zombies maps"), and one Chronicles owner complains of getting no discount toward the deluxe bundle. Positive reviews turn the same point into sale advice: 8% of longer positive reviews (148) say to buy it on sale or at a discount ("NEVER buy this at full price."), and several call it good value at that price.

Apart from the security fear, 13% of longer negative reviews describe cheaters. Players report aimbots and wallhacks in multiplayer, and in Zombies and multiplayer alike, people who "will mess with your rank, kick you out of game, grant achievements, aim lock." A few say they were reset to level 1 or boosted to max level against their will, and one says a cheater who unlocked everything for them was "cheating me out of my hard work and honor."

An update is to blame in 11% of longer negative reviews, most often the 19 February 2026 patch, which players say broke T7 Patch and many Workshop mods and maps while leaving the exploits in place: "imagine pushing an update to a 10+ year old game that only breaks security patches against RCE exploits and essentially changes nothing else." Players describe downgrading to an older build to keep playing safely, crashes in the menu with mods installed, and older custom maps that will never be updated. A second round of complaints in September 2026 says another update broke patches again and introduced random crashes, and players also object to updates arriving with no patch notes. One reviewer describes a friend buying the game on sale, only for an update to break the patch before they could play together: "why are y'all still updating the game and preventing safe methods of playing from being used?"

Network trouble shows up in 9% of longer negative reviews, most often "lobby not joinable" and NAT type mismatches that stop friends playing together. "You cannot join because your nat type is strict while your friend has moderate nat type," one writes, and two players on the same home network say only one PC can host. Others report being disconnected mid-match, and solo players resent losing high-round runs to a brief drop: "I just love being kicked out of my single player game because I momentarily lost connection to the online servers." A few players share workarounds such as a virtual LAN, and a couple say they refunded.

Players who cannot get the game running, or keep it stable, write 10% of longer negative reviews. The usual reports are a black screen with audio after the logos ("Every single attempt to load it has been black screen with audio."), a loop of safe-mode prompts, "fatal error" messages, handshake crashes and DXGI errors. One player traced the black screen to having several audio devices plugged in ("apparently this is a bug from having too many audio input/output devices"), another heard that disabling audio drivers worked for a few people but not for them, and a couple mention a new TPM 2.0 check. Some crashes hit at the worst moment, such as the final step of an Easter egg.

A few modding fans want more from the Workshop tools. "I absolutely hate the Fact that you can't load more than one Mod at a Time," writes one, and others complain that modded maps do not count toward rank and achievements, or that some mods take hours to get working.

A scattering of reviews raise technical irritations: the install growing past 100 GB ("The 120+ gbs of storage isn't justified in 2026"), microstutter and frame drops on some systems, resolution resetting on alt-tab, and controllers that do not register.