Call of Duty: Warzone Players Are Telling You to Check Your Nuts

A new grassroots campaign is using Call of Duty: Warzone lobbies to remind young men to check their nuts for signs of testicular cancer.

A new mission has dropped in Call of Duty: Warzone, and it’s not about killstreaks.

A grassroots campaign called The Lifesaving Lobby is turning the dead air between matches in Call of Duty: Warzone into a wake-up call for young Aussie blokes: check your nuts.

Launched quietly in April during Testicular Cancer Awareness Month, the campaign infiltrated online lobbies with one goal – to encourage self-checks for testicular cancer, the most common cancer in men aged 15 to 35.

Led by Brisbane-based advertising professional and longtime gamer Rhys Venning, the campaign recruited a squad of competitive players who went into Warzone matches under pseudonyms like The Pain Below, Aching Boys, and Usual Lump – names alluding to common symptoms of the disease that will affect around 960 young Aussie men this year.

Check out the video for the campaign here:

The idea came to Venning after he heard the statistics behind how many young men were impacted by testicular cancer on a podcast.

“I was shocked,” Venning said. “I’ve had two mates diagnosed, both are doing well now, but both were young and healthy when diagnosed – that hit me.”

Instead of letting that moment pass, Venning did what any good tactician would: he turned it into a play.

“The average gamer spends hours immersed in high-energy gameplay, but between matches, there is a moment of pause – the lobby,” he said.

“That two minutes of nothing was the seed of an idea: what if it became a prompt for a self-check? A moment to potentially save a young man’s life.”

The team took to Call of Duty: Warzone lobbies with no commercial motive, just a simple message dropped post-match: check your nuts.

Backed by Movember, who gave the campaign access to its Know Thy Nuts education hub, the Lifesaving Lobby is already proving that good ideas don’t need corporate sponsorship or big ad spends to hit their target.

“There is no commercial backing and no fundraising component, just a clear goal to raise awareness and encourage early action,” Venning said.

“If just one young bloke found a lump and got it checked early because of this, that’s more than enough for me.”

Whether you’re in a sweaty match or spectating, next time you’re in a Call of Duty: Warzone lobby, take the prompt seriously. Two minutes of downtime could make all the difference.