Game developers working for the company Treyarch (known for owning the Black Ops series from the Call of Duty franchise games) have recently started rickrolling dataminers through links in the code of their new game Call of Duty: Cold War. Dataminers are people who go into the code of something like a game and look through files to try to find more information on something that is hidden. 

Treyarch had four fake file names next to four matching links.Every single one of them had a bit.ly link next to them that, when you copy and paste them into a google search bar, takes you to the song “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley. This is called “rickrolling” someone which became a trend that started in the early days of FaceBook and has recently become popular again. Many still find it funny when others get rickrolled. 

The labels were “SEASON_CONFIG,” “PCDEV_GODMODE,” “LOOTBOXES_CONFIG,” and “MTX_CONFIG.” All hint to potential updates, changes, and features that some speculate will enter the game. The first one hinting at a potential season system, the second hinting at god mode for hackers, the third hinting at in game rewards like loot boxes introduced in earlier games, and the last hinting at microtransactions (buying in game items for money). This is starting a lot of speculation, however, on whether or not these really will be in the game. 

Some speculate that all four will be in it while others believe none of them will. The majority belief, however, is that since it is the sequel to Call of Duty: Black Ops, they will only have features represented in the Call of Duty: Black Ops game. This means only one of them may be confirmed which is microtransactions however, this is obvious as it’s been in almost every Call of Duty game ever. Others are looking to see if a minigame named “Dead Ops Arcade” will be accessible in the game. When the game comes out on November 13, however, all these questions will be answered.