Rules

Community maintained rulesets for Call of Duty: Zombies

Full gameplay is MANDATORY. Small amounts of missing footage because of a stream cutting out is fine - as long as no crucial moments in the game are missed.

Tip

You can avoid missing footage by recording at the same time.

#footage
Gameplay MUST BE publicly available (unlisted YouTube video is fine) at all times, and have good enough quality to be able to clearly make out all important visual aspects of the game.
#footage
Covering ANY hud element with any sort of overlays on the stream/recording is NOT ALLOWED.
#footage
Reading otherwise inaccessible information or changing the behavior of the game via patching, plugins or memory reading/writing is NOT ALLOWED unless a specific feature is widely understood as quality of life without providing significant advantage or is explicity allowed.
Editor note

This rule is very broad, but it applies whenever you cannot find an information about something specific. In some categories, you'll find rules that are essentially a duplication of this one, but for something specific, this means, the community discussed that one specific thing.

#tool
Using tools that write to game memory (like Cheat Engine) is NOT ALLOWED.
#tool
Emulators and virtual machines are NOT ALLOWED.
Requires further discussion

Emulator definition ambiguity

This rule technically makes playing on Linux unlegit, because the game is ran through an emulation layer. This has never been enforced, but the rule has not been updated either.

#system
Multiple actions bound to a single key/button, otherwise known as macros, are NOT ALLOWED.

BO1 explicitly voted in:

#config #gameplay #tool
Setting the sv_cheats DVAR to 1 is NOT ALLOWED unless otherwise specified.
#gameplay
Changing all settings available from unmodded game UI is ALLOWED unless there is a specific rule restricting it.
#config #system

Substituting a player in a coop game is NOT ALLOWED.

Note

Substituting a player means a different person joining for another session within the same game, the same set of players need to play throughout the entire game.

#gameplay

Split screen is ALLOWED for console runs.
#gameplay #system

Platform Rule
PC - Steam / CD NOT ALLOWED
PC - Plutonium REQUIRED FOR PC
Xbox 360 / One / Series ALLOWED
PS3 ALLOWED

PC Plutonium voted in

#system

A verified community patch is REQUIRED for runs on PC, and must be used only on Plutonium.

Note

This was done to prevent cheating and for further enforcement of the rules.

#provided-by-waw-patch #tool

Covering Plutonium anticheat output on the gameplay is NOT ALLOWED. The output is the text in the upper right corner on the screen, and list of checksums listed in the upper left part of the screen.

Tip

Check your stream overlay alignment BEFORE starting the game, make sure it does not cover any of important information on the screen.

Important

These are the protected elements

image

#footage #plutonium
Disconnecting, reconnecting and pausing in Co-Op runs via Plutonium is ALLOWED. In effect since May 19, 2023

Voted in

#gameplay #provided-by-plutonium #system
External automatic game and round timers are ALLOWED as long as they don't write to memory.
#tool
Max FPS changes are ALLOWED in range of 20 to 250.
#config #gameplay

FOV changes are ALLOWED, but must not go above 120.

Important

FOV Scale does increase the FOV, make sure combined they don't exceed the upper limit. Calculate it by multiplying your FOV with FOV Scale value.

In effect since May 19, 2023

Voted in

#gameplay
Canceling perk drinking animations is ALLOWED.
#gameplay #glitch

Solo-Op is ALLOWED via the following methods:

  • Connecting from multiple instances of the game from the same computer.
  • Two people physically controlling the game at the same time.
  • Using bots to fill player slots.
In effect since May 19, 2023

Voted in

Revoted in

#gameplay
Custom Camos and Textures are ALLOWED, but MUST NOT give better visibility or be transparent. In effect since May 19, 2023

Voted in

#aesthetics #gameplay

Fixed Backspeed is ALLOWED.

Important

This rule permits modification of player_backspeedscale and player_strafespeedscale dvars up to a value 1.0

In effect since May 19, 2023

Voted in

Re-voted in

#gameplay #provided-by-waw-patch

Fast Knife exploit is ALLOWED.

Tip

Fast knifing is holding the fire button and then knifing rapidly

#gameplay #glitch

Bypassing the 25 day Black Screen is ALLOWED.

Tip

BIOS method is allowed, but as of Plutonium R5260 it can be done with the command cl_fix_25day_blackscreen 1

In effect since Sep 18, 2025

Voted in

#gameplay #provided-by-plutonium #system

The use of the pause_hard command is ALLOWED.

Tip

This command freezes your game to prevent certain things from crashing it, and allows for Co-Op pausing without leaving the game.

#gameplay #provided-by-plutonium

Automatic trap timers are NOT ALLOWED.

Important

Automatic trap timer is a timer that reads trap cooldown state from the game directly. Timing the trap manually is ALLOWED

In effect since May 19, 2023

Voted in

#tool

Removing stun effect with a grenade is ALLOWED.

Tip

By damaging themselves with a grenade, player can remove any stun effect, eg. traps or Wunderwaffe

In effect since May 19, 2023

Voted in

#gameplay #glitch

Disabling Plutonium anticheat functionality is NOT ALLOWED. The following DVARs CANNOT be disabled:

  • cg_flashscripthashes
  • cg_drawidentifier
#config #provided-by-plutonium #system
Loading a mod from the main menu or any kind of fastfile is NOT ALLOWED.
#tool
Renaming or deleting vanilla fastfiles so that the game does not load them is NOT ALLOWED.
#tool
First box patch is NOT ALLOWED. In effect since May 19, 2023

Voted in

#tool
Fast ray exploit is NOT ALLOWED.
#gameplay #glitch
Removing the fog is NOT ALLOWED. In effect since May 19, 2023

Voted in

#aesthetics #gameplay
Setting corpse count value to any option that's not exposed by the in-game options menu is NOT ALLOWED.
#config #gameplay
Duplication of weapons is NOT ALLOWED.
#gameplay #glitch
Plugins are NOT ALLOWED unless otherwise specified.
#tool
Loading any GSC scripts other than the community patch is NOT ALLOWED.
#tool

Removal of foliage, smoke effect, and fire is NOT ALLOWED.

Tip

You can use grenades to remove foliage from the map.

#gameplay

Changing config values except for whitelisted ones listed below is NOT ALLOWED:

  • FOV
  • FPS
  • Fast Restart bind
  • Hostname
  • HUD graphics changes
#gameplay

Campaign difficulty exploit is NOT ALLOWED.

Note

Difficulty settings can carry over between campaign and zombies, which changes player statistics. Zombies is meant to be played on "Regular" by default.

Players do not need to do anything unless they loaded a mission beforehand, in which case just restart the game on PC, for console however you will need to load a campaign mission on the "Regular" difficulty, as it will save to your config.

#gameplay #glitch

Leaving and rejoining after dying to disable "ghost spawns" is NOT ALLOWED.

Tip

If players bleed out, the spawn remains active. This is called a ghost spawn

#gameplay #glitch

Changing FPS mid game to explicitly save yourself is NOT ALLOWED.

Note

Doing this dramatically increases the chance of surviving as close situation, as zombies are not nearly as sticky on lower frames.

In effect since Aug 31, 2025
Editor note

This was brought up during the 2025 vote's initial discussion, there is no stream/recording that we are aware of, however most of the players were in favor of disallowing it.

#gameplay #glitch

An automatic indicator for insta-kill rounds is NOT ALLOWED. In effect since Sep 18, 2025

Voted in:

#tool

Modifying the game to fix Wunderwaffe DG2 health bug is NOT ALLOWED

Note

When player shoots themselves with the Wunderwaffe and gets zapped, their max health is permanently reduced. It can only be mitigated in coop by going down.

Voted in

#gameplay #glitch