A Korea Herald report says the opening cinematic of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will be edited to remove video clips of a real-world disaster in South Korea that left 160 people dead.

The Seoul Halloween crowd crush occurred in October 2022 during Halloween celebrations in the city's Itaewon neighborhood, when a crowd surge in the narrow streets and alleys resulted in 160 deaths and left nearly 200 more injured. The opening cinematic of Modern Warfare 4 uses footage from that disaster to portray the immediate aftermath of a fictional North Korean invasion of South Korea, the basis of the game's story.

Activision said the use of the video was not meant to "reference or trivialize" the actual event, but merely "to establish the game's fictional narrative." A statement released by families of victims reported by the BBC, however, said "using such an event as material for a game made for entertainment is in itself highly inappropriate and senseless," and added that if Activision "has even a minimum of courtesy and empathy towards the victims, it should take corrective action without delay."

That's now set to happen, as Activision has released a statement saying it will remove the footage from the game and apologized for using it. "We offer our deepest condolences and sincere apologies to the bereaved families, victims and everyone who has been deeply hurt or distressed by this incident." the publisher said.

However, there will be some delay before that happens: The Modern Warfare 4 opening cinematic will be changed in an update set to roll out on November 12.

After 23 mainline games, there are far more Call of Duty maps than anyone can reasonably remember. That's why I'm impressed it took just one screenshot for several fans (with back pain, presumably) to clock that an upcoming Modern Warfare 4 map is actually a remake of a map that's over 20 years old.

Backstab, the new 6v6 map arriving on November 6, is a dead ringer for Burgundy, first seen in Call of Duty 2 way back in 2005. That means Backstab is older than the teenagers currently playing Call of Duty—do with that information what you will.

A number of people noticed this around the same time, but I'll credit Reddit user wizward64 for providing helpful visuals.

Apologies to the reader typing "This was a classic, show some respect!", but there's no way I would've noticed the resemblance on my own. I played Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox 360 when it was new, but not all that much multiplayer. I really like the look of the original Burgundy, though: The desaturated green grass and beige brickwork of the French countryside still looks so clean and attractive 21 years later. I'm also now wondering if my favorite Day of Defeat: Source map (Donner) snuck in some of these CoD 2 assets, or if all WW2 shooters of this era were riffing on the same Saving Private Ryan scenes.

The layouts are near 1:1, which is neat, though the theming is clearly altered. Burgundy was a WW2 map in France (duh) and Backstab appears to take place in either Russia or North Korea (I think I see Cyrillic script on those signs, so leaning toward the former). Backstab is also snowy, so maybe this town will exist in the eventual Russian chunk of the Hajin DMZ map.

Burgundy was a pretty small map for Call of Duty 2, and I expect it'll feel even smaller at Modern Warfare 4's quicker pace. The map's signature feature was a pair of two-story buildings that overlooked the central courtyard from opposite sides of the battlefield. High windows with usable machine gun emplacements made these buildings important for map control, but those windows will presumably become regular sniper nests in Backstab.

Call of Duty is famous for recycling old maps, but a deep dive into the vault like this feels different from the usual. This isn't Infinity Ward remaking a popular map to please expectant fans like we see with yearly iterations of Nuketown and Shipment, but instead pulling a relatively unknown goodie and refreshing it for a new audience.

The OG Call of Duty studio has apparently been doing this for a while and I didn't notice: As commenters point out in that same Reddit thread, the Modern Warfare 2 (2022) map Taraq was a remake of CoD 1's Neuville and Modern Warfare 2019 map Suldal Harbor was a remake of CoD 1's Harbor. Hey, those maps were pretty good.

There is a new game titled "Call of Duty" every year, but it's not every year that Call of Duty is really back.

The tireless schedule of Activision's load-bearing FPS has resulted in more bad games than good as of late—Modern Warfare 3 was an expansion-sized sequel rushed out the door, Black Ops 6 was a step back for multiplayer, and its immediate followup Black Ops 7 was clocked as superfluous and uninteresting even by rain-or-shine fans. These back-to-back games, shouldered by Treyarch, Sledgehammer, and Raven, had cracks and compromises that suggested the Call of Duty machine just can't keep up with both "good" and "fast" anymore.

Modern Warfare 4's greatness shows how right that is. This is an extravagant package on all fronts: A kinetic 6v6 FPS with truly excellent gunplay, a fun campaign that doesn't just play the hits, and an expansive extraction "mode" that would be its own game if any other name were on the box.

I have complaints, but this is what it looks like when Call of Duty is in the pocket. The best Call of Duty studio got to take its time (four years, tied with the longest in series history) and it shows.

Multiplayer

These days, whether or not a Call of Duty clicks with me begins and ends with the guns—how they look, sound, animate, and change with attachments—and Infinity Ward is simply unmatched on those details. Modern Warfare 4's guns spit out layered, cacophonous blasts that will overpower your voice chat by default (as they should). They shake your world as you shoot them without getting in the way of aim. They reload with personality and flair without wasting time. They're loud and metallic without sounding tinny or plastic, like Treyarch guns always do.

Modern Warfare 4 has some of the easiest guns to control in the genre, yet in action, they feel substantial and weighty like a milsim. This is the magic trick that Call of Duty studios regularly attempt, but only this one has mastered.

Infinity Ward just loves being extra about guns in ways that make them memorable. This time, they've had fun mixing both modern and dated weapons with Korean design language: The KG-7 Vulkan is a functionally standard bolt-action sniper rifle, but its worn wooden body and chipped green paint communicate that it's been fished out of an aging North Korean armory. The Warlord, meanwhile, is a double-barrel shotgun with the profile of a brutalist space vessel—flanked by two translucent plastic tubes that you can watch empty and refill as you use it. It's rad.

Not every gun is this distinctive—not even Infinity Ward can produce 30+ guns without forgettable chaff—but there is enough personality in this arsenal to latch onto for hours on-end. I've fully leveled three in just a week, tweaking my attachment setup every few matches to suss out each gun's "thing."

In some cases, Infinity Ward has saved a boring gun by giving it cool attachments. The Han 86 was, to my eye, the most boring assault rifle in the game until I discovered an integrally-suppressed barrel that all-but transforms it into an MP5 in aesthetic and behavior (an FPS classic I'm always happy to see). Attachments feels like bigger choices here than ever before—you can only use five at a time, and instead of stuffing Gunsmith with 20+ barrels, muzzles, and grips that do almost the same thing, there are fewer options per category that are usually the best at what they do.

Infinity Ward has also inherited prestige attachments—the best idea to come out of those recent Black Ops sequels. Called apex attachments in Modern Warfare 4, they're add-ons unique to each gun that drastically change their behavior or add a new dimension to how they work. You only get these after maxing out a gun (or by having a blueprint with them already applied), so I don't have many yet, but I love the ones I've played with.

They range from absurd to subtle:

• The Hyeon Burst's apex turns it into a hybrid burst-auto rifle, beginning with a sped-up burst and transitioning into slower automatic fire as I hold the trigger.
• The M4's apex swaps its traditional magazine for the top-mounted, graphics card-shaped extended mag.
• The Oris DMR gets side-mounted throwing knives (yes) that you can flick at enemies to counteract the gun's close-range weakness.
• The PPSH SMG gets an underbarrel launcher that spews hot napalm on the ground for some on-the-fly area denial.

Apex attachments aren't always worth the hype—I found the Mojave revolver's that lets you "fan the hammer" to fire faster underwhelming as an idea—but they're a way more enticing reason to progress in Modern Warfare 4 than camos or gaudy playercards.

War should change

Elsewhere in the land of "details you end up caring about after 20 years of Call of Duty" are nice quality-of-life touches in Create-a-Class, like the option to copy killstreak or perk selections to other classes, or assign operator skins on a per-class basis.

Then there's all that minutia that Infinity Ward is making a big deal about: revamped movement that allows for smoother mantling and sliding, a depth of field trick that unblurs important parts of the screen, less disruptive gunsmoke, better-looking hipfire. At the time, these all struck me as weirdly minor improvements to trumpet as big swings, and it's now clear why: Modern Warfare 4's core multiplayer takes no big swings. It is, at its core, about executing better what was already there.

That approach has its upsides, like a ridiculous attention to detail, but it underlines Activision's continued disinterest in challenging Call of Duty's status quo. Never has a shooter franchise been so shackled by traditional design choices that haven't been good for years: Killstreaks are still lopsided power trips that bring matches to a screeching halt so that the best player on the server can rack up more kills. Maps are still uninspired square boxes with three lanes and an allergy for verticality. Gunsmith still favors making every gun the same zero-recoil, high-capacity laser beam that wins firefights. It has been 19 years since Call of Duty 4, and I'm still getting shot by a guy who spawned behind me in Team Deathmatch.

The small country of developers who make Call of Duty could take a special interest in these problems, but they consistently don't. Instead, they design sequels around bolted-on distractions—jetpacks, hero abilities, Omnimovement—while actual big swings, like Warzone and DMZ, happen elsewhere on the main menu. We should all want more from a series that asks us to fork over $70 every year.

There is one exception, and it's sadly flying under the radar so far. Among Modern Warfare 4's slate of new modes (several of which are competently made but destined to be ignored) is Frontline, a TDM variant with one change: Teams spawn on opposite sides of the map, and those spawns never change. It sounds so minor, but it's the greatest thing to happen to Call of Duty multiplayer in a generation.

I almost couldn't believe how much better Call of Duty plays with consistent spawns: I can confidently move through the map with an idea of where enemies will come from, which gives matches an understandable continuity—a sense of tug-of-war. Matches are slower, lives more deliberate, and I'm not getting shot in the back.

My life is, for once, not up to the pull of a slot machine. We have territory, they have territory, and there's a middle ground to fight over. It's a winning formula that has worked in better casual shooters for decades (Team Fortress 2, anyone?), and singlehandedly fixes a gigantic problem with these games. Frontline is easily my new favorite way to play Call of Duty and should become the new normal, but knowing Activision and the Call of Duty audience, it'll probably be cycled out of the game and forgotten by next quarter.

DMZ

DMZ is, in many ways, proof that Call of Duty shouldn't be afraid to change.

Going into my first day with the mode, I honestly thought the last thing I needed was another extraction shooter. This genre can be so consuming with its long grinds and punishing stakes that, beyond the occasional Hunt: Showdown night with friends, these days I gravitate to the more consistent, team-based, and casual end of the FPS spectrum. There is no "pick up and play" extraction shooter—or wasn't, until now.

Infinity Ward has made exactly what it's claiming with DMZ: A full-fledged extraction shooter that could be a standalone game like Escape From Tarkov or Marathon, but is instead the third pillar of a yearly Call of Duty installment. Its systems are extensive, its Hajin City map haunting and expansive, and it might have the least annoying chores of any game like it.

DMZ definitely has room for improvement, but I'm impressed. When I look at Modern Warfare 4's iterative core multiplayer and wonder what Infinity Ward has been doing these past four years, I realize this is it.

To me, what sets DMZ apart is how Infinity Ward isn't so interested in loss. Money is easy to make through a combination of valuables, faction assignments, and Dynamic Ops (multi-step missions that randomly populate the map). Cash earned through these missions is "banked", meaning I can't lose it even if I die without extracting. But I'm less likely to actually die than in other games, because I can pick myself up from a DBNO state once at the cost of max health.

Everything accrues XP that unlocks new stations at my FOB, crafting recipes that make future runs more convenient, and traits that permanently enhance my operator. Some of those traits are a huge deal, like a free self-revive in every match, and they don't disappear when I have a bad game. Instead, dying in the field triggers an MIA status for that operator that I can clear any time by dropping a wad of cash.

It's quite generous for this type of game, and I like it. DMZ wants me to always move forward, and in that sense, it sometimes feels more like a Call of Duty RPG.

But it's not like DMZ is immune to gear fear: I had a few anxiety-inducing moments where an especially rare valuable, stack of crafting materials I needed for upgrades, or a rare weapon blueprint was burning a hole in my pack as I tried to sneak off to an extraction site. Hajin City's non-player threats—soldier patrols, helicopters, and drones that snitch on you—have yet to challenge or surprise on the level of Arc Raiders' sophisticated apocalypse machines, but they could easily overwhelm when I took my eye off the ball. I was ready to call the NPC soldiers a bunch of scrubs until they nearly ruined my best run yet.

This gets to my other favorite part of DMZ: Every extraction shooter has chores, but DMZ has a lot of structured events, locations, and formalized missions that can turn grocery runs into something bigger.

A perfect DMZ round

Like one time, a match started as a quick solo trip to find "rigid synthetics" for a stash upgrade I'd been working toward. The description for that material said they're found in residential areas, so I entered an apartment building, looted a locker, and found something I wasn't looking for: a rare key to the "Netshin IT Room."

That key had a helpful description: Unlocks the high-security server room deep within the server clusters on the upper floors of the Netshin Tech Complex within The Grid.

New sidequest added. I love that the hint didn't give everything away: I knew generally where I was going and what to look for, but no arrow or waypoint to follow. So I drove to the center of the city and found The Grid, one of the most dangerous zones in Hajin. You can tell because it's red on the map and walled off on all sides, announcing that you'd have to be dumb to run in there alone.

So I ran in alone, storming the Netshin building and almost dying to heavily armored grunts twice. I ran up six flights of stairs (there was probably an elevator) until I reached the top and started checking every door. Surprisingly, there were other locked doors in Netshin that led to other exclusive areas, and Netshin is just one highrise of several in this part of the city—this map is dense.

I finally found the IT department, used the key, and strolled in thinking I'd hit the jackpot. Not quite: I'd actually disturbed the nest of Jang-ui, one of Hajin's miniboss "lieutenants" that have a chance to appear in each match. Auto-turrets placed in all four corners of the room caught me by surprise and almost killed me on their own, and reinforcements from elsewhere in the building flooded in as well. It was a squirrely fight typical of Call of Duty PvE: Lots of sprinting across the room to buy time for reloads, dumping pounds of lead into Jang-ui's stupid head, and pressing G to replenish armor.

But he finally died, and the rewards were huge: A kitted burst rifle unique to the boss fight and a weapon manual that'd unlock a gun permanently for crafting. That, plus a pile of useful materials, including the synthetics I'd originally been looking for. It was a sweet haul I really didn't wanna lose, which still felt very possible, as I was out of ammo.

I thought for sure I was home free when I found a ventilation shaft that spit me out on the scaffolding under a sky bridge—a hidden exit! From there I could just jump off to escape, and it would've been the perfect end to this little adventure, except I didn't have a parachute. So for the first time, I actually used DMZ's rudimentary stealth system to sneak out of Netshin, hiding behind desks and scrounging for bullet scraps until I left the same way I entered.

PvEvolution

It was a genuinely emergent, self-appointed mission that felt like the best case scenario for DMZ. Not every part of the PvE experience is awesome. Call of Duty still can't escape how normal dudes with heavy armor just aren't interesting as opponents. They can't stack up to Arc Raiders physics-based drones, Hunt: Showdown's supernatural monsters, or even Marathon's UESC corps. But those are all games where, if you're fighting the environment, you're kind of playing them wrong: They are, in practice, multiplayer stealth games until the moment PvP kicks off.

I don't think DMZ will be like that. The fodder soldiers are boring, but they're also everywhere. Killing a few doesn't make so much noise that you're alerting the whole map—relative to its size, Hajin isn't as packed with players as Warzone's battle royale modes. I felt relatively safe to engage AI patrols for their armor plates and ammo without feeling forced into an awkward melee playstyle. That's good, because everything worth doing in Hajin plays out like a mini Spec Ops mission (we all remember that old Modern Warfare co-op mode, right?), including the six "story missions" that are even more campaign-like in nature.

Story missions are longer, narrative-focused tasks available early on. They have more bespoke ingredients than the randomized Dynamic Ops: There's one about a casino heist and another that involves manually pushing a gurney down hospital hallways while AI attacks on all sides. These are fun and pay well, but they don't change from match to match. It seems like Infinity Ward created these as a guided on-ramp for players new to extraction shooters. You have to queue into a story mission before the match starts, and if you do, you'll be the only squad in the match with that mission.

So while DMZ's PvE factions don't stand out, the incentives for fighting them do. Dynamic Ops are repetitive for sure—I did the same "blow up the chemical weapon" routine three times over two days—but they're a better excuse to explore than just opening boxes and praying for the presence of duct tape. This directly tackles a weakness of both Arc Raiders and Marathon, and they'd be smart to steal it.

It's fascinating how Infinity Ward is throwing its weight behind both PvE and PvP here, because I can't really say the same for its competitors. Arc Raiders is, at least to me, about sneaking and scavenging in dangerous environments, not picking fights with other players. In Marathon and Hunt, the loot and boss fights are just the pretense for excellent PvP.

DMZ sprawls out in both directions, which gives it a unique angle, but also means it isn't the best at either play style. PvP fights have been surprisingly rare, but so far they're a lot like Warzone firefights, so just OK. Call of Duty's fast time-to-kill (even with armor plates) and generous aim assist means it's hard to bounce back from being the second one to start shooting, and leads to team fights that begin with one squadmate already down.

Infinity Ward told me DMZ was designed to respect your time, and that really comes through. I love the little touches of streamlining that show this is a Call of Duty extraction shooter, like how you don't need to stuff your backpack with bandages, armor plates, or stacks of ammo before heading out—that's all handled automatically. The game's also smart enough to loot the most obvious stuff for you, like ammo, crafting materials, and items that can stack in my backpack without taking up extra space. Games with this much looting is usually a turn-off, but it's very seamless and pleasant here.

They really went and made a whole-ass extraction shooter within Call of Duty, and it's surprisingly good.

Campaign

As I watched the credits roll on Modern Warfare 4's campaign, a sobering thought infiltrated: I've been playing Call of Duty for two-thirds of my life. While I consider it primarily a multiplayer game these days, what I loved about Call of Duty all that time ago was its campaigns. In 2006, as a shy fourth grader at a new school, I made my first friend because we both played Call of Duty 3 on the Wii and spent a week recounting cool moments from the campaign over lunch. By 2007 (the year of Modern Warfare, of course), our lunch table was losing its collective shit over the part where Captain Price slides you the pistol right as he (as we thought at the time) dies.

As memorable as that sequence was, it marked the moment Call of Duty became globe-trotting romps about superhuman, super serious operatives who prevent WW3 before breakfast. It was pretty badass at the time, but what they gained in the sort of spectacle that makes great Sunday Night Football ads, they lost in relatability.

Sure, those early WW2 campaigns were shlocky riffs on movies, but they starred normal people who primarily wanted to go home—grizzled sergeants and green privates who fended off helplessness with humor. They depicted large-scale offensives won by smaller contributions. That's the energy that Infinity Ward tries to harness again in Modern Warfare 4. At times, it totally works.

This is the most fun I've had with a Call of Duty campaign in years, lending mostly to its new, non-elite faces. Over half of the six-hour campaign revolves around a crew of young South Korean marines (plus a few Americans) running out the clock on their compulsory military service when North Korea suddenly invades. The guys themselves are familiar archetypes—a serious guy, an audience insert who doesn't talk much, an American who fills every silence with a joke—but they're basically charming enough that I cared to remember their names.

I like the idea, even if this latest "ripped from the headlines" premise of a North Korean offensive continues Infinity Ward's streak of flattening complex foreign conflicts through a conventionally American lens (while conveniently making the CIA's dogs the good guys). You'll never guess which global superpower is really pulling the strings this time, ya'll.

Going dark

Playing a "cog in a machine" again unlocks Modern Warfare 4's most standout missions, many of which remind me of the series' best days. "Mayhem" and "Losing Ground" follow a futile attempt to hold the fictional Hajin City against the overwhelming invasion. They're loud, chaotic fights where your characters are noticeably terrified of what's happening (a rarity in a post-Price world) and your side is constantly outnumbered. Later on, "Counter Attack" ramps up the scale and intensity with a massive beachfront assault that can only really be achieved by throwing a silly amount of money at it. It's certainly a better use of resources than the overly gimmicky, Warzone-y campaigns of recent Black Ops sequels.

Even when the action gets smaller, Private Park (no relation) and friends are simply fun to follow. "Stranded" picks up with the squad crash landing behind enemy lines in North Korea, and its Infinity Ward's best swing at a sandbox level to date. The multi-hour mission establishes three non-linear objectives, side quests, and a hideout where you can craft better armor, guns, and camouflage. It's a comparatively quiet, isolating mission than the ones that precede it—almost like playing a micro Far Cry in the middle of a CoD campaign. It was a bit jarring at first, but ended up a major highlight.

I was worried this would prove to be another instance of sneaking Warzone into singleplayer, as the mission uses the DMZ looting system, but I was told the map was made just for the campaign, which is nice.

Infinity Ward could've crafted a whole campaign around Park's squad, and I'm still not sure why they didn't. Instead, their story runs parallel to the disconnected adventures of Captain Price, now a wanted fugitive because of some Modern Warfare 3 business that most people didn't see (the game acknowledges this by playing a lengthy recap video).

Modern Warfare 4 tries to explore a darker Price while replaying the hits—a car chase with shooting, a foot chase with jumping, a cinematic knife fight—but these sequences left my head as quickly as they ended. It's bizarre how different and less interesting this part of the game is, especially considering Price basically exits the story for the back half and never intersects with the real heroes.

It comes off as Infinity Ward checking boxes for the folks who are expecting Price stuff while also wanting, desperately, to do something else. This was billed as the conclusion of the Modern Warfare story that started in 2019, but in practice, it's more like a sprint to be done with it all. It's a shame they dragged Mads Mikkelsen into the bad parts of this one—he could've been a menacing presence in a campaign that actually had time to use him.

It speaks to the quality of this series lately that producing a regular campaign with extravagant setpieces, lavish cinematics, and basically great gunplay is a big win. Uncompromised by the influence of Warzone or Zombies, this is the first time in too long that Call of Duty's campaign does not feel like the afterthought.

It's been 22 years, 11 months, 28 days and counting since we were first graced with Call of Duty. Over those two decades the franchise has emerged as one of the most lucrative in videogame history, with Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announcing that it's passed the $40billion revenue mark.

Speaking of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's success, Sharma reflects: "One of the most celebrated Call of Duty games in its 24-year history, and now $40 billion in lifetime franchise revenue. An incredible milestone. Congrats to the Activision team. And to the players, thank you for being with us."

$40 billion in lifetime revenue places Call of Duty behind goliaths like Mario and Pokémon. It also means that Call of Duty, on average, has earned $4,762,472 a day, which is particularly terrifying if you ask me.

But how it got there is an entirely different question—one that can be answered by the ravenous appetite of consumers in the free market. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 still sits at the top spot with over 43 million copies sold, with Modern Warfare (2019) comes in a close second with over 41 million copies sold. But by and large, the popularity of Call of Duty is driven by Black Ops, namely its older titles.

The prize for most successful launch, however, has to go to Modern Warfare 2 (2022) which earned $1 billion in just 10 days alongside 200 million hours played. This followed Activision Blizzard's sale to Microsoft, which also meant that Modern Warfare 2 was the first time a Call of Duty game had been on Steam since 2017 with Call of Duty: WW2—it even made it into Steam's top 10 games by concurrent players.

The ridiculous release schedule of one Call of Duty game a year certainly seems to be working for Activision. I doubt it would've been able to pass this landmark without the tireless work of Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Sledgehammer Games, and Raven Software pumping out something new year after year. At this rate I'm pretty sure the Call of Duty franchise will outlive us all. Picture this: the dry arid landscape of an Earth pillaged and then left void of humanity, with the sole proof of our existence being the 15th Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 remaster (2193)—I hope it's good.

The Call of Duty movie officially became a thing earlier this year, and aside from making fans of Black Ops cry out in pain it promised "an authentic and exciting" take on the Modern Warfare games. Helmed by director Peter Berg who's known for films like Lone Survivor, Battleship, and The Mosquito Bowl, he's now explained a little more about what we can expect from this movie.

"This is not just 'Hey, let’s shoot them all up and shoot popcorn!'", Bergs says in an interview with Comicbook. "There’s a soul underneath it, that I understand and [Call of Duty's co-writer and producer] Taylor Sheridan understands, [it's] not quite as graphically violent as Mosquito Bowl, but there will be a very strong soul, and consequence of war within the film, called 'duty.'"

Modern Warfare is pretty generic, even for Call of Duty, but Berg insists that it's exactly what the film needs, specifically its characters: "Captain Price, and Soap, and Ghost, and Alex—these are complicated humans." I'm certainly intrigued to see how Berg goes about adapting these iconic characters and their stories for the silver screen although any actor will have something of a mountain to climb to win over hardcore fans.

"These are not—and no disrespect—cartoon characters or comic books," Berg says. "These are very nuanced storylines; like, there’s a real soul to the Modern Warfare universe… And, yes, there’s violence, and there’s hardware, and equipment, and there's killing—but underneath it I think the game, and the craters of the game, are really looking at the cost of war, the cost of having to be a warrior who’s, for whatever reason, chosen to put himself between real danger and the rest of us, and the burden that these guys carry."

Berg's Call of Duty film is set to release June 30, 2028—quite a while away. But if you look at Activision's release schedule it lines up with the games quite nicely. We've just had Modern Warfare 4's release so presumably that means we will be getting another Black Ops next year and then Modern Warfare the year after; just in time to compare it to Berg's creation.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's big extraction mode DMZ has been out for one day, so it's a bit early to make sweeping declarations about balance, but even I'm raising an eyebrow at an operator trait that the internet is already calling broken.

That's "broken" in the "so overpowered it shouldn't exist" way, not the "literally doesn't work way," though when you see Possum in action, it does give the impression of a bug.

As someone who's been around the extraction shooter block, it's a very powerful trump card. It doesn't take that long to get, either: If you beeline straight to it on the Warfighter skill tree, you can do it in a handful of matches.

To be clear, this is not the same as reviving yourself during the DBNO (down but not out) state, which anyone can do from level 1: Possum means you can be a cold, dead, lootable body, and then suddenly spring back to life.

I'm not surprised folks are panicky about the prospect of playing around lobbies full of Possum players. There's already one clip circulating (per xFleXy_ on X) of someone fully killing a player, turning their back to fight other nearby enemies, then getting shot in the back by the guy they just killed.

That's the nightmare scenario, though the perk has drawbacks that xFleXy could've exploited if they'd known Possum existed. The self-revive isn't quick, and once it's done they still have to pick themselves up from DBNO with a tourniquet. If the killer is paying attention when that first step happens, they can easily end them for good before they stand back up.

I reckon Infinity Ward didn't envision folks using the perk to instantly turn the table on a lost fight. Per the name, you're likely meant to sit still, play dead, then self-revive after your corpse has been picked clean and the killers have moved on. You lose some stuff, but you escape with your operator (which can be expensive to replace). Call of Duty YouTuber JGOD demonstrated this use case in his own video.

In those terms, a trait like Possum is a great fit for DMZ, which is designed not to be as punishing as other extraction shooters. The problem is its execution: Players who just won a fight should not always have to worry that their victim is going to stand back up and kill them. Maybe using Possum should make more noise in the moment, or require a long wait (like 5 to 10 minutes) to use. Infinity Ward needs to underline how bad of an idea it is to use while enemies are around, or in lieu of that, players need a way to burn bodies.

"Burn bodies," in this context, refers to Hunt: Showdown, the other extraction shooter with this exact ability. That game's Possum, called Necromancer, works the same way, except that others have the option to set your corpse on fire and wait for a sound cue that confirms "this guy ain't getting up." It's a great bit of balance, because it puts the onus on the killer to already have a molotov cocktail on-hand, look for another way to start a fire, or leave your corpse and accept you may come back. Sometimes Necromancer saves your bacon, sometimes not.

Whatever the eventual solution is, I expect Infinity Ward to react soon.

Original Story: This one is thin, man, but it has to do with one of my favorite games of all time, while the circumstances of the rumor are just kind of neat and weird, even if it turns out to be nothing. User Few_Interview8222 on the Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines subreddit reported back from a Genitorturers show in Brooklyn, New York. Partway through the set, the band supposedly told the crowd that a VtMB remake is happening.

Genitorturers played at Brooklyn's The Meadows as part of their "Live + Lewd Tour" on October 15. We've reached out to both rights-holder Activision (one of several, it's complicated) and Genitorturers' representation, and will update this story if we hear back.

Why would an industrial metal band started in Orlando in 1986 have this information?

In addition to a killer score by Rik Schaffer, Bloodlines featured wonderfully era-appropriate licensed tracks from metal bands⁠—they were mostly used as diegetic music in the nightclubs and bars of Los Angeles. The Genitorturers track Lecher Bitch was the pitch-perfect theme of The Last Round, a downtown LA dive bar frequented by the Anarch faction of vampires.

What if they're wrong?

Multiple commenters on the Reddit thread point out that this could have been a confused, untimely, misinterpreted, or all of the above reference to last year's Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. It's the sort of almost-but-not-quite thing you might expect from an artist with tangential awareness of a secondary fanbase they picked up over the years.

A VtMB remake is also the sort of project you could see getting pingponged around between various actors and stakeholders: started, stopped, shopped around, etc. It'd be a situation ripe for collaborators on the periphery acting on outdated information.

What if they're right?

Rad! I think? It'd depend on who's doing it. More and more, I'm beginning to distrust anyone not named "Nightdive" when it comes to commercial remasters. See also: The recent Shogun 2 debacle and the fate of Deus Ex Remastered.

Bloodlines is such a wild, janky, PC gaming package that Nightdive is the only studio I'd trust to not only do a remaster right, but also to bring on legendary modder Werner "Wesp5" Spahl, the man who's been keeping Bloodlines alive with one of the most impactful unofficial patch projects in gaming. A more ground-up remake would offer equally daunting challenges, like matching the one-of-a-kind mood and look Troika managed to evoke.

Why should you care?

Bloodlines is one of my very favorite games and an incredible RPG that's well worth your time. To the uninitiated, I like to pitch it as an evolutionary missing link between 2D Fallout and New Vegas. Bloodlines boasts the open-ended design and reactivity of Fallout in 3D for the very first time (Bloodlines leads Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson were senior talent on Fallout 1).

Unlike New Vegas' wide open world, however, Bloodlines had a more linear, but still loose sequence of zones on a world map to explore. Bloodlines' Y2K, gothic, noir interpretation of Los Angeles is one of the coolest worlds ever presented in an RPG.

A Nightdive treatment would be my preferred outcome: build on Wesp5's work and compensate him accordingly, then make it more accessible on more platforms at a modest markup over the original game. Bloodlines 1 can be had for $20 on Steam and GOG, but it's practically always on sale.

Even if it turns out to be nothing, this is still just a neat, newsworthy little incident to behold—Genitorturers shouting out an obscure, beloved RPG like this 22 years later, and maybe getting a couple genre nerds like me a little too excited on the way.

Warzone is trying something new

• In Warzone, a "cosmetic toggle" that will disable legacy character skins at a client level
• With this toggle, players will instead see operators from Modern Warfare 4, making the game stylistically cohesive
• This toggle only exists within Warzone, as Modern Warfare 4 itself won't carry forward any cosmetics from past games.

This time last year, Call of Duty had to look itself in the mirror and admit that all the ugly crossover skins had gotten out of hand. The company committed to a clean break with Black Ops 7: No old skins would carry forward, and future cosmetics would have to fit the Black Ops universe to make the cut. That lasted for about three months, when a CoD x Fallout collaboration arrived and all bets were off again.

This new toggle is, without a doubt, a positive change for CoD that I personally never expected to happen. If I were a Warzone diehard, I'd turn this on from day one and never look back. It's a shame, though, that this toggle appears to be only a temporary vacation from tacky outfits.

Since, according to this blog post, skins from Modern Warfare 4 aren't filtered out with the toggle, Warzone players will still be subject to whatever future attire is destined for the new game. So Warzone will only be stylistically cohesive for as long as Modern Warfare 4 is. By the time Season 6 rolls around, we might have Timothée Chalamet in Dune gear or Travis Kelce running amok in Warzone, and the toggle would be rendered pointless.

That is, unless Infinity Ward makes its own commitment to non-goofy cosmetics between now and launch, or expands the toggle to exclude all store outfits. I've reached out to Activision for clarification on how this will work.

Microsoft has given up on Halo Studios, the team it formed and recently renamed for the express purpose of making new Halo games. Another victim of the Xbox Reset, the studio has been slashed down to its bones as part of another (but not final) wave of layoffs, and what's left of Halo Studios will now oversee the franchise in nebulous-sounding ways. Indeed: Halo Studios is no longer making Halo.

Now Activision is in charge, and as both a Halo and Call of Duty fan, the pairing isn't exciting.

Though I've been a vocal critic of Halo Studios' take on Halo over the years ("Halo Studios has no discernably new take on Bungie's landmark FPS" -Me, 2026), Halo Infinite eventually grew into a strong multiplayer FPS that I sunk hundreds of hours into, and Halo: Campaign Evolved was the team's best effort yet to embrace the series' quirky traditions while keeping an eye toward evolution. Ripping that work away from them a few months after shipping a Halo remake is a drastic move.

Let's take a moment to account for Halo Studios' history.

You can see why Microsoft thinks Activision is suited to fix some of those mistakes—Call of Duty can still produce a decent campaign. While the industry struggles with longer development cycles, Activision has maintained a steady pace.

That pace has come with real compromise—like never knowing if this year's CoD will be embarrassingly bad or merely good enough—and that's why I question if it'll be a worthy steward for what was once among the most celebrated and unique shooters in history. Despite its shortcomings, Halo Infinite stood out by doing things differently than Call of Duty with a slower pace, hipfiring guns, mirrored loadouts, power weapons, and vertical maps that had more in common with classic arena shooters than the 'boots on the ground' generation that Modern Warfare created.

I don't think that the outcome of this is going to be Halo becoming more Call of Duty-like, but I don't trust the Call of Duty machine to be a good influence on Halo, especially as Activision juggles two titanic franchises simultaneously.

No doubt that Activision is eager to put Halo back on the map, but I hope they'll be able to match the attention to detail of the Halo Studios staffers that Microsoft just fired. Say what you will of their final products, but they were massive fans of Halo: This is the studio that didn't stop improving The Master Chief Collection until it was a gold standard of preservation; the studio that allowed community members to rummage through the records and publish an unfinished Halo 2 E3 demo on Steam Workshop; that cared enough about the minutiae of Halo's jump physics and grenade bounces to literally run 15-year-old Halo Reach code under the hood of Campaign Evolved.

Activision will be put in a very challenging creative position: presumably to put some new spin on Halo that will work better than the last few releases, but also to earn fans' trust by preserving whatever aspects of the franchise it deems sacred. How will that play out? Call of Duty is famous for changing up its setting, tone, characters, and gameplay as it bounces from studio to studio. Fans have adapted to the whiplash over the years, but the series' inconsistent identity is a tradeoff that Activision either accepts as part of cranking out annual releases or has chosen to embrace. I don't want something similar to happen to Halo as its makers seek to restore its relevance.

Because honestly, the things I love most about Halo—its streamlined weapon sandbox, emphasis on vehicles, uncomplicated modes, social lobbies, and community-driven custom games—aren't in vogue anymore. If the goal is to transform Halo into one of the most-played multiplayer shooters in the world, I'm just not sure how a studio achieves that while simultaneously preserving what makes Halo great, 25 years later.

"Anyone want help on anything." That's the title of the oldest post I could dig up on The Helper's Warcraft 3 world editor help forum, posted by Neo_HoJo all the way back in July 2002. It's one of over 100,000 similar threads, collectively containing approximately 859,700 comments. It seems to be the biggest forum on the site by far. But just as Warcraft 3 grapples once again for a new lease on life, The Helper is turning in.

The announcement came in the form of a post from an admin also called The Helper. "Wow, it's been a ride," the post reads. "Over 27 years of this site from a personal homepage, to a Blizzard [games] tech support site, a world editor help site, and then a community of helpers from then until now.

"[For many years] I was a lost soul floating around the dark side of the Internet, skimming the edges and really just not having any kind of focus. That has changed. I am no longer a lost soul. I am now on Team Jesus and unfortunately my path moving forward does not include having this site competing for my time … The site will be archived. The content will be available for people if they want it. It just will not be advertised or out there in any forum that bots or search engines will get it."

The site is a listed affiliate of Hive Workshop, a popular Warcraft 3 modding community prominent members of which recently collaborated with Blizzard directly on the new official Forsaken Kingdom campaign. It has other forums for Atari, world news, AI, and even Nuon.

"Some might say this is the end of an era," The Helper's closure announcement post reads. "I like to think of it as more of a beginning. At least for me."

Warcraft 3: Reforged got a hefty 3.0 patch alongside its new Forsaken Kingdom expansion, but not all of the changes are for the better. Amid bugfixes and new features, Reforged now requires an internet connection to play, even in singleplayer, and it also removed the game's local area network (LAN) functionality. Blizzard did not provide a reason for these changes in the patch notes.

Blizzard does mention that LAN support and offline play are still offered by the legacy Warcraft 3 client included with purchase of Reforged. The company has a Battle.net support page with instructions on how to install this legacy client.

But it's still a frustrating, confounding change: Reforged was an embattled remaster that had to claw back support from the fanbase. The Forsaken Kingdom expansion and 3.0 patch were the perfect opportunity to complete a redemption arc and lock in Reforged as the definitive version of the 2002 RTS. But as much as things have improved, it's taken a stumble in its victory lap.

Always-online requirements have been a sore spot in gaming since they first started cropping up in the 2010s, and depending on where you live, reliable high-speed internet isn't always a guarantee. Even in the big city, outages aren't unheard of, and always-online requirements for singleplayer games remain an odious imposition on players.

The LAN removal makes even less sense to me: LAN party and tournament play have always struck me as an essential part of Warcraft 3's legacy. Why concede this ground to the original game when the remaster's reputation has been so contested since its release? You can check out the full Warcraft 3: Reforged patch notes over on the Blizzard forums. More positive changes include a new graphics mode and a doubling of the unit selection cap from 12 to 24.

As noted by MMORPG.com, World of Warcraft: Forever is coming with a peculiar economic proposition: Most of the new fork of the MMO is included in your normal WoW subscription (rad), but the new Skyborne Elf race (and its corresponding starter zone experience) is gated behind a separate, $30 purchase (sad).

While "$30 elf" might be a somewhat uncharitable characterization, there's not much else that really lights my fire in the $29.99 "Skyborne Hero Pack." In addition to the titular elves, it comes with a mount, cosmetics, housing decorations, and early name reservation.

Compared to the bleeding edge of Overwatch, League of Legends, and Diablo premium cosmetic pricing, this is just keeping pace. But with many of the best new games on Steam coming in at $20 or less, I'm feeling sticker shock.

$30, for my money, is the cost of an expansion pack under normal economic conditions, though WoW's most recent retailed for $50 MSRP. Speaking to my WoW consultant and on-the-ground BlizzCon contact, PCG contributor Tyler Colp, he wagered that any new classes coming down the line in Forever will likely be similarly monetized, and argued that this sort of monetization is less in the spirit of classic WoW than the rest of the Forever project.

Looking at it from the outside, getting so much of the rest of Forever with a normal WoW subscription strikes me as an excellent bargain, but it only throws the $30 elf into even sharper relief as a consequence. Personally, I'd be more amenable to a $15 elf as a matter of principle, but I've been out of the MMO/live service game for some time. Do you think this is a fair market value for an elf? Sound off in the comments.

As was revealed in today's Blizzcon opening ceremony, Overwatch's newest hero is on the way: Doctrine, a vampire with a cyborg arm and mechanical bats. He was debuted via a story trailer that reveals a connection to Doomfist, the game's resident punch man.

A hero trial is active now, in case you want to try him out, and it will remain live through the weekend. While his exact release date has not been announced, the game is keeping up a rapid pace for the addition of new heroes—D. Mon released just last month on August 11.

That's not all Blizzard teased, though. Reworks are on the way for two of the game's prickliest characters, Sombra and Roadhog, both of whom have already received countless tweaks since they joined the game. Precise details weren't shared during the opening ceremony, but Sombra's going to become a support and Roadhog should be less "frustrating" to deal with.

The new act of the game's year-long story will bring a new map as well—Grímsvötn—and the next Overwatch Spotlight teasing what's to follow is scheduled for Feb. 2027. The last time one of those happened, five heroes were revealed and released all in one go. Time will tell if something that huge is set to happen again.

You can keep up with the rest of today's Blizzcon news via our live blog.

For the first time since its Frozen Throne expansion in 2003, Warcraft 3 is getting a new campaign. Or got one, more accurately: Blizzard just announced at BlizzCon that it's dropping the expansion today.

In a pre-brief before BlizzCon's opening ceremony, we learned that Warcraft 3: Forsaken Kingdom is a two-part campaign for Warcraft 3: Reforged, the 2020 remaster of the 2002 RTS. It begins with a prologue covering the story of Arthas, the primary antagonist in World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

The main portion of the campaign following that prologue regards the Undercity, the capital of the undead Forsaken Kingdom, where we'll find the likes of Sylvanas, Putress, and the Scarlet Crusade.

Alongside the new expansion, Warcraft 3 Reforged is getting a free 3.0 update. Forsaken Kingdom is available now for $30 on Battle.net.

Reforged was not a popular remaster of Warcraft 3 when it first launched in 2020, but a new update and surprise expansion could go a long way toward rehabilitating the project. 2026 is now firmly the year of the surprise expansion to an old game: Forsaken Kingdom joins Thief Remastered: The Tarnished Mirror, Quake: Dawn of the Machine, and The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past in this strange new category.

At today's Blizzcon opening ceremony, it was announced that Hearthstone will receive a third post-launch class—the game's first since the Death Knight released in 2022. It's none other than the Monk, a class with origins you can trace all the way back to Warcraft 3's pandaren brewmaster.

Represented by the playable Chen Stormstout, the Monk will get a full reveal next year. While not World of Warcraft's most popular class, it is perhaps its silliest, which fits Hearthstone's cartoonish sensibilities to a T. After this point, the Evoker will be the only class from Blizzard's titan MMO that isn't represented in card game form (unless you count the Night Elf Mohawk).

The expansion coming in the meantime, Reign of the Black Empire, is another old god-themed extravaganza, complete with bouncy electronic grooves all over the trailer. No goofy lyrics this time around, but what can you do?

It also comes with a new keyword, "assemble," which allows players to merge cards for ludicrous combos. It sounds like the sort of shenanigan-magnet Hearthstone is known for.

Reign of the Black Empire will land on Oct. 10, with the Monk class arriving March 2027. Follow the rest of today's Blizzcon news on our liveblog.

The biggest surprise of BlizzCon might be Diablo 5, which Blizzard announced will release in spring 2029, six years after the 2023 launch of Diablo 4.

The sequel will take place about a century after the events of Diablo 4. Sanctuary is no longer on the verge of apocalypse in Diablo 5: It's been fully apolcalpyted. The Lord of Terror—aka Diablo himself, absent in Diablo 4—is back, and he won.

"The heroes are gone, Sanctuary has fallen, and Diablo has won," declared Diablo 4 director Joe Shely. "For the first time, you won't be fighting to stop Diablo from taking Sanctuary. You'll enter a world where he already has. There are no towns or safe places waiting to protect you."

There's not a ton to go on in the trailer, but it is, fittingly, dark and grim: Everything's on fire, grubby peasant guys proselytize on behalf of the victorious demons, and angels are getting crucified. After the title drop, we get a brief view of the titular Diablo himself, out of focus and wreathed in fire.

2029 is still a ways off, but it's nevertheless surprising to hear news of a new numbered Diablo sequel. Given Diablo 4's live servicey shape, I expected another expansion roadmap rather than a full-blown sequel.

For comparison, there was a 12 year wait between Diablos 2 and 3, and an 11-year gap between the initial launches of 3 and 4, both about double the projected wait between 4 and 5.

Development times have been trending longer in the industry, not shorter, and I'm curious how Diablo players will respond to what would usually be regarded as pretty great news—do you think Blizzard should have stuck with D4 as a platform instead of already starting on a sequel? Sound off in the comments.

Regarding Diablo 4, Blizzard did announce that the Amazon class is coming, and talked about the next season, an anniversary celebration looking back at Diablo's past, but didn't announce a new expansion.

At BlizzCon 2026, Blizzard president Johanna Faries took to the stage to announce that a Diablo animated series is in production with Netflix.

The announcement was light on details, and did not come with a trailer or release window, but Faries did note "great discussions being had" regarding adaptations of Overwatch and Warcraft. Faries also allowed that Blizzard's other properties could see similar treatments.

“After decades of bringing entire universes to life through our games, we’re partnering with some creative powerhouses to tell even more stories beyond gaming across new screens," Blizzard wrote in a press release about the project. "A new animated series set in the world of ‘Diablo’ is in development with Netflix. More details will be shared in the future, but this is only the beginning, with even more taking shape across our universes.”

It feels like the early 2020s gold rush of streaming TV videogame adaptations is cooling down—RIP, Halo show. But we also know what's worked really well. Netflix's animated adaptations of Cyberpunk and League of Legends, Edgerunners and Arkane respectively, are huge and much-beloved, with reaches well beyond their respective playerbases.

An animated adaptation from the same outfit behind these other hit gaming adaptations strikes me as a slam dunk. We'll have to wait and see if the goliath partnership is able to land the plane.

The rumors were true: A new StarCraft game is incoming. It's just called "StarCraft," it's an open world shooter, and Blizzard doesn't plan to release it until 2030.

The game was revealed at BlizzCon with a cinematic trailer, but no gameplay was shown, which isn't surprising given how far off it is.

The trailer showcases the training and gearing up of a Terran Dominion Space Marine, with an inspirational speech about killing Zerg over the montage. It ends with our anonymous hero doing battle with the Zerg, then a cut to his broken and bloody armor getting cleaned and repaired without him back on a Dominion ship.

This isn't the first time Blizzard has attempted an action-forward StarCraft spinoff. StarCraft Ghost was a legendary, Duke Nukem Forever-tier bit of vaporware that Blizzard teased, demoed, and reworked for much of the 2000s. Its titular Ghost, Nova, eventually got the consolation prize of being a secondary character in StarCraft 2 and the protagonist of a few tie-in novels. This new shooter appears to borrow little, if anything, from that earlier effort by Blizzard.

There was some speculation before the show that Blizzard might announce a new StarCraft RTS, but there's no sign of such a project, if it exists. It'll be interesting to see how fans react, as well as the esports scene. Excited for new StarCraft anything? Disappointed that it's not an RTS?

Call of Duty has joined Microsoft's bid to reinvigorate interest in Xbox consoles, today announcing a Modern Warfare 4 gun skin that you can only see if you're playing on an Xbox.

You read that right: The Inner Circuit blueprint is an M4 skin granted to those who pre-order Modern Warfare 4 on any platform, but the gun looks totally different on the Xbox version.

The Xbox 25th anniversary edition of the skin is designed after the green translucent plastic of the original Xbox console—it also features an Xbox logo and "Xbox 25" branding on the magazine. It looks, I must admit, pretty cool. Too bad these pictures are as close as I'll ever get to seeing it, as I don't own an Xbox.

Platform-specific incentives are nothing new for Call of Duty—for years, a Sony partnership meant PlayStation players got extra double XP, and Xbox used to get first dibs on map packs—but what's strange here is how this cosmetic isn't just exclusive to one platform, but only perceivable by it as well. If an Xbox player wants to show off their green M4 to a friend on PC, all they'll see is a boring-looking grey gun.

In a dedicated Xbox gun blog post, Activision clarified that in all ways other than appearance, the weapon blueprint is the same across platforms: "Both versions use the same attachments and perform identically in-game."

That's certainly one way to make pre-orders for a preferred platform more attractive, though this approach strikes me as more confusing than simply giving Xbox players a unique skin that everyone can see. At least that way I would actually know when the guy who killed me is trying to show off their fancy Xbox gun in a killcam. Instead, non-Xboxers who don't read Activision's blog or this website won't even know the difference. Strange!

And to think: This time last year, my PC was an Xbox.

Activision has employed many different tactics in its unending battle against cheating in Call of Duty, from suing cheat makers for millions of dollars to employing complex technical solutions to ban cheaters as quickly as possible. In its latest gambit, Activision served cease-and-desist papers to one especially infamous Call of Duty cheat maker, filmed the entire exchange, and posted it online.

On Friday, a video appeared on the official Call of Duty X account (via Kotaku) showing a legal representative arriving at the home of Elocarry—a cheat maker who creates exploits for games like Rust and Apex Legends alongside Call of Duty—walking up to his front door and serving him a cease and desist order.

Now, if you're expecting some Dog the Bounty Hunter level of reality TV drama, expect to be disappointed. The whole exchange between Elocarry and the legal representative is brief and civil—pretty much "Hello. Here are your papers. Goodbye." The most interesting part occurs when the representative explains the papers are cease-and-desist orders, and Elocarry asks "What's that?", after which the representative suggests Elocarry call the relevant attorney's office.

Clearly though, the objective here is to serve a broader warning to Call of Duty cheaters. That not only will the publisher come after you legally, that it will also do so publicly and for the whole world to see. In a follow-up post, Activision says that it served 80 such cease-and-desist letters in its fight against cheat makers, disrupting 375 reseller operations and shutting down 30 vendors entirely.

Regarding Elocarry specifically, the cease-and-desist order appears to have had an effect. Further down the thread, the Call of Duty X account posted a screenshot from Elocarry's discord which states he has "temporarily paused sales" of Call of Duty cheats as he "review[s] a matter internally".

Activision also took the opportunity to discuss how these anti-cheat efforts are being carried forward into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. In another post in the thread, Activision stated that during last weekend's beta test "infection rates were lower, hardware bans were harder to evade and our time to action improved." Sadly, Activision didn't go into much more detail than this. But the publisher certainly seems keen to let players know how seriously it is taking cheating.

Modern Warfare 4's second beta weekend is currently ongoing, and unlike the first beta weekend is open to all players. Alongside the standard multiplayer test, players can also try a mission from the campaign and drop into Warzone for a bout of battle royale. PC Gamer's Morgan Park got hands-on with Modern Warfare 4 earlier in the year, coming away impressed by the level of detail on show, but unconvinced by its maps.

The beta for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 kicked off in earnest this weekend, with Infinity Ward commencing public testing of what we all hope is a return to form after the disappointment of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. And changes are already being made, with the developers releasing a new patch that makes a couple of mechanical tweaks while also adding a new map and mode.

We'll deal with the latter additions first. The new map is called Cachette, and it is truly a new map, making its debut in Modern Warfare 4. It's a compact, 6v6 affair set on the outskirts of a French rail terminal, where some military types have made an armoury out of an old mechanics garage and an abandoned wine warehouse.

The new mode, meanwhile, is called Inflation, and it is a cash grab in the most literal sense. Eliminating enemies during a match gives you cash, while players with the most cash become marked as high-value targets. If you get the better of a high-value target, you get to steal their cash and, presumably, become an HVT yourself. I always think Call of Duty shines brightest when it adds a little bit of structure to its inherently frenetic nature, and this sounds like the right balance of the two.

As for those mechanical adjustments, footstep volume has been reduced after players complained it was too loud. On top of that, Infinity Ward concurs with players that "time-to-till [TTK] isn't quite right yet" and as such has "turned down the lethality of some of our guns." Oh, and map voting has been introduced, with Infinity Ward stating that the system needed four maps to work effectively—which it now has with the addition of Cachette.

Infinity Ward says it will continue working on the beta throughout its runtime, so further patches may be waiting in the wings. The early access beta ends on August 25, with a second, open beta arriving on August 28. Alongside the multiplayer modes and playable campaign mission made available this weekend, the open beta will also let players get hands-on with the latest iteration of Warzone. If you want to know how to access the beta yourself, you find all the info you need here.

It's a bountiful weekend for the military FPS: two highly-anticipated military shooters are holding betas for those with a pre-order, and they couldn't be more different. One is, predictably, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, but the other is a new kid on the block: Wardogs, a 100-player milsim that recently surpassed one million wishlists.

The pair are currently the top two sellers on Steam overall. Call of Duty is number one—no surprise—but to see Wardogs, a totally new game from a relatively unknown studio, going toe-to-toe with Activision is surprising. Though its instant popularity won't surprise those who've been following the game: Wardogs has built up a ton of organic buzz throughout 2026 through closed playtest word-of-mouth. I played an alpha build a few weeks back, and honestly, it's something special.

Wardogs beta details

• 17:00 UTC August 21 to 02:00 August 24
• Pre-order access guaranteed
• Steam playtest requests open
• Refundable

Modern Warfare 4 beta details

• Pre-order beta (weekend 1): August 21 to August 25 10 AM PT
• Open beta (weekend 2): August 28 10:00 AM PT to September 1 10 AM PT

Modern Warfare 4, on the other hand, is more of a good thing. This is Infinity Ward's first at-bat since 2022, and I could tell from my first match this morning that the best Call of Duty developers are back. These games really excel at bottling up the aesthetics of reality—meticulous reload animations, ear-piercing thwips, the rattle of empty round casings—into an arcadey format that anyone can pick up. This year's beta also includes a campaign mission, which is fun.

Wardogs seeks to simulate a lot of that reality, too: Time-to-kill is short, headshots are extremely lethal, and reloading sometimes means loading individual bullets into magazines. Maps are gigantic, kilometers-wide regions that require dedicated player pilots to taxi soldiers to warzones. But Wardogs is also an outlier among milsims like Squad, Escape From Tarkov, and Arma for its arcadey concessions aimed at accessibility, like a killcam. Developer Bulkhead is building an on-ramp for folks who play mainstream shooters or battle royales to try something more complex. If you like Battlefield, Wardogs isn't a huge leap.

I'll be trying both this weekend, but if I could only play one, it'd be Wardogs. It's a $40 pre-order to get in, but the devs are encouraging folks to refund it if they don't like the beta. Unfortunately, nobody's been able to play enough to decide for themselves yet—Bulkhead is working through crippling server issues caused by higher-than-expected turnout (over 87,000 people as of writing). I guess I can level up my M4 in Modern Warfare while I wait.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was not the series' finest hour, but one aspect of the sequel that has gone down well with players is its experiments with matchmaking. For years, players have complained about the effects of skill-based matchmaking (SBMM), which is intended to level the playing field by sorting players into groups of similar skill. But some players claim that SBMM can outright flatten the experience, neutering much of the fun and unpredictability of arena shooting.

Until recently, Activision had tried to convince players of the merits of SBMM. But last year saw a change in attitude from the publisher. For Black Ops 7's multiplayer, it introduced an "open moshpit" playlist alongside its standard match allocator, wherein skill consideration was "drastically reduced in matchmaking".

It appears this option has gone down well with CoD players, as Activision has said it plans to carry low-SBMM playlists forward into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. This was revealed in a post on Call of Duty's official X account, where it explained its broader plans for multiplayer matchmaking going forward.

"Over the past year, we've continued to learn a lot about multiplayer matchmaking through player data and community feedback," the developers wrote, adding that these learnings had been "reinforced" by players' reception of the releases of Black Ops and Black Ops 2 alongside Black Ops 7. Clearly, it has concluded that open playlists are worth keeping around, as it says. "We'll continue to offer Open playlists in Black Ops 7, and we'll also include Open Playlist options in the upcoming Modern Warfare 4 beta."

On top of this, Activision is introducing a "new matchmaking system" for various modes in Black Ops 7, including Black Ops classic, quick play and party games. It says that this system is "inspired by" Black Ops and Black Ops 2, and in a follow-up post, explains it builds upon "what we've learned, with smarter team balancing, wide match variety, improvements that keep matches full, and a better experience for mixed-level parties."

It'll be interesting to see how the matchmaking changes align with Modern Warfare 4's adjustments to gunplay and general combat, with a renewed emphasis on making players "feel like they're really behind the gun". The beta kicks off on August 21, though unlike last year Game Pass subscribers will not be entitled to early beta access.

It's that time of year again: The next Call of Duty is on deck, and Activision's got the beta dates to prove it. Modern Warfare 4 won't hit the streets until late October, but the multiplayer beta begins a full two months ahead of time.

As usual, Activision is holding two beta weekends: One for those who pre-order the game and one for everyone else.

• Weekend 1 (August 21-25): For those who pre-order Modern Warfare 4 on PC, PS5, or Xbox (no Switch 2 beta)
• Weekend 2 (August 28 to September 1): A proper public beta on all platforms (including Switch 2)

Fairly expected for a CoD beta calendar, except for a few abnormal details, like how Switch 2 players will be left out of that first weekend (that version might be coming in a little hot compared to the others). There's also the fact that pre-order weekend is five days instead of four—further stretching the definition of "weekend." That means pre-order players can start the same day as the Call of Duty Next livestream and won't have to watch streamers enjoy a 24-hour headstart.

Less surprising, but surely disappointing for many, is that Game Pass subscribers will not be entitled to early beta access this year. They were for both Black Ops 6 and 7, but apparently Microsoft's decision to exclude new CoDs from its service also extends to betas.

Sounds like the Modern Warfare 4 beta will be a decent tasting menu for the full package. Players can unlock "19 different weapons before deploying into everything from small-scale 3v3 skirmishes to massive tactical battles featuring tanks and more," a blog post published today reads. "Test your mettle across new and returning modes, from Search & Destroy to the brand-new Kill Block, plus the Training Mobility Course."

Kill Block is a modular multiplayer map made for both small and medium-sized modes. The map is divided into chunks that dynamically swap between rounds. It's the sort of experimental gimmick that seems unlikely to catch on in a big way, but 10v10 Gunfight on Kill Block was a highlight when I played Modern Warfare 4 back in May. During one round, the map became a 1:1 recreation of Crash from the original 2007 Modern Warfare—charming.

Glenn Schofield, the creator of Dead Space and The Callisto Protocol, has announced his retirement after 35 years in the industry. In a LinkedIn video post, Schofield thanked his family, Electronic Arts and Activision, and "the people who supported us in videogames".

"The past couple of decades have been some of the greatest times in videogames," Schofield said. "Some of the best games have come out over these times, [from] some of the greatest talent in the world I've been able to work with. I thank you all. I had a front row seat to one of the greatest creative explosions in history, I think."

Schofield has been candid about the difficulties of securing funding, and getting games greenlit by publishers, amid the industry's post-COVID malaise. Following the release of 2022's The Callisto Protocol and his subsequent departure from Krafton's Striking Distance Studios, Schofield tried and failed to raise funding for "a new sub-genre of horror".

"People loved the concept," he wrote on LinkedIn in 2025. "We got a lot of second and third meetings. But early feedback was 'get [the budget] to $10M.' Lately, that number’s dropped to $2–5M." At the time, he said he may have directed his last game, and the industry has only become more ravaged since then, with huge layoffs at Xbox, Bungie, and Ubisoft in 2026.

Since shipping The Callisto Protocol and ultimately failing to make a new horror game, Schofield's focus has shifted to his visual art and AI. While he's no AI naysayer— he spent the bulk of his 2025 Gamescom Asia keynote praising generative AI as a creative tool—he was dismissive of Elon Musk's claims that xAI could generate a whole game from scratch ("he's full of crap", Schofield said.)

While Schofield is best known for Dead Space and three Sledgehammer Call of Duty games (Modern Warfare 3, Advanced Warfare, and WWII), his credits list is long and reaches as far back as 1991. As art director, he's worked on titles as varied as The Ren and Stimpy Show: Buckeroo$! and Barbie: Game Girl. As a director, he worked on Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain and two Gex games.

Still, it's difficult not to associate Schofield with a period of big blockbuster primacy that kicked into gear with the seventh generation of consoles. For most of Schofield's career, every year's release calendar was reliably dotted by at least a half-dozen triple A behemoths. Evidence suggests those days are not coming back, at least not for western studios: tens of thousands of development roles have been shed since 2022, as the industry is eroded by the popping of the COVID bubble, ballooning development costs, lengthening production cycles, and the delusional goals of executives.

Factor in unprecedented hardware cost increases thanks to the AI industry's leeching of RAM and storage, and you can probably imagine how difficult it must be to stay optimistic as a game developer in 2026: especially if you were commandeering multimillion sellers 10 years ago, and still can't get a project greenlit.

Still, despite all available evidence, Schofield says the future is bright.

"This is an amazing industry with so many talented people," he said. "And I know times are tough right now, but man, the future ahead is really, really bright. And I wish you all the next generation of game makers the best of luck. Explore, experiment, enjoy. And don't forget that the most important thing is the idea."

Amongst all the news of brutal layoffs, studio divestments, and ironic task force appointments at Microsoft this week, over in the Call of Duty corner of the megacorp, something kinda cool happened. Activision released updated ports of Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) and Black Ops 2 (2012).

They come with caveats, of course: At $40 a pop, the Call of Duty tax is firmly affixed to these elderly shooters. They're also PlayStation only, sadly, so the millions of fans who originally played them on PC are cut off from the reinvigorated scene. But they are nearly complete updates of those original games, now upscaled to 1080p, with few exceptions. Players were especially surprised to learn that even the emblem editor—a beloved and somewhat controversial feature of Treyarch's early games—made the cut.

Because, well, people are making swastika emblems with it. And depictions of 9/11. And Charlie Kirk's assassination. And a KKK member. And that's just all that fit into this tweet from influencer JakeSucky.

As you can see, the emblem editor is surprisingly powerful—its stock of primitive shapes, symbols, colors, and layers let dedicated thumbstickers depict just about anything. Most often, custom emblems ended up looking like the trash bin of an early South Park animator, but it was a regular occurrence to glance at a profile and be treated to a remarkably convincing Mona Lisa, cartoon character, or yes, something naughty.

I'm also quite surprised the feature made the cut. Even with player moderation, there's no policing photoshop, so a tool that allows for high expression assumes that sometimes your killer will flash you with cartoon racism. There are normal, cool, creative emblems being made as well, but in keeping with the Call of Duty community, terrible behavior is more the norm.

As others have pointed out, they should've done the work to let people turn off custom emblems entirely—there wasn't an option back in 2010 and there isn't one now.

Weirdly, the only major change to the ports is the omission of some modes. Wager matches are gone from Black Ops 1, so clearly developer Iron Galaxy did some surgery here, but you won't find modern options like FOV sliders or high refresh rates. Pretty barebones ports, all told.

Season 4 of Black Ops 7 brings the FPS equivalent of an easy chair into the game: a gun that essentially aims for you.

The update bolsters Black Ops 7's arsenal with several new weapons, including the rapid-fire VX Compact Assault Rifle, and the battle pass exclusive CBRS-3 SMG and KRS-7.62 Marksman Rifle. But it's Grimhawk that stands out. Available as a weekly challenge reward, this fully automatic rifle fires low-velocity rounds that home in on targets firing at you. Activision stresses that these are "light" homing rounds, so they won't do all the work for you. Nonetheless, supercharged aim assist is a pretty big advantage in a multiplayer FPS.

Alongside this, Season 4 adds a new mode called 'Black Ops Classic' which removes the Omnimovement system first added in Black Ops 6 while also featuring "streamlined" loadouts and a "throwback" map roster. That means no wall jumping, no sliding, no acrobatics of any kind.

Basically, it's Black Ops for FPS pensioners—old fashioned, sensible deathmatch with no larking about. You don't even have to aim properly if you've got the Grimhawk equipped.

On the subject of scorestreaks, season 4 adds a new one called "Iron Rain", basically a big drone that lets you track enemies on the ground and then pummel them with aerial artillery. It also adds a new 6v6 map called Primetime, brings back another Black Ops 2 map called Vertigo, and sees the return of the Gunfight game mode in 6v6 form.

Black Ops 7, Season 4 is available to play now. Personally though, my eyes have turned to the next entry in Call of Duty. Microsoft has formally raised the curtain on Modern Warfare 4, which heralds the return of Infinity Ward and has been cooking for four years—a long time in Call of Duty terms. Morgan Park got hands on with it last month, and while he wasn't sold on its map roster, he thought the gunplay was sublime. "In terms of raw FPS craft, this is immediately head and shoulders above the previous pair of Black Ops—games that look and sound fine. It really does matter who makes Call of Duty."

"We actually made a proper DMZ this time," said Modern Warfare 4 multiplayer creative director Geoff Smith to a room of press in May.

Last month I visited Infinity Ward to play Modern Warfare 4, the first Call of Duty in four years made by the studio that started it all. I had a fun time with what could be the best Call of Duty multiplayer this decade, but what I really wanted to try was DMZ, the new extraction mode that Infinity Ward talked up a lot throughout the day.

This is the studio's second try at extraction. The first DMZ, a mode within Modern Warfare 2 (2022), was an accessible but shallow take on the Escape From Tarkov-style extraction loop. It received updates throughout 2023 before getting placed on a shelf with innumerable other Call of Duty experiments. Now DMZ is back, and Infinity Ward ain't calling this one a beta.

DMZ quick facts:

• The map: Haijin, a war-torn nuclear exclusion zone on the border of North and South Korea with several towns and settlements
• You play as an off-the-books CIA asset, self-funded and tasked with finding valuable military technology
• Persistent gear: Loot extracted from Haijin can be sold or used for upgrades and crafting
• FOB: A hub that players upgrade over time with work stations and benches
• Story missions: DMZ will have story missions that take place during live matches
• Dynamic operations & Free roam: The other two ways to play DMZ. These sounded like repeatable missions with randomized steps that you can either commit to before a match or pick up during free roam.
• Loadouts: Gunsmith designs can be carried over from Multiplayer, but attachments have be purchased

"We've learned a lot about what resonates with players and what we were lacking in our beta. All of that knowledge and those action items became this foundation for us as we're shaping this new vision of DMZ from the ground up," Smith said.

"DMZ offers a rich standbox with escalating AI threats, dangerous bosses, environmental puzzles, raid-like operations, and narrative-driven story missions. It's really more than just a third mode. It's a full-featured game inside Modern Warfare."

To that end, DMZ has its own progression systems and inventories that don't touch 6v6 multiplayer. Operators that function purely as skins within 6v6 have distinct inventories in DMZ. Your Gunsmith setups do carry over, but you have to buy the necessary attachments to actually build them.

Another interesting tidbit from the presentation: DMZ will have a bounty system that takes your reputation into account. Killing a lot of players over time will eventually place a bounty on your head that other players within your match can take on. Global leaderboards will memorialize the top 50 killers and top 50 bounty hunters each week.

It sounds pretty substantial for what will likely be the third option on Modern Warfare 4's main menu. I didn't get to play DMZ, sadly, so jury's out on if it can find a place within my diet of Arc Raiders and Marathon.

DMZ will launch as part of Modern Warfare 4 on October 23. It will not be free-to-play.

Infinity Ward has once again promised that it will keep its skins and cosmetics thematic and grounded in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, a commitment that it has repeatedly asserted as part of the rollout for this anticipated return of Infinity Ward CoD.

The promise came as part of an exchange on X, The Everything App. User Hellz Broadcast Network shared an AI-generated image contrasting the speculative buttoned up, tacticool operator types of Modern Warfare 4's first season with the rainbow-colored, Nerf-armored counterparts players feel are all but inevitable from season 2 onward. The post garnered 23 thousand likes, prompting a response from the official Call of Duty account.

"We got the feedback. No BS," the official Call of Duty account replied. "This is all about staying true to Modern Warfare. No clowny skins for launch and seasons beyond." This echoes a similar statement from the official Call of Duty account just a few days ago.

The only problem? Activision said the same thing about last year's Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 before introducing premium Fallout TV show skins. The Fortnitification of everything has been getting to us for a long time: Features producer Mollie Taylor wrote about it last August, but news writer Morgan Park has been banging this drum since 2023.

It's become a popular gripe among CoD's most vocal fans, and one has to wonder if that's been accompanied by declining skin sales. Odds are strong that there are well-meaning developers pushing for anti-wack skin promises before a sales or marketing department immediately makes them look like chumps, but the fact remains: Trust is low, and we'll believe it when we see it.

The frequency and vociferousness of the promises this time around has me optimistic, at least: Activision risks damaging its precious brand to renege at this stage. If you're gonna let people be the epic chicken from Family Guy or something anyway, the smart play would be to not say anything.

This is a big moment for the CoD empire: Modern Warfare 3 and back-to-back Black Ops entries have proven critical flops, and while they've still sold enough to make any other studio's wildest dreams come true, they've underperformed for the juggernaut series, and fan morale seems to be at a real low.

This all comes as Microsoft's been eager to see strong profits come from its historic Activision Blizzard purchase, and taking it out on beloved studios when they fail to materialize.

Modern Warfare 4 also faces a non-trivial obstacle in Xbox's continued status as a target of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. BDS has called for consumers to boycott all Microsoft gaming products⁠—including Game Pass and Call of Duty⁠—in response to Microsoft's business relationship with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Microsoft has instituted a leadership shakeup at its Israeli subsidiary and canceled a major contract offering cloud service support in the surveillance of Palestinians, but the company is reportedly still keen to renew its other contracts with the IDF.

Special commentary on this classic PC Gamer review provided by:

James Bond: Blood Stone review - PC Gamer issue #210 (US, February 2011)

From the archives: The review below appears as originally written, with only minor changes in formatting and newly taken screenshots. By Tyler Wilde

Out of respect for you, the Bond franchise and the English language in general, I had planned to avoid using hackneyed puns in this review. Plan aborted. Blood Stone doesn't deserve bad wordplay immunity, and I refuse to give it a single quantum of solace. Well, maybe that's too harsh—it can have one quantum. Blood Stone isn't entirely un-fun, but it's no more fun than, say, watching Quantum of Solace. (Double zing!)

This licensed shooting-and-driving game was built by Blur developer Bizarre Creations, which is why I expected more going in. Most of the shooting follows a "find cover, shoot wave of dudes, move to new cover, shoot next wave" pattern. When enemies get close, you can drop them by triggering a motion-captured "Takedown" kill, and performing these earns "Focus Aims." Those really aren't worth going into. The best of the fighting is the few stealthy segments, which actually require a smidgen of care.

It doesn't break the game, but the camera is a constant annoyance. It seems to be attached to Bond's back via a limp bungee cord. Walking around is like steering a boat with half a rudder, and it's as awkward as describing something with three different metaphors.

Driving is better, but inconsistent. Some sections feel truly Bond-like—time slowed down as I sped under tumbling big rigs (without pausing to consider how many bystander deaths just happened). Other parts, however, contain multiple hairpin turns that'll end the chase if mishandled. Checkpoints are plentiful, but some took more tries to reach than was good for the enamel on my clenched teeth.

Shaky, not stirring

The action is justified by an original story by Bruce Feirstein, whose words have been uttered in three Bond films and two games. So it's a passable spy yarn about bioterrorists with names like Bernin and Pomerov. It's not bad, but it's not interesting, either. The voices of Daniel Craig (as James Bond), Judi Dench (as M) and singer Joss Stone (as the Bond Girl) advance the story in frequent, soporific cutscenes and phone conversations.

They're dull, but they offer a short, welcome break from the mediocre shooting, which is in turn broken up by hands-off moments meant to ensure that Bond's nick-of-time escapes look properly cinematic. All of that is better than the inane scanning and "hacking" of stuff with Bond's magic smartphone.

Blood Stone's five-hour campaign, like the world, is not enough. It also comes with three generic multiplayer modes, all of which leave out the best part (the driving)—but trust me: you don't care.

Welcome back to FOV 90, the best and only FPS column at PC Gamer. I've been busy preparing for the summer announcements season, which last week included a trip down to Infinity Ward to see and play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. You can read my impressions of 6v6 multiplayer after a handful of matches, but the gist is that Infinity Ward still makes the best-playing games in the series, apex attachments are cool, and the maps I saw were bland.

I also sat down with two senior Infinity Ward devs—multiplayer creative director Joe Cecot and design lead Jacky Reynolds—to talk Modern Warfare 4 and all things Call of Duty. What follows is a transcript of our 30-minute chat, edited for length and clarity.

Topics covered include:

• The friendly competition between Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer
• Skill-based matchmaking
• How weird Modern Warfare 3 was
• Why Infinity Ward gets more time to make games
• "Ripped from the headlines" campaigns
• Apex attachments
• Aaaand "update requires restart."

PC Gamer: Thanks for making the time guys. To start, I'll say I play every Call of Duty, some more than others. I approach Modern Warfare 4 having a strong preference with Call of Duty. I always like the Infinity Ward games more. That's what I want to ask about: You guys recently said that Infinity Ward games "hit different." What does that mean? How would you quantify that feeling?

JOE CECOT, MULIPLAYER CREATIVE DIRECTOR: What I want to make sure we say is that this is not in any way to put down the other Call of Duty studios or anything. We have a history of really pushing ourselves on quality, and I think with [Modern Warfare 2019] we pushed really hard to reinvigorate the franchise. To go back to our roots and say "What is a modernized Modern Warfare for today?" And that's what we do with every game. It's something that permeates the whole studio in every department.

This is a little in the weeds of game development, but sometimes you have certain departments that are service departments, and others that are creative departments. At Infinity Ward, every department owns their stuff and is responsible for the quality of their stuff. So our gameplay programmers care, like you would not believe, about how good our gameplay feels. Our animators send out these sizzle reels each month that are like, "Here's the cool fucking shit we've done this week," and everyone gets pumped. We play the game every Friday, and we have these matches where we're screaming and having fun. We're very critical and measured that if we're not having fun playing our game, then we're not doing it right.

Do you think that philosophy has made Infinity Ward sort of the "tastemakers" of Call of Duty?

CECOT: What I would say is: With Black Ops, they have a flavor and they do it really well. And what we talk about in the studio is that it's actually really healthy for the franchise if the different lead studios are able to differentiate, so that you don't get the same game each year. So I think for us, we're always trying to level up ourselves, and I guarantee at Treyarch, they're also trying to level up—they're trying to one-up us, and it's a friendly competition. We're all trying to create the coolest, best first-person shooter each go-around, and I think you can feel it in Modern Warfare 4. We had a little bit of extra time with this one too, with the way the developments lined up, and so we were able to take bigger swings with weapon feel and hipfire accuracy and mobility.

JACKY REYNOLDS, MULTIPLAYER DESIGN LEAD: Yeah, and to elaborate as well, I like to think of Treyarch and Sledgehammer as different flavors of ice cream. There's strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate. They're all good, and they all taste a little different, and I think we're very interested in our taste and maximizing flavor.

It feels like Infinity Ward, in preferring its own flavor, doesn't tend to take aspects of the other series into its games. Like there's no ominimovement in Modern Warfare 4, no wall bounce. Infinity Ward tends to pare things down, right?

CECOT: We like that we have swim lanes. And again, it's what's right for Modern Warfare, right? We take it really seriously when we say we're a Modern Warfare game. Whenever I talk to audio or animation, we talk about how we're a fun game, but when you shoot someone, well I just took somebody's life. I just hurt someone. We want that authenticity and that feel. Everything's meant to be set in this setting, and because we do that, I think it makes the game feel more cohesive.

Those little touches are often my favorite parts of the Modern Warfare games, to the point that sometimes I feel like I'm playing a different game from some of the hardcore corners of the community. When Modern Warfare 2 came out, I remember that first beta where everyone was talking about red pings on minimap and nametags and muzzle smoke. You guys have clearly taken steps to mitigate some of those things that add flair, but aren't competitive. Is that a new philosophy for the team?

REYNOLDS: With every approach we try to learn lessons and move forward, and I think what we had pushed on [with Modern Warfare 2] was to make the game feel more tactical, but I think it came at the cost of the feel and some of the fun. So what we tried to do when building Modern Warfare 4 from the ground up was tackle these points of friction that make the game feel off or feel more sluggish. How do we improve on them? Rebuild them from the ground up so that you get that fluidity and that feel back, while also making sure that we maintain the kind of grit, groundness, and tactical play that we're known for. We really want to fire on all cylinders.

Of course we care about community and feedback, but we also want to take it further than just giving them what they want. When they complain about something, we ask what they are really talking about underneath, and how do we approach that problem and build it in a way that surpasses their expectations as well as our own.

CECOT: I think what I've been saying is with Modern Warfare 2, we made some changes that were maybe healthier for the game, the way it played, but created friction and removed fun for some players. So whenever we make changes in this game, the changes need to do both. They need to make the game healthier, but also make sure the game still feels fun, still feels responsive.

Can we take a moment to also reflect on Modern Warfare 3? Because that was a strange moment for the series. It was a subsequent sequel. It wasn't primarily an Infinity Ward game. The campaign was weird, and it also directly reversed several Infinity Ward decisions just a year earlier. How did the studio react to that when going into Modern Warfare 4?

CECOT: I think some of the changes that Modern Warfare 3 made actually felt good. And so we took a step back, we looked at our game, where we'd gone from MW2019 to MW2. We really want to make mantle feel good, not just faster. That's when we rewrote the mantle system and we made sure that one: it now maintains your momentum, two: you can now strafe in it, and three: you can mantle right into a slide.

Instead of just tweaking some numbers, we pushed hard into making it feel like an extension of movement, like you never lost control. For us it was a learning thing and it was also about taking the time. The nice thing is we identified it early, right at the beginning of the project, and said we want to do this.

You mentioned that you guys had extra time with this game. That's something that fans always wonder about: Does Infinity Ward just get to take more time with Call of Duty?

CECOT: It just worked out that way, given the strategy of launching multiple [Modern Warfares and Black Ops] in a row. So we looked at it as an opportunity. We said, "Okay, what are the big swings we're going to take to really improve the game?" And that's where the mobility stuff came from, that's where Kill Block came from, and the hip fire and all the fidelity changes.

One of the big swings from last year's game was limited skill-based matchmaking. Is that something that Infinity Ward is also interested in, based on how well it was received?

CECOT: We're always interested in matchmaking. We don't have any specifics today to talk about. What I can tell you is we are working with Demonware. They are heavily looking at and working on Black Ops 7 and reviewing how matchmaking is working there. There will be future communications coming out about matchmaking before launch.

[Activision PR chimed in here to let me know that Demonware, one of the many studios that collaborate on Call of Duty each year, handles all things networking for the series. That includes the inner workings of matchmaking.]

I also wanted to ask about maps. I like how it looks to climb pipes in Modern Warfare 4—it's very fluid, it's easy. Though in the few maps I saw today, it seems like where there was a pipe, there could have just been a ladder. I really like that shooting course you guys showed off because it had a bunch of verticality and dynamic angles. It was also a parkour map. Are there maps that feel more like that in Modern Warfare 4?

CECOT: There's no map that plays like the mobility course, because the mobility course is meant to just stress test movement. Our core multiplayer maps do have a variety of looks and feels. We have a map called Coal that I don't think you played that does have more verticality.

The pipe climb is a really interesting traversal mechanic that we use in our maps and feels like it makes sense in our world, and it's fun and fluid to use. But with core multiplayer maps, the most important thing for us is mostly the gunplay. It's not meant to be all parkour.

Modern Warfare has always had this "ripped from the headlines" attitude with its campaigns. I'm curious: As people, does this stuff get harder when the real world and actual headlines are almost as horrifying as the ones you guys write in campaigns? Has that affected how Infinity Ward makes a Modern Warfare story?

CECOT: We're an entertainment product, you know, and so even though the world is rough, there's still really great movies that deal with that content, and they provide an experience, and so we look at it through that lens. We're no different, right? I play games like World of Tanks, Arc Raiders, I bounce around all these different games where I get to roleplay as a different person, a different thing, a different place. So for us that's the modern military tier one operation, or the grunts.

When people see this campaign from the outside looking in, one thing they're going to say is that this is Call of Duty choosing a combination of countries that are not currently in the headlines, experiencing something horrific, because it's safer that way. As opposed to depicting the fake Middle East, for instance. Is that a conscious choice?

CECOT: Jacky and I aren't the best people to talk through campaign, but I would say: Korea was really interesting to us. When we look at these games, we do want to be "ripped from the headlines," we want to be hitting on pop culture and what's popular, and we want to be globetrotting, so we appeal to a wide audience. Whether it's Americans, Europeans, Koreans—all of that stuff goes into it.

I noticed we didn't talk at all about Warzone today.

CECOT: Yes. We want to talk about Warzone, but we're not ready to. Outside of that, it's very important to us. We worked on the original Warzone and directed that, so we're excited to share more about that. We just can't right now.

Part of me was hoping that Modern Warfare 4 would be a clean split from the Modern Warfare/Warzone marriage, because people have a lot of thoughts about what happens when those guns have to cross into other games, and if that actually works out.

CECOT: We have those thoughts too. We can't share any specifics.

So, apex attachments. If you've ever read one of my Call of Duty reviews, I always talk about how Gunsmith is cool, but everyone wants to make the same laser beam.

CECOT: Yeah.

REYNOLDS: Totally.

The only thing I really loved about Modern Warfare 3 were the aftermarket attachments, because they meaningfully changed a gun's behavior—defined its role. Does that also represent how Infinity Ward sees guns in Modern Warfare 4? Not just tuning sliders up and down?

REYNOLDS: I think it came from going all the way back to Modern Warfare 2 (2009) and CoDs from that era. You would look at a gun in the killcam, and it had a heartbeat sense and a silencer and was blinged out. You would go, "Damn, I want that."

I think that gaming tastes have changed, and the way building a weapon has changed over the course of the franchise, and apex attachments is really a culmination of that. We give you a new way to play with a weapon that you already know and love. And the idea is not to not make it more OP, necessarily, but to have a new toy to play with.

CECOT: It allows you to find new reasons to love the weapon you already have, and define your playstyle and your class even further than we have before. We wanted something at the end of the gun leveling process that says "this was worth it."

One of the best things as designers is if you make something where players think they're circumventing your system, or they're cheating or whatever. It's that kind of reward loop that we wanted, so that hopefully players want to get all guns to max level and have all the apex attachments.

I also like that having an apex attachment makes guns feel closer to a classic shooter, where you'd have a primary and secondary fire.

CECOT: Oh yeah, like Unreal. With the flak cannon and stuff like that. We've definitely leaned into that, right? Our underbarrel system has gone nuts.

I'm glad you guys said you're working on "update requires restart," because I was going to come in here and ask why Call of Duty is the only game that still makes me do this.

CECOT: Yeah, it's true. We hate it too. It is something that is being worked on. We want to kill it. This project, I think the only question is can we do it on the Switch 2 or not? But it is something we're absolutely trying to get rid of. We hate it too.

Thanks for your time, folks.

In recent years, Call of Duty has been suffering from what I lamented last year to be a severe case of Fortnitification—you know, just about every game you know and love amalgamating and morphing into a multimedia glob where some bozo from a TV show can gun down a real-life celebrity and then proceed to be revived by their teammate donning the skin of some anime protagonist.

While I don't exactly mind it in Fortnite, it always felt that little bit off in Call of Duty. Something doesn't sit right with me about setting up my loadout on Nicki Minaj, or a frighteningly realistic Levi Ackerman doing a 360 no-scope. I certainly cannot grasp what the hell Skeletor is doing there.

Well, it looks like Infinity Ward wants to walk back some of that baffling incoherence with Modern Warfare 4, which was revealed earlier this week. "Every aspect of Modern Warfare 4 is anchored in the game's narrative," a post from the Infinity Ward X account reads. "Every feature, every decision needs to feel authentic to what Modern Warfare is, and that includes cosmetics and collabs. We're committed to keeping it grounded and transparent, and we want to hear from you on what you'd like to see in our game."

That sounds like it's not ruling out collaborations entirely, mind. There's still room for some of that delicious crossover money to be made. But it seems like Infinity Ward is being more mindful about ensuring that whatever makes its way into the game is more tonally appropriate. Rather than, you know, Beavis and Butthead sniping you. For what reason? I don't know, man. I love Beavis and Butthead but I am perfectly okay with them not being Cornholio or needing TP for their bungholes anywhere near my shooters.

Of course, this isn't the first time we've heard this. Activision said essentially the same thing about Black Ops 7 in 2025, acknowledging complaints about Call of Duty skins and promising that skins will "be crafted to fit in the Black Ops identity." Five months later, Fallout arrived.

You'll be able to enjoy this more modern, transparent entry into the Call of Duty series when Modern Warfare drops on October 23 later this year. Our very own FPS fanatic Morgan Park got some time with the multiplayer mode recently, and while he's "not convinced it's a major leap forward" for the series, he's "confident that Modern Warfare 4 will be the best-playing Call of Duty in years."

The rumour mill is churning and this time we've got a two-for-one special, as word on the street is Overwatch and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is gearing up for a collab. Why, you ask? Well other than living under the same Activision Blizzard umbrella, some eagle-eyed fans have spotted an Overwatch poster in one of Modern Warfare 4's maps.

You can see the poster on the right-side wall of what looks to be a South Korean internet cafe. It may have been a slightly jarring sight at first glance, but to be fair, it does make sense. Modern Warfare 4 is set in present day South Korea, and seeing as Overwatch is such a widely played game here, the addition makes sense.

So the cameo makes sense. The only other question I, and many other players have, is whether it will just stop at that or if Activision Blizzard is gearing up for a proper collaboration between the two FPS games. Well, like the poster cameo it wouldn't be the wildest crossover, some players even have a laundry list of ideas which they'd like to see come to Overwatch if it were to happen.

"I NEED a D.Va skin where her ult line is changed to 'Tactical nuke incoming'," one player says. "Emre could have one where Chernobog goes 'AC130 above'." Other ideas include giving Soldier 76 the voice line: "Mission failed, we'll get em next time" or even just a generic Call of Duty skin—he is known as Overwatch's 'Call of Duty guy' after all.

But the most outspoken voice for this potential collaboration is none other than Conor McLeod, Hazard's voice actor: "Ok if we're getting a collab and Soap goes to anyone but the Scottish character, we are rioting. And by we, I mean me." That's not only valid, but also a good idea. I hereby throw my hat in the ring to join the riot if we don't get to see Hazard as Soap.

But this could also all just be wishful thinking. While I don't think Overwatch's vibe would fit into Call of Duty quite as well—especially after Activision promised skins would feel more "authentic to Call of Duty" going forward—I do think it'd be fun to see Overwatch heroes cosplay some of the most iconic Call of Duty characters.

It's the fall of 2022, and everyone is reacting to the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 open beta. Infinity Ward's reboot sequel made a lot of movement changes that seemed subtle, but angered a lot of folks. The idea was to make Call of Duty more deliberate and consistent by slowing down the action: unintended movement techniques were stifled, silenced weapons were hidden from minimap pings, and red nametags were gone.

I liked it. Most people didn't have a strong opinion about it. But Call of Duty's most active players resoundingly rejected it. Infinity Ward would eventually reverse some of these changes before launch, and the next year's Modern Warfare 3 (developed by a different team) scored points by moving in the opposite direction.

Speaking to PC Gamer in Los Angeles last week, Infinity Ward devs reflected on the gameplay changes that have come to define Modern Warfare 2's reputation.

"In Modern Warfare 2, we made some changes that were maybe healthier for the game and the way it played, but created friction and removed fun for some players," said multiplayer creative director Joe Cecot.

"What we had pushed on was to make the game feel more tactical," added multiplayer design lead Jack Reynolds, "but I think it came at the cost of some of the feel and some of the fun."

It's those learnings that informed Modern Warfare 4's revamped movement. Infinity Ward isn't bringing over wall bouncing or omnimovement from the last two Black Ops games, but it is embracing fluidity in sprinting, sliding, climbing, and mantling. Traditional mechanics, like red dot spotting on the minimap, are back. It's about refinement, not reinvention.

"What we tried to do when building [Modern Warfare 4] is take these points of friction that make the game feel off or sluggish and improve on them—rebuild them from the ground up so that you get that fluidity and that feel back, while also maintaining the kind of grit, the groundedness, and the tactical play that we are known for," said Reynolds.

Some of those changes, according to Cecot, were the result of Modern Warfare 3.

"I think that some of the changes that Modern Warfare 3 made actually felt good, and so we took a step back, looked at where we had gone from MW2019 to MW2 and said we really want to make mantle feel good, not just faster. So we rewrote the mantle system and made sure that, one: Now it maintains your momentum, two: You can now strafe in it, and three: You can now mantle right into slide. We pushed hard toward making it feel like an extension of movement—like you never lost control."

I tried Modern Warfare 4's rebuilt movement for myself, and while a handful of matches wasn't enough to fully judge the results, I did notice an emphasis on momentum. Getting around is effortless and cool. But my crowd was undeniably casual—the true test will be that inevitable open beta later this year, when the actual movement sickos enter the ring.

This year's Call of Duty is, officially, Modern Warfare 4. It takes place primarily in South Korea, it'll have a regular campaign, and they're bringing back the DMZ extraction mode. But for many, Modern Warfare 4 is significant for one big reason: This is the first Infinity Ward game in four years.

That's the longest that the original Call of Duty makers have gone without making their mark on the series, and a lot has happened in the years between: Activision became an organ of Microsoft, which has been hard at work destroying its reputation with full-breathed AI mania and cooperation with Israel's genocide in Gaza. All the while, Call of Duty has fallen into another rut: Modern Warfare 3 was an unpopular, rushed sequel made by a different team. That was followed by Black Ops 6, which was well-liked, but its own quick followup Black Ops 7 immediately squandered that goodwill.

Those factors leave Infinity Ward in a similar situation as it was in 2019, when Call of Duty's relevance was waning and its Modern Warfare reboot singlehandedly revitalized the series. Will Modern Warfare 4 do it again? After 90 minutes with its multiplayer, I'm not convinced it's a major leap forward, but I am confident that Modern Warfare 4 will be the best-playing Call of Duty in years. A few quickfire topics from my demo:

Gunplay: Sublime

When it comes to the little things that are important to longtime fans, they're nailing it. Modern Warfare 4's audio, animations, and feedback are exceptional. I shot a revolver that was so loud that I flinched in my seat. Later, I test drove a bolt-action rifle so bassy and powerful that I temporarily became a sniper guy. Sometimes the yearly Call of Duty grind can get boring. I don't care about camos or stickers or even prestige, so for me, it's the fundamentals that elevate an FPS and keep things interesting for dozens of hours. I'm going to max out the revolver because it's exciting to shoot, not because of a checklist.

In terms of raw FPS craft, this is immediately head and shoulders above the previous pair of Black Ops—games that look and sound fine. It really does matter who makes Call of Duty.

Apex attachments: Very cool

Modern Warfare is finally embracing attachments that actually change a gun's identity. Similar to Black Ops 7's prestige attachments, apex attachments are sidegrades unique to each gun that unlock when it's fully leveled up. Each gun has at least one apex attachment, but some have two.

They're kinda wild. Examples include:

• A shotgun with explosive rounds
• A revolver with a grip that lets you fan the hammer
• A sniper rifle with side-mounted throwing knives that you "flick" at players
• A prototype North Korean silenced SMG that's quieter than anything else in the game
• An airburst launcher for the AK that can kill behind cover
• An SMG conversion mod for the M4 that brings back the P90-style magazine from MW2
• Ammo that spots enemies

Anything, literally anything, that makes attachments more meaningful than moving sliders up and down is a positive change, though I'm bummed that unlocking even one of these requires using a gun for a long time. They were all unlocked in the demo build and it was a blast to goof around with the airburst AK and the cowboy-style revolver. I also love that these attachments are designed for the specific weapons they were made for—a choice that could give guns a role beyond their weapon class. Apex attachments use their own slot in Gunsmith, so you won't have to sacrifice your favorite stock or sight unless there's an unavoidable conflict (like the attachment is itself a sight).

Movement: Fluid but maybe too fast

Infinity Ward talked a lot about movement. It feels so long ago now that we were all arguing about sprint speeds and slide cancelling in Modern Warfare 2, and the studio has been reckoning with that feedback behind the scenes for years. The result is a faster and less restrictive movement system than its last game—something closer to Sledgehammer's adjustments in Modern Warfare 3—but nothing as drastic or athletic as Treyarch's omnimovement.

Mantling is now extremely fast and fluid, so toppling over cars or climbing low walls now barely slows you down. Sprinting out of slides is smoother, and Modern Warfare 4 should be kinder to those who've gotten used to jumping or sliding around corners. That all sounds like a step in the wrong direction, personally—Call of Duty's map design and heavy aim assist make these techniques more annoying than expressive—but they weren't on display in my room of mostly press.

Maps: Meh

Pretty, but otherwise exactly what you'd expect. We played a handful of the 6v6 maps launching with Modern Warfare 4 plus one special Gunfight map with sections that change from round to round (more on that below). The standard maps followed Call of Duty's tired three-lane formula with only glimpses of verticality. Still, they at least feel closer to real places than Treyarch's maps tend to.

10v10 Gunfight: 👍

Like it says on the tin, it's Gunfight with bigger teams on bigger maps. Teams spawn with identical loadouts for single-life elimination rounds—clear the other team or capture a flag at the center to win. Gunfight might be the single best side mode Call of Duty has produced in a decade and it scales up well.

This is where we got to try Kill Block, a map broken up into one-third chunks that change between rounds. Many of these map chunks are based on classic Modern Warfare maps, so you never know when the center of the battlefield will suddenly be Crash from Call of Duty 4, or Killhouse, or a bunch of World War 1 trenches. It's a neat idea, and it apparently supports over 500 combinations. Infinity Ward mentioned that Kill Block will be used for more than just Gunfight.

Details: FOV, depth of field, muzzle smoke, hipfire

A surprisingly large stretch of Infinity Ward's presentation was focused on relatively small quality-of-life updates that were possible because of Modern Warfare 4's extra dev time. If they hadn't pointed this stuff out specifically, I'm not sure I would've noticed:

Enhanced FOV: This wasn't in the demo, but apparently Modern Warfare 4 will pull some camera trickery so players will benefit from the spatial awareness of a high FOV without making targets smaller on screen as a result.

Depth of field: Infinity Ward admitted that most CoD players turn off depth of field because the blurring effect on iron sights can also obscure targets. No longer: They've adjusted the effect so it doesn't do that, which sounds more like a bug fix to me.

Muzzle smoke/flash: Folks complained that Modern Warfare's muzzle flashes and smoke are too big and get in the way of accuracy, so now muzzle flash and smoke will subtly disappear at the center of the view to keep sightlines clear.

Hipfire: This one was a bit confusing. Infinity Ward says Modern Warfare 4 won't have recoil bloom. Bullets will always go where the gun is pointing. That made me think that maybe hipfire will be more accurate overall, but in practice, this seems to be largely a visual change: hipfire is as inaccurate as ever (subject to attachments), but your on-screen model will now always match where the bullets end up. Essentially, your gun shakes wildly to better communicate what's happening with recoil, which does make underbarrel lasers more useful.

Loadouts: One change I love

In Modern Warfare fashion, loadouts have been simplified since last year. Guns take five attachments, all of which have positives and negatives. It's a standard three perk system with no combo abilities or wildcards.

The only change worth calling out is one I'm surprised hasn't happened until now: both killstreaks and operator skins are equipped per-class. That means you can design a loadout around stealth, support play, or whatever, and then pick skin that matches it. It's a minor thing, but I can see the personalization making my classes feel more custom.

It's that time of year again. The sun is out, air conditioners are on, and the next Call of Duty is public knowledge. Activision announced that this year's game is, as we suspected, Modern Warfare 4. This is the first Infinity Ward-led Call of Duty in four years—a fact that matters to longtime fans who prefer the studio's approach to military shooters.

In a room full of press at the Infinity Ward offices last week, studio heads Mark Grigsby and Jack O'Hara introduced Modern Warfare 4's primary settings: North and South Korea. The campaign follows a squad of South Korean marines (plus one embedded American) in a "zero to hero" story in the wake of a North Korean invasion of Seoul. Grigsby and O'Hara were influenced by their love of Korean rap (featured prominently in trailers), and more broadly the spread of Korean culture, citing the popularity of Korean cinema and music in the West.

"Our cultures are melding and there's a lot of references there for all of us," O'Hara said. "But the curious thing about North Korea and South Korea is they have been deadlocked since the Korean War."

The next slide showed a map of the North/South Korean border illustrating the dozens of artillery batteries pointed at the city of Seoul at all times. This is the next iteration of Infinity Ward's "ripped from the headlines" approach to campaigns. That has often proven a double-edged sword for Infinity Ward, whose fast-and-loose depictions of reality once led it to recast blame for an American war crime. Perhaps in an attempt to temper Modern Warfare's edgy reputation, O'Hara expanded further on the mantra:

"We want to make sure that we live in this pocket that we call 'ripped from the headlines' when it comes to our universe. What that means is, when you see our game, you should feel like it could be in the headlines, not necessarily that it came from the headlines, but it could be."

It also wouldn't be Modern Warfare without Captain Price, who reenters the story on the run after executing a general at the end of Modern Warfare 3. I wouldn't blame you for forgetting or never seeing that major plot development, as Modern Warfare 3 was widely considered a low point for the series.

During the campaign presentation, some talking points seemed indirectly aimed at the unpopular 2023 sequel Infinity Ward did not make (it was actually developed primarily by Sledgehammer Games), as well as Black Ops 7's co-op campaign that was criticized for playing more like a series of Zombies arenas than a traditional Call of Duty adventure. O'Hara walked us through the premise of each of its dozen-plus campaign missions (including several spoilers), as if to communicate that Modern Warfare 4 will have a normal, linear story mode.

I also played around 90 minutes of Modern Warfare 4 multiplayer, which you can read about in full. Long story short: Infinity Ward is picking up where it left off in 2022. Ominimovement is gone. Wall-jumps are out. The audio is unbelievable, animation is top-notch, and they've sped up mantling and sliding to make twitchy players happy (boo). It's fun, but not at all surprising.

The third big mode of Modern Warfare 4 is a proper sequel to DMZ, Call of Duty's extraction mode that debuted in Modern Warfare 2 (2022). Activision is staying tight-lipped on details for now, but describes the mode as a "living combat sandbox" with "changing weather, dynamic military objectives, and hostile forces moving throughout the zone."

Modern Warfare 4 is out on October 23. That's a perfectly normal week to release Call of Duty, though this year it has the added significance of being a full month before the release of Grand Theft Auto 6.

DMZ is coming back.

The Call of Duty extraction mode, which debuted in Modern Warfare 2 (2022), will have another go-around when Modern Warfare 4 releases in October. DMZ was among the first big-budget attempts at the extraction genre—three years before Arc Raiders became a phenomenon.

Activision is not talking in detail about the new DMZ, but provided a top level description to press:

"DMZ is the definitive Call of Duty extraction experience, a living combat sandbox where every deployment is a new story. Deploy solo or with a squad into a volatile conflict zone as an off-the-books asset tasked with recovering advanced military technology left in the wake of war. The conditions in the exclusion zone are always shifting, with changing weather, dynamic military objectives, and hostile forces moving throughout the zone. 

"Loot, fight, negotiate, betray, and extract with whatever you can carry. The harder you push, the harder the world pushes back. Every run is a risk, every encounter is a choice, and no two deployments play out the same way."

Not much to be gleaned from that other than "yep, sounds like an extraction shooter," though talk of being an "off the books asset" does make it sound thematically consistent with Escape From Tarkov.

The original DMZ had familiar elements of extraction shooters—gear fear, proximity chat, backpacks, contracts—but was criticized for lacking depth. It was casual, but bland, and you could tell it was more of an offshoot of Warzone than its own game. Infinity Ward supported DMZ with updates throughout 2023, but ultimately retired the mode, calling it a successful beta.

We do know a bit more about Modern Warfare 4's multiplayer, which I played at the Infinity Ward offices last week. It's not surprising, but Infinity Ward still makes the best Call of Duty guns.

Reuters reports that Microsoft has agreed to a $250 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by Swedish pension fund ​Sjunde AP-Fonden over allegations that, simply put, Activision sold out too quickly and too cheaply when it was acquired by Microsoft.

Microsoft dropped $69 billion on Activision Blizzard in the 2022 deal, a nice, hefty sum of money by any measure. But later that year, as reported by GameFile, Sjunde AP-Fonden—also known as AP7—filed suit, alleging the deal was rushed by former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick in order to avoid fallout from reports of sexual misconduct at the company and protect his own massive payout from the deal.

Kotick filed his own countersuit, saying that the AP7 lawsuit was at least in part "aimed to help pave the way for [Swedish game company] Embracer to increase its foothold in the California market at the expense of Activision." Embracer said in response that it was "humbled" by the claim but denied it, adding that "we did not and do not need any help from a Swedish pension fund in competing with Activision." This all happened before Embracer's $2 billion implosion, remember, so it was still on a very big roll at this point.

Anyway, that's all water under the bridge now, because the $250 million settlement means it all goes away, including the countersuits filed by Kotick and Microsoft.

The settlement is not an admission by Microsoft, as explained in the following passage:

Microsoft is entering into this Stipulation solely to avoid the burden, expense, and distraction of continued litigation. Microsoft does not substantiate any allegations that there has been systemic or widespread workplace misconduct at Activision; that Activision senior executives ignored, condoned, or tolerated a culture of systemic harassment, retaliation, or discrimination; or that Activision's Board of Directors, including its Chief Executive Officer, Kotick, acted improperly with regard to the handling of any instances of workplace misconduct.

Plaintiff acknowledges that its original claims were based in part on media reporting and characterizations of allegations made by the California Civil Rights Department (the "CRD"), which the CRD itself admitted in a court-approved consent decree have never been "substantiated" by any "court or independent investigation" and now have been expressly withdrawn.

Plaintiff acknowledges that, based on the materials provided to date, there is compelling information which undermines any claim that the Board or Mr. Kotick failed to operate in good faith with respect to the matters alleged in the Action.

$250 million sounds like an awful lot of money, and, okay, it is. But it's also less than one-half of 1% of what Microsoft paid for Activision Blizzard in the first place; a relative pittance, in other words, the equivalent of adding an extra dime to the purchase price of Subnautica 2. Sure, you could use that dime for something else—throw it at a cybertruck, maybe—but are you really going to miss it? Probably not. So for the equivalent of some megacorp couch money, I imagine Microsoft is happy to finally put a pin in this.

The Call of Duty movie in development at Paramount will be directed by Peter Berg, one of the guys that studios call when it's time to portray the US military as big screen heroes.

Adapting the most popular military shooter in the world to film is seemingly the perfect gig for Berg, whose past work includes Lone Survivor, Patriots Day, and the adaptation of grandpa-approved board game Battleship. But the last time Call of Duty came up in his presence, before he'd been cut a significant check, he made it clear that videogames are a waste of time, and that those who play them often are "pathetic" and "weak."

That's according to a 2013 interview Berg did with Esquire, which was recently unearthed by a ResetEra thread and subsequently shared by GamesRadar.

In the Q&A-style interview, Esquire's Julian Sancton picked Berg's brain about masculinity, sports, and videogames (at the time, Berg was promoting his Navy SEALs movie Lone Survivor and had just released Battleship the previous year). When military games and Call of Duty came up, Berg didn't hold back:

ESQ: As a guy who's become a public advocate of American manhood, what's your take on war video games?

PB: Pathetic. Pathetic. Keyboard courage. Can't stand it. The only people that I give a Call of Duty get-out-of-jail-free card to is the military. They're out there serving and they're bored and they want to entertain themselves? Okay, maybe. Kids? Uh-uh.

ESQ: Navy SEALs have a standing invitation to your house in Montana, and you've spent a lot of time with them. Do they play those games?

PB: Some of them do. But I tell them I think it's pathetic. I think anyone that sits around playing video games for four hours... It's weak. Get out, do something.

Tell us how you really feel, Pete!

As Call of Duty isn't Berg's first adaptation, surely he knows how to set aside his feelings about the hobby to make a good movie, but it does suggest the co-writer and director probably isn't approaching the project with Call of Duty affection.

But hey, 13 years was a long time ago. Maybe he's eased up on games since, or even played a round of Warzone in the 2020 lockdown. If so, we could bury this beef once and for all with a 1v1 on Rust. Intervention snipers. Quick-scopes only.

New Xbox boss Asha Sharma had some good and bad news for Game Pass subscribers yesterday: the service is now cheaper, but new Call of Duty games will no longer be included with the service at release. They'll now arrive a year later, around the time that they're inevitably replaced by the next Call of Duty.

The change is one of the first major shakeups from Sharma, who takes up Phil Spencer's mantle following a truly shameful year for Microsoft in which Xbox was the least of its fumbles.

Xbox's two-year run of giving away its single biggest money-maker to subscribers is over, which Activision seems keen to move on from, as Call of Duty's wider availability reportedly dealt a huge blow to the profitability of Black Ops 6 in 2024 and Black Ops 7 in 2025.

Reactions to the news among fans swung between disappointment and understanding, but among them was a specific request: "They should release all legacy Call of Duty games on game pass like today," wrote Stallion83 on X.

Perhaps not every Call of Duty, but a source at Activision told PC Gamer it plans to add more of Call of Duty's back catalog to Game Pass this year.

Currently, only the last handful of entries are available on the service's Ultimate tier—the oldest being 2017's Call of Duty: WW2. The availability of classics like Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops would be a genuine draw, especially because as the console and PC versions of many older games still go for $30 to $60 (and a few never came to PC at all):

• Call of Duty (2003)
• Call of Duty 2 (2005)
• Call of Duty 2: Big Red One (2005)
• Call of Duty 3 (2006)
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007)
• Call of Duty: World at War (2008)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2011)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (2012)
• Call of Duty: Ghosts (2013)
• Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 (2015)
• Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016)
• Call of Duty: Vanguard (2021)

I had to double check, but yes, 2021's oft-forgotten Vanguard has also been forgotten by Game Pass. Maybe Treyarch's Big Red One (the even more forgotten version of Call of Duty 2 for the original Xbox/PS2) will finally gets its day in the sun.

The Call of Duty movie announced by Activision and Paramount in 2025 is set to come out on June 30—of, uh, 2028. No need to start standing in line just yet, I guess.

The two-years-down-the-road debut was revealed today on the Call of Duty X account:

Not much more to it, really, although I do note that there's now a Call of Duty Movie X account, which is where we'll presumably start to see movie-specific CoD news popping up. You'll want to follow that if you're interested in this flick.

We don't know much about the film at this point, but as PC Gamer's TV guy pointed out last year, it does seem to be moving ahead with speed and purpose. Less than two months after the initial reveal, dad TV maestro Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone, 1883) was announced as the scriptwriter, while Friday Night Lights series developer and Battleship director Peter Berg is set to co-write and direct.

But even with that dearth of detail, I don't think it's too hard to guess at what we can expect in the broad strokes: Something akin to Without Remorse, I would say, the Michael B. Jordan-starring Prime-exclusive tale of an unstoppable American hero caught up in a high-stakes conflict between the US and Russia—while the world sleeps soundly, blissfully unaware that its fate turns on the actions of a few hard men willing to do the hard things.

I joke (although I'm not joking about that, to be clear, that's pretty much Taylor Sheridan's whole thing) but I also dig war movies, and so even though Call of Duty really isn't my bag I'll no doubt watch this one when it's out. In 2028.

When I heard Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019 was back in the limelight thanks to an unusually steep $6 sale on Steam, I wasn't too surprised. Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare reboot was extremely popular in its day, reinvigorating a series that tread water through the mid-2010s and ushering in an era of followups that'd build on its reimagined progression and class systems.

MW2019 was the best these games had ever played, looked, or sounded at the time. Coming back to it now, it's obvious Call of Duty hasn't been meaningfully better since.

The first thing I noticed jumping into a match in 2026 (which only took a few seconds, as it's still popular) is how knockout gorgeous this thing still is. Like seriously, look at this seven-year-old videogame next to 2025's Black Ops 7:

Both look good, but Modern Warfare immediately wins on atmosphere. The cracks in the asphalt, the way those tree leaves are catching the light, the wildly detailed texture work on the aging buildings—what black magic was Infinity Ward up to making this work on an Xbox One?

Sound is still a standout, too. Assault rifles erupt with ear-splitting explosions followed by steel-on-steel cycling, and my kitted out revolver from launch sounds more powerful than its equivalent in BO7. Guns are appropriately loud in the sound mix—so loud that they can drown out the barks of the in-match announcer or interrupt the level-up guitar riff. Last night a teammate firing a Kar-98 rifle from behind caused me to violently flinch in my chair.

I'm reminded that this was Call of Duty redoubling down on grounded "realism" after years of wallrunning and jetpacks. Infinity Ward harnessed the immersive presentational qualities of a milsim within the confines of an arcadey shooter, and it's just as effective now as it was then. It's worth pointing out that this past streak of games helmed by Treyarch, Sledgehammer, and Raven just do not sound or look like this, even when it's clear they're trying to get close.

When folks say Infinity Ward's games are better made than Treyarch's, this is the stuff they're talking about. This game really checked all the boxes—excellent gunplay, memorable maps, sticky progression, and a campaign that doesn't suck (though that Highway of Death mission sure does).

Playing the last few nights, I'm taken by Modern Warfare's subdued Create-a-Class. You only get the basics—three perks, grenades, and two guns with five attachments. It's a bit limiting compared to the Swiss-army-knife-like monstrosities you can throw together in BO7, but that's appealing in its own way. When I can only modify a gun in so many aspects, I'm forced to embrace its intended strengths and weaknesses.

There's this observable pattern in competitive shooters with customizable guns, but especially Call of Duty, where everybody wants to create the same laserbeam. Whatever combination of grips, stocks, or barrels that lower recoil while juicing velocity or fire rate makes that gun objectively better, and therefore the most popular configuration. Modern Warfare's attachments are designed so that you can't boost those key stats without accepting tradeoffs in other areas like movement speed or ADS time.

Treyarch and Sledgehammer have loosened those restrictions on attachments in recent years, allowing up to 10 slots on each gun and mostly eliminating the downsides of making a laserbeam. The result is that every gun in Black Ops is pretty much the same. Modern Warfare isn't perfect in this regard either, but its launch lineup of weapons at least have standout qualities, like the M4A1's balanced damage and range offset by jittery visual recoil.

It's also nice to play Call of Duty from a time before it became a clown show of ugly skins. Modern Warfare still mostly looks like Modern Warfare, and it may be the last Call of Duty we'll ever be able to say that about. Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops 6 will be forever besmirched by Nicki Minaj, American Dad, TMNT, and The Boys collaborations. Even after committing to chilling out on the tacky crap in Black Ops 7, Activision has proven this was a flat-out lie, with recent collaborations including Fallout and Dave Chappelle (yikes).

The irony is that MW2019 is both the last great Call of Duty and the one that kicked off its new worst era. Back in 2020, just a few months after it launched, Warzone hit the scene. A year later, the reboot was forcibly gobbled up by the battle royale behemoth that Infinity Ward co-created before giving the keys to Raven and saying "see ya."

We're still in this period where "premium" Call of Duty multiplayer is intertwined with Warzone—sharing weapons, classes, and roadmaps—in ways that are frequently a detriment to both games. The ultimate example of this is the modern Call of Duty launcher: a slow, grating layer of annoyware that inflicts extra steps upon those seeking to play it.

The only mercy today is that MW2019 was eventually decoupled from Warzone back into its own standalone product, though for some reason you still have to select it from a smaller launcher that also includes Modern Warfare 2 (2022), even if you don't own it or want it.

It speaks volumes of this particular chapter of Modern Warfare that it's worth the launcher hurdle. Seven years later, this is still the Call of Duty to beat (in retrospect, even better than the sequel I gave a higher score).

I imagine this is the sort of rekindled excitement Activision was angling for with the big discount, as 2026 is Infinity Ward's chance yet again to drag the series it created back to the forefront.

The only way to make a decent April Fools' joke these days is pretend you're making something totally ridiculous and then actually make that thing. That's the route Treyarch took with its seasonal goof in Black Ops 7, which it unveiled today with an X post depicting a map no larger than a single room.

"Let's get ready to start the day!" the Treyarch account tweeted. At first I took this as a playful jab at Call of Duty's love for tiny, grind-friendly maps, but I figured it'd be prudent to boot up Black Ops 7 just in case.

Sure enough, there's a new playlist today called GRWM with just one map. If you don't subscribe to beauty creators, the name refers to the "Get Ready With Me" video format where people share their morning beauty routines. Instead of showing us how Alex Mason fights forehead wrinkles, GRWM crams an 8-player free-for-all lobby into what must be the smallest map in Call of Duty history: a walk-in closet.

It's as deliciously violent as you'd expect. Observe:

As a longtime hater of small maps, GRWM still charmed me. Unlike fan favorite maps like Shipment and Nuketown, where seasoned players camp corners to exploit terrible spawns and farm kills, this closet is so comically small that there is literally nowhere safe. You're lucky to survive two or three seconds.

The best and really only strategy is to start firing as soon as you spawn, aim for corners where other players appear, and hope to rack up a five-kill streak before someone does the same to you. One could argue this is Call of Duty distilled to its purest form: a performative battle where nobody actually cares about the outcome, because all that matters is points.

I expect players will glom onto GRWM mostly for its grinding potential—I leveled up twice over a single five minute match, though that progress is partly explained by my low account level. Still, I got 57 kills, so this is probably amazing for unlocking weapons and attachments. This map is so juiced that it may only stick around for April Fools' day itself.

When a casual FPS enjoyer expresses a preference for a particular feature of Call of Duty, they are unknowingly picking a side. The way soldiers run, how attachments work, the shape of the maps—seemingly minor details are live ammo in a 20 year war between factions of gaming's strangest fandom.

A normal long-running game series is likely to have a singular direction—a continuity or consensus that determines what present and future iterations will look like. When Assassin's Creed shifted from stealth action games to lite RPGs in 2017, that became the direction for all of Ubisoft's studios making Assassin's Creed games. Not Call of Duty: it has a coalition of 11 studios working around the clock to produce a $70 videogame every 12 months, and those studios are rarely on the same page. Activision's fiefdoms collaborate to varying degrees to get the job done, but its two lead studios have very different, often opposing ideas of how Call of Duty should look, play, and evolve.

As Call of Duty attempts to rebound from its weakest year in a decade, it's worth examining this unusual arrangement. Activision's stringent schedule and widening creative differences, now spanning two decades, have created a splintered series mirrored in its increasingly tribalistic players. It's the Call of Duty schism, and it's fascinating.

The divide

Generally speaking, there are two studios steering Call of Duty's creative direction: Infinity Ward, the OG creators of the series and Modern Warfare, and Treyarch, the creators of Black Ops. The pair have taken turns with their takes on the bestselling military shooter since 2006, when Treyarch was tapped to make Call of Duty 3 (as well as 2005's Big Red One) while Infinity Ward took extra time on the first Modern Warfare (2007).

While it's fair to say Treyarch was the "secondary" Call of Duty studio in those early days, Black Ops (2010) changed that. With its campy Cold War spy story, non-traditional guns, and party modes, Black Ops established Treyarch as the "fun" Call of Duty studio. Maybe it couldn't match Infinity Ward in terms of raw craft, but the first Black Ops was an even bigger sales hit than Modern Warfare, and distinguished itself by loosening restraints and not taking these silly blockbuster shooters so seriously.

I didn't know it at the time (being 14 and all), but this was the beginning of the schism. Black Ops is the first time I can remember heated arguments at school over whether this Call of Duty was better than the previous year's Modern Warfare 2—a talking point that defines Call of Duty discourse in 2026.

The specific design choices that folks argue over have changed alongside the FPS genre as a whole, but the core of the studio debate remains remarkably consistent. There's nuance to these perspectives, of course, and there are some who don't really care either way, but there's a much louder contingent of fans who firmly believe one studio is killing Call of Duty and the other is its savior. Let's talk about the two camps.

The Infinity Ward argument

Fans of Modern Warfare believe Infinity Ward's games:

• Look better
• Sound better
• Move Call of Duty forward
• Are more grounded and mature
• Produce standout campaigns

Those who prefer Infinity Ward's take on Call of Duty are likely to cite a higher qualitative bar. The Modern Warfare series tends to be less flashy and adventurous than Treyarch's Black Ops, but what you get in return are the best-looking and -playing versions of Call of Duty. Infinity Ward excels at the "little" things—weapon sounds, reload animations, bullet feedback—that make Call of Duty a fundamentally satisfying shooter. The Modern Warfare "level up" stinger is the iconic example:

This sticking point goes all the way back to the early 2010s, when a new Black Ops would arrive looking less impressive than the Modern Warfare that came before it, with the exception of Treyarch's superior fire tech. While Treyarch has narrowed the gap on sound and animations over the years (especially after it switched to Infinity Ward's engine in 2024) the difference is still plain enough to see that most Treyarch fans won't argue this point.

Modern Warfare enjoyers may also prefer the way Infinity Ward does a campaign, a style marked by international task forces, NATO alphabet barks, and Captain Price's dependable mustache. These, too, aren't as ostentatious as a Black Ops romp where characters hallucinate a zombie horde or infiltrate a Clinton rally, but deliver more grounded, often jingohistic fantasies—stealthy sniper missions, AC-130 bombardments, night vision raids in foreign countries, etc.

There's also no denying that Infinity Ward still sets the tone for Call of Duty's future. The first Modern Warfare established the series' blueprint in 2007, and even at the peak of Black Ops, you could argue Treyarch's games are largely variations on Infinity Ward's designs. When Call of Duty's relevance waned between 2016 and 2018, it was the technical advancements and excellent gunplay of the Modern Warfare reboot that reinvigorated the series.

Does Infinity Ward only achieve these leaps because Activision gives it a longer leash and more time?A fair question, but it nevertheless contributes to the perception that a new Infinity Ward game is a special occasion.

The Treyarch argument

Fans of Black Ops enjoy that Treyarch's games have:

• Faster movement
• Longer time-to-kill
• 3-lane multiplayer maps
• Better campaigns
• Zombies

The Treyarch crowd undeniably skews hardcore. Many are especially active Call of Duty players, streamers, or content creators who take the competition seriously and are hungry for evolution specific to their interests. Treyarch has recognized these interests throughout the Black Ops series, designing and marketing its games around gameplay adjustments for high-skill players: fast movement, expressive sliding techniques, double jumping, jetpacks, and most recently non-skill-based matchmaking.

A Black Ops enjoyer might believe the Modern Warfare games are too slow, low skill, or less balanced while championing the strides Treyarch makes toward consistent and competitive Call of Duty multiplayer: less visual recoil, standardized 3-lane maps, and detailed weapon stats.

In recent years Treyarch has also distinguished itself by taking Infinity Ward's Gunsmith customization system and expanding on it with "prestige attachments" that dramatically change a gun's behavior. Revolvers can become sniper rifles. ARs can have underbarrel flamethrowers. There are few rules.

The casual Treyarch diehard also appreciates the Black Ops series' playful playlists—Modern Warfare will sometimes indulge in offbeat modes, but it's got nothing on Black Ops mainstays like Prop Hunt, One in the Chamber, Sticks and Stones, and Gun Game. Then there's Zombies: the beloved co-op mode of Treyarch's creation that's ballooned in scope over time to have its own lore and dedicated fans, all of which has no equal in Modern Warfare.

It doesn't go unnoticed by Treyarch fans that when the Black Ops series makes universally popular changes, Infinity Ward might ignore or drop them in its next game. This contributes to the perception that Treyarch makes games "for the fans" while Infinity Ward only listens to itself.

What about Sledgehammer and Raven?

Sledgehammer Games also makes its own Call of Duty games. Or at least, it used to: For a time, it was the "third" Call of Duty studio slotted into the rotation to accommodate ballooning development times across the industry. Its first standalone project, 2014's Advanced Warfare, was popular, but its two World War 2-themed followups were not. Since Call of Duty: Vanguard, Sledgehammer has seemingly been demoted to support studio, assisting on and co-developing yearly releases.

Recently, Sledgehammer stepped in to co-develop Modern Warfare 3 (2023), a rushed sequel to Modern Warfare 2 (2022) that Infinity Ward wasn't involved with. It reviewed poorly and didn't sell much better, but it was popular with hardcore players for the ways it backtracked on Infinity Ward's decision to slow Call of Duty back down a year prior.

Raven Software is the other major series contributor. The storied FPS developer behind classics like Hexen and Star Wars: Jedi Knight was conscripted to full-time Call of Duty work in the 2010s, serving as co-developers on all of Treyarch's recent Black Ops games and battle royale spinoff Warzone. The studio has never gotten the chance to lead a project, but the influence of Warzone and its integration into "premium" Call of Duty has catapulted the series into a free-to-play juggernaut.

The studio imbalance

Sledgehammer's fate is emblematic of an imbalance within Activision's Call of Duty factory. What used to be a predictable two-to-three year cycle with clean handoffs between studios has become a mad dash to make whatever is possible by a deadline—a workload that has disproportionately fallen to Treyarch, Raven, and Sledgehammer in the 2020s.

Look at the last six years of Call of Duty and you'll see what I mean:

• Black Ops Cold War: Treyarch (lead), Raven Software (Campaign), Sledgehammer (assisting)
• Vanguard: Sledgehammer (lead), Raven Software (assisting)
• Modern Warfare 2: Infinity Ward (lead), Sledgehammer/Raven (assisting)
• Modern Warfare 3: Sledgehammer (lead), Raven/Treyarch/Infinity Ward (assisting)
• Black Ops 6: Treyarch (lead), Raven (Campaign), Sledgehammer (assisting)
• Black Ops 7: Treyarch and Raven (co-lead), Sledgehammer/Infinity Ward (assisting)

So far this decade, Infinity Ward has made exactly one Modern Warfare sequel while Treyarch, Raven, and Sledgehammer have upped their pace. This is not how it used to work and, I imagine, not ideal to the frontline developers.

When I zoom out, I see that Call of Duty has actually been on two cycles all along: once a year there's a new Call of Duty, and once a decade there's a point where that unrealistic pace catches up to Activision, and the series adopts a posture of desperation—new features are less new, old maps are added to new games to pad out a many-boxed roadmap, and player sentiment tanks. We've been at that point since Modern Warfare 3.

From the outside, it's an arrangement that seemingly casts Infinity Ward as the flagship studio afforded as many years as it needs to make the next evolutionary Modern Warfare, while Treyarch, Sledgehammer, and Raven are tasked with keeping the lights on with quickly-made sequels that suffer diminishing returns.

This setup may work for Activision, which gets to sell boatloads of $70 boxes every Fall without fail, but it further fuels the schism. Nobody can agree on what "peak" Call of Duty is, and what used to be fun changings of the guard are now treated like existential threats—Modern Warfare loyalists can't wait for Infinity Ward to be back in control, while the loudest Treyarch fans believe Call of Duty has been better off without them.

That makes 2026 a big year for all involved. Four years since Modern Warfare 2, it's finally Infinity Ward's turn again. This year's Call of Duty will presumably have had the longest development period in series history, and it's coming on the heels of a Black Ops sequel that not even the Treyarch crowd is playing. That sets expectations sky high: Will Infinity Ward revive Call of Duty once more, or prove that Treyarch has become its new masters?

The original World of Warcraft—no bells, no frills, no expansions—was a very special videogame. It was also occasionally insufferably annoying. Part of the reason it was so successful is because it was less annoying than the competition at the time, sure, but it also had some real stinkers when it came to quest design.

One of those stinkers is The Green Hills of Stranglethorn, a quest that tasks you to find a bunch of randomly-dropped pages at the behest of one Hemet Nesingwary. It is a major pain in the ass. Jeff Kaplan, who designed the thing during his stint at Blizzard, explains why to Lex Fridman in an interview this week.

"[The quest] holds a lot of emotional value for me because amongst WoW players back in the day it was unanimously hated as one of the sh*ttiest, most annoying quests," Kaplan explains. "But it holds a really special place in my heart, because first of all it was one of the few times I just wrote a short story that's actually in the game. It's me paying homage to Hemingway."

It was also, as he colourfully puts it, "the typical hubris of a junior game designer who thinks he's clever but is actually a dipsh*t. That's The Green Hills of Stranglethorn summed up."

The problem was, per Kaplan, that it was an "ant farm" quest—which is a conceptual term used to describe a designer playing god: "You're the game designer who's playing god and players are the ants in your ant farm and you want to see what they're gonna do (which is not the correct way to be a good multiplayer designer), but I hadn't learnt that yet.

"[It] was an ant farm design of 'I'm gonna write this (honestly probably pretty sh*tty story, I haven't read it since 2003 so god only knows if it's any good) … I wrote the story, and then I divided it up into all these different pages." Out of curiosity, I read it—it's a fun little Hemingway send up, nothing wrong with it. Probably not worth the quest, though.

See, there were a lot of problems with the mechanics of the quest itself—the pages didn't stack, and you could find multiple of the same ones, leading to a ton of inventory bloat and, if you were trying to do the quest on your own, complete and utter surrender to the RNG gods.

There were four pages per chapter, and you needed to collect all four chapters, leading to a total of 16 individual items that could clutter up your inventory even if you didn't have duplicates. Sure, you could compress the pages into chapters once you got all four of them, but—it sucked, is what I'm saying.

"It was kind of like that McDonalds Monopoly game where you have to have all the pieces or else you're not gonna win … I don't think that idea in a vacuum is horrible, but where this really fell apart was that the interface of World of Warcraft wasn't really set up [for it]."

"Players had very limited bag space. And as they're fighting in Stranglethorn Vale, I'm just sh*tting up their inventory with all these pages. They only needed so many! You might be unlucky and get like, three page fives, that're just junk in your inventory.

"That was my fantasy as a designer of like—and then they're gonna be social and meet each other and players are gonna be appreciative of each other! Eventually no-one did the quest, they just were super annoyed and went to the Auction House."

On the plus side, Kaplan says that "it not only became a way from me to learn from my mistakes—but because I was very open with the fact that I didn't think it was good, and that the quest had failed, it opened the door for us at Blizzard to be critical of our own work." Hey! Swings and roundabouts. At least it's not a 19-quest long chain about bees.

Overwatch co-creator Jeff Kaplan was the public face of Overwatch before he left Activision Blizzard in 2021. If you were interested in videogames between 2014 and 2021, it's likely you'll recognise his face. In a new interview on the Lex Fridman podcast, Kaplan details for the first time how and why he left Activision Blizzard, and it's not pretty.

The way Kaplan explains it, the good ship Overwatch started to buckle when unreasonable expectations were placed on the Overwatch League, a hugely hyped esports league founded in 2017 and closed in 2024.

"Where it got away from us is that there was a lot of excitement about Overwatch League, like too much," Kaplan said. "It got overmarketed to the people buying the teams. They went on this roadshow where they had a deck—and you can put anything in a deck, and sell anything—and they were pretty much selling the Brooklyn Bridge, that Overwatch League was going to be more popular than the NFL."

It got to a point where commitments made to Overwatch League and its "billionaire investors" started to interfere with work on Overwatch itself, or at least, the part of it the public played. This included the development of Twitch integration, spectator camera control, as well as skins in the form of team uniforms. In other words, the money people kept promising features that soaked up development resources.

"And so all your plans [for Overwatch content] at that point kinda go out the window," Kaplan said. "You're not working on new world events, you're not focused on Overwatch 2, you're just treading water."

Kaplan also describes how when Activision Blizzard wasn't able to meet certain investor expectations with Overwatch League, the onus would be placed on the dev team to make good. "I don't know how to phrase this in a way that's not damning, but there was too much focus on 'let's make lots of money really fast' and a lot of people got drawn into it," Kaplan said.

Eventually it wasn't just Activision and Blizzard who had financial stakes in Overwatch, but many other investors, all of whom started to express their opinion.

"Originally the business model was going to be that they [Overwatch League] were going to do in-person events, and there's going to be big ticket sales and merch and all of that. I think, really quickly, everybody learned we can't do in-game events when we have a London team and a Shanghai team… like, how does this work? So that fell apart super quickly. The merch was good but it wasn't going to be making NFL money, whatever insanity people thought that was going to be.

"So everybody [the investors] quickly defaulted back to, 'hey, didn't Overwatch make 500 million dollars just in the live game last year?' What can we sell, and what can you give us? That pressure comes onto the [dev] team, and [add to that] the pressure to ship Overwatch 2, and then all the care and love that we had for the live game and the live service—like let's make events, new heroes, new maps—we're losing all these resources."

Kaplan says that in 2016 and 2017, he felt in control of Overwatch and the direction of the game, alongside the product director Ray Gresko. "It felt like we were running Overwatch and we were very, very successful and doing a good job, and I think the fans were happy," he said. Overwatch League, despite the good intentions behind it, "ended up being an albatross".

In the end, after enduring the difficulties of managing Overwatch League expectations with development on the core game itself, Kaplan was sent over the edge by an exquisitely cruel meeting with the company's then CFO.

"What ultimately broke me and my Blizzard career was I got called into the CFO's office and he sits me down and he says—he gives me a date which at the time was 2020 and was going to slip to 2021, but at the time it was 2020—and he said: 'Overwatch has to make [redacted] in 2020, and then every year after that it needs a recurring revenue of [redacted]' and then he says to me 'if it doesn't do [redacted] we're going to lay off 1,000 people, and that's going to be on you.' And that was the biggest fuck you moment I've had in my career, it felt surreal to be in that condition."

The redacted figures are due to a confidentiality agreement signed by Kaplan.

"As someone who's worked on a lot of games, made a lot of games, you get in these meetings where they're like 'Fortnite has 1400 people working on it, so if we just hire 1400 people and make it free-to-play, we'll make that money, right?' I had believed that I would never work in any place but Blizzard, I loved it, it was a part of who I was, and I thought that I was a part of it. And I literally thought I'd retire from the place. I never thought the day would come, but that was it. Luckily for Blizzard, that CFO is no longer there."

Dennis Durkin was CFO of Activision Blizzard from 2019 to May 2021; Armin Zerza held the role from then until 2025. Kaplan's departure was announced on April 20, 2021.

I've reached out to Activision Blizzard for comment.

After releasing in 2023 without many key advertised features, including a long-promised PvE mode, Overwatch 2 was eventually renamed Overwatch earlier this year.

They say that 2026 is the new 2016, and when it comes to my relationship with Overwatch, that is most certainly the case. I've fallen in love with the hero shooter all over again after its recent revamp—where Blizzard dropped the "2", gave us five new heroes to mess around with, and the promise of a year-long narrative arc that'll hopefully make up a little for its lack of previously-promised PvE content.

It feels bizarre to live in a world where I'm once again looking forward to booting up the game every evening for a few skirmishes, but I've genuinely been loving everything about Overwatch again. Well, except one teeny-tiny thing: Conquest, its grand, five-week event that seemingly expects me to min-max the absolute crap outta my playtime in the worst possible way.

I've found it a huge stain on what has otherwise been a very exciting and cool time to be playing this game again. It certainly doesn't help that the first week was mired by a progression bug that caused most people to be locked out of rewards—though that was something Blizzard thankfully fixed by doling them out anyway.

It's a strange event, honestly. Talon versus Overwatch, with two reward tracks and a set of dailies for each side. At the end of the week, whichever side was more popular gets an additional little reward sent out to everyone. It feels like a test of which side your loyalties lie, but it's an event that also actively encourages switching back and forth to claim everything you can. Something that's made even more obvious by Blizzard offering the "Double Agent" title to anyone who completes enough tracks on both sides.

Once you've nabbed the cosmetics for the week, you can then continue completing quests throughout the week for bonus loot boxes, with the rewards track culminating in one legendary loot box reward. That's a pretty sweet deal… but it requires a bizarre level of optimisation that it's making me not want to play for just how scummy it feels.

You can't conquer 'em all

That's because the event is set up in a way where you have to play every single day. Which is fine, broadly speaking, except that even then it's a complete pain in the ass. Four daily quests for 100 points each. Each reward takes 175 points to obtain. Don't feel like playing one day, or don't naturally hit a handful of challenges in your day-to-day play? Oops, good luck getting that legendary loot box.

Despite playing the game every single day last week, I came up to the weekly reset 50 points short of nabbing the legendary loot box. Why? Because I used up some dailies (which reset before weeklies) to finish up the Talon track, and then instead of switching to the Overwatch path when the weekly reset happened, I stuck on the same side. Which left me with a handful of completed dailies and scuppered my chance to nab the loot box from the start.

Should I have assumed I wouldn't be getting a fresh batch of dailies? Probably, but it's just one small part in how the whole event feels too tight, too restrictive. I shouldn't have to think this hard about getting some fun event rewards.

What should feel like a celebration of the game's grand revamp instead feels like a poorly planned attempt to force me to play in the hopes I'll stick around. Blizzard, I like your game. You don't have to exploit my inner completionist to get me online. You already did the hard part with your mini reboot!

I suppose the bright side to all of this is that my least favourite part of the game right now is fleeting. In two weeks, the event will be gone—and I'll inevitably be moaning about how I miss the drip-fed loot boxes—and there's a chance for Blizzard to do better with whatever it has planned next. Hopefully, in a way that doesn't require all of this annoying preplanning just to get some sprays I'll never use.

I still want them, though.

I gotta say, it's been a good time to come back to Overwatch. Five new heroes, plus all of the ones I missed out on in the three or four years I haven't been playing. The Sanrio collaboration that actually had me contemplating playing Widowmaker for the first time in my life. A renewed drive to play the first multiplayer shooter I ever fell in love with. Something I am most definitely going to continue to do now that Blizzard just announced a freakin' Nier: Automata collaboration.

These are certainly two games I never expected to come together—despite the fact that Nier has somehow managed to show up in just about every damn videogame I enjoy at this point. It has a whole-ass 24-player raid series in Final Fantasy 14, was one of the first major collaborations in my beloved gacha game Nikke, and 2B was even a guest fighter in Soulcalibur 6. But I dunno, I certainly never expected her, 9S, and A2 to make an appearance in the funny cartoon hero shooter.

Yet here we are, in the year of our lord 2026, and that is exactly what is happening. Despite the aforementioned Sanrio collaboration being very support-biased (four of the six skins were for support characters), that hasn't stopped Blizzard from doing the exact damn thing all over again.

As far as I can tell, this is what the collaboration looks like:

• Kiriko as 2B
• Vendetta as A2
• Wuyang as 9S
• Lifeweaver as Adam
• Mercy as Commander White

Listen, even as someone who's barely touched this game since Kiriko's debut I still know just how many damn skins this character gets. Do I love her as 2B? Not particularly—I saw a post pointing out that Illari would have been a fantastic choice, and I'm now mourning what could have been. I will admit that as a new Wuyang main I'm a little jazzed to see him as 9S, though he does seem to be Overwatch's collaboration poster boy at this point.

I do think that this collaboration could have been just a bit cooler though. Where is Emil? Imagine Zenyatta with an Emil head and matching orbs, or Wrecking Ball rolling around with that giant grinning Emil face. Bastion would have made a killer Pascal, and it feels criminal to see my most beloved robot fella missing from the pack.

At this point I'm convinced that support mains are the ones with the deepest pockets—and I say this as a support main. They're certainly highly favoured for these sorts of collaborations, and while I'm not too cut up about it, I do wish it had been a touch more creative.

Despite all my moaning, am I going to dump money on this when they land on March 10? I absolutely am. Spending my hard-earned money on Overwatch cosmetics? It truly is 2016 again, huh.

Diablo 2: Resurrected is a thorough revamp of Blizzard's classic high-speed clicking game, but since 2021 it's only been available to purchase via Battle.net. Not any more: Diablo 2 is now on Steam, which comes with two obvious perks: one, it is more easily compatible with Steam Deck and even has a Steam Deck Verified badge, and two: you can now access the game via Steam rather than boot up Battle.net.

But wait! You'll still need the Battle.net desktop app installed, according to the system requirements, and more obviously, you'll still need a Battle.net account. As with the Battle.net version, Diablo 2 requires a constant internet connection to play as well.

The Steam release compliments a brand new expansion for Diablo 2 available now, which is its first in 25 years. It features a new warlock class and a revamp to the dungeon crawler's nowadays quite clunky inventory management. Tyler Colp went hands on with the expansion.

It's great news for people who hate to juggle launchers. Sure, it only requires moving one's arm and pressing one's finger on a mouse button to open Battle.net, but still (and I'm being totally sincere here) it's very annoying. It's the kind of annoyance that has ultimately compelled big publishers like EA and Ubisoft to mostly give up on their own storefronts in favour of Steam.

It also helps that Valve increasingly has its sights on hardware, and that it's a great selling point that not only does Diablo 2 work seamlessly on Steam Deck, but that it likely will for the forthcoming Steam Machine as well.

If you are dedicated to Battle.net for some reason, Diablo 2 and its expansion Reign of the Warlock are also available there.

New guns are always going to be powerful when a new Call of Duty season drops, but some of the new weapons introduced in Black Ops 7 Season 2 are crazy strong.

Black Ops 7 Season 2 is filled with all-new maps and modes plus returning fan favorites like Safeguard and Slums, but the new guns available at the launch of the season are easily the stars of the show. The REV-46 SMG and EGRT-17 assault rifle are dominating lobbies right now, and upcoming changes could make them even more impactful to the BO7 meta.

Moving Away from the Maddox

If you played Black Ops 7 last season, then you've probably seen the Maddox RFB assault rifle in most of your matches. A returning weapon from Black Ops 4, the Maddox dominated BO7 with its close-range power and long-range accuracy.

The Maddox got nerfed during Season 1, but it's still one of the best assault rifles in the game. Now, Season 2's new weapons have taken its spot at the top of the food chain. With Season 2 balance changes coming later than usual so the development team can monitor weapon performance in the live game, the REV-46 and EGRT-17 are the best of the best for the foreseeable future.

Explaining the EGRT-17

The problem weapon last season was the Maddox, an assault rifle that shredded at close-range and could have basically zero recoil at long-range. This season, Treyarch added the EGRT-17, an assault rifle that shreds at close-range and can have basically zero recoil at long-range. See the problem there?

Granted, the EGRT-17 isn't as accurate as the Maddox at long distances. However, it's significantly stronger up close, so it just trades one thing for another.

The EGRT-17 boasts the second-highest fire rate in its class—losing only to the rapid-fire Peacekeeper—but it still has an easily controllable recoil pattern despite being a certified bullet hose. With the right attachments, it becomes a laser beam. The only thing holding it back is a slower-than-average reload speed, but that can easily be offset with attachments as well.

As if the weapon couldn't get any stronger, its bullets also ricochet off surfaces. If you prestige the EGRT-17, you then unlock an attachment that makes the bullets ricochet three times. That attachment also offers a huge improvement to both damage range and bullet velocity, which makes the gun even easier to control.

The Stock-Switching SMG

This season's new SMG is just as strong. The REV-46 is the fastest-firing SMG in Black Ops 7 by a wide margin, and that's just one reason why this gun is so popular in BO7 right now.

A weapon that can shred enemies at close range is already going to be strong in any Call of Duty game just by virtue of its fire rate, but the REV-46 has a unique trick up its sleeve: a folding stock. It's the only weapon in the game with a folding stock mechanic, and its stats change drastically depending on the configuration.

Using the typical fire-select button, you can retract or deploy the REV-46's stock at any time. With the stock folded, the REV-46 has unmatched handling with blazing fast ADS and sprint-to-fire speeds. Once you unfold the stock, the gun gains reduced recoil and a significantly tighter hipfire reticle.

It's the best of both worlds for SMG lovers, and the REV-46's prestige attachment sweetens the deal even further. Once equipped, the stock dramatically boosts movement and ADS speed while extended at the cost of some additional recoil. It's really not that harsh of a tradeoff, though, and it makes the REV-46 capable of both hipfire shreds and room-clearing strafes simultaneously.

Bringing Back Blackout

These weapons are already strong in their current state—and things could easily change once balance patches start to roll out— but the EGRT-17 and REV-46 make me really excited for something else on Season 2's roadmap.

Both guns are already proving popular with the Warzone crowd, but Black Ops 7 Season 2 is bringing back the fan-favorite Blackout mode introduced in Black Ops 4. Blackout beat Warzone to the punch by a full year, and it was a much more enjoyable experience for casual sessions.

Blackout was fast-paced and designed with fast-paced action in mind, so I can see the EGRT-17 and REV-46 sitting comfortably at the top of the new Blackout meta. It may not be a one-to-one translation of BO4's battle royale since this is being touted as a "new battle royale experience" that "draws inspiration" from Blackout, but if the core mechanics are the same, finding these two guns will be like finding a gold SCAR in OG Fortnite.

Blackout won't be coming back until Season 2 Reloaded, so there's still plenty of time for these guns to get nerfed into the ground. For now, the EGRT-17 and REV-46 are very much worth grinding the battle pass for.