Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War secret-hunters unlocked a bonus beta day, and Rickrolls
Never gonna give this joke up
The ongoing multiplayer open beta weekend for Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has given both treats and tricks to fans seeking to uncover its secrets. Some people solved another ARG puzzle, which has resulted in the devs extending the beta by another day. Hooray! And other people rooting around in beta files have been rewarded with hidden YouTube links to Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up. Oh no! Curiosity is a double-edged sword. But hey, the beta will run until Tuesday. And damn the meme, it's honestly a fair song.
First, the news for everyone:
That's the official poking, prodding, and puzzling (PPP) they want fans to do. The other form of PPP is unsanctioned, with players rifling through the beta's files hoping to find more things like the potential peeks at Warzone's map. That naughty PPP is evidently not unexpected, mind.
It seems Treyarch set a jokey wee trap for looky-loos, as noted by @luisw_1998. Open the game's executable in a text editor and you can find (I checked myself) a list of settings including some with tantalising names. The SEASON_CONFIG, PCDDEV_GODMODE, LOOTBOXES_CONFIG, and MTX_CONFIG bits are all followed by URLs, which turn out not to be shocking leaks of confidential info but rather different disguised links to the original Rickroll'd video. The URLs tack on cheeky tags like "you_are_curious", "you_are_too_curious", and "you_are=way_too_curious" too. A classic Internet prank, or possibly someone at Treyarch with an earnest appreciation of a pretty fun song.
Fire up the Battle.net client and you can download the Cod Blops Cow multiplayer beta to play until 6pm (10am Pacific) on Tuesday the 20th. The full game will launch November 13th.