The Dropshot - A Call of Duty Podcast · The Dropshot, LLC

We Tried Call of Duty Recently...

March 1, 2026·59 min·5 clips

A popular streamer went from calling Warzone the best it's ever been to completely hating it in just one week.

Casey and Tanner return to discuss recent developments in the gaming world, starting with their brief experience returning to Call of Duty Warzone after the Black Ops 6 integration. Despite initial positive reception, Casey played for only two hours before quitting due to boredom and frustration with the unchanged core gameplay loop. The hosts note that even previously enthusiastic players like Metaphor have turned negative on the game after recent updates that increased UAV costs and removed money from scavenger contracts, making high-kill games much harder to achieve. Steam player counts show minimal growth with only one additional average player compared to January. The discussion moves to The Finals (Ark Raiders), which has been losing players rapidly, dropping 30% in the last 30 days from 240,000 to 175,000 average concurrent players on Steam. A viral clip of Shroud encountering obvious cheaters highlights the game's ongoing anti-cheat problems, despite the developers' controversial three-strike policy for cheaters rather than immediate bans. The hosts reference a former PUBG employee who revealed they used to manually monitor popular streamers' games to ban cheaters and stream snipers in real-time, suggesting this level of manual oversight is necessary but rarely implemented. A major legal development involves New York Attorney General Letitia James suing Valve over loot boxes in games like Counter-Strike, claiming they constitute illegal gambling under state law. The lawsuit seeks to stop these practices and compensate affected players. The hosts debate whether loot boxes truly constitute gambling, noting the key difference might be that Counter-Strike items can be sold for real money, unlike cosmetics in other games. They observe that most major games have moved away from loot box models in recent years, possibly anticipating legal challenges. The episode touches on Marathon's beta launch, which the hosts describe as visually unappealing with a bad cyberpunk-inspired art style and mediocre gameplay. They express continued anticipation for Battle Pups as an alternative to current extraction shooters. The conversation concludes with listener questions about food preferences, movie theater experiences, and daylight saving time, maintaining their casual, conversational tone throughout.

As heard by us

A blunt, messy rant about cheating, stream sniping, and how creators can shape a game's fate.

The episode settles into a blunt, sometimes rambling argument about cheating and stream sniping in Ark Raiders, and about how trust starts to slip once those problems keep surfacing.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a messy Ark Raiders rant that turns into a hard argument about cheating, stream sniping, and dev accountability.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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