Treyarch promises to stop team-killing in Black Ops 4's Blackout battle royale mode

Judging by James, Chris, and Tyler's impressions, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's battle royale mode, called Blackout, sounds like a lot of fun—but it's not without problems. Many players have complained about team-killing, and argued that being able to pick up your teammate's loot after shooting them in the back just encourages people to go rogue. Treyarch is listening, and says that it's one of many issues it's set to address during the beta.

On Reddit, it said that it agreed that you shouldn't be able to loot teammates you've killed, and that a fix was on its to-do list. It said it will also continue to ban players for intentional team-killing, and encouraged players to report bad behaviour through the mode's social menu.

Players have also flagged some strange audio bugs, and Treyarch is planning to smooth things over. "We discovered and are fixing a critical bug where a player’s environment does not properly impact in-game sounds. This is why, for example, someone directly above or below the player can sound so much louder than expected," it said. "When the game is released, footsteps will be properly impacted by walls, floors, ceilings, and other objects in the world."

It also said it will make it easier for players to tell how much damage their armour has taken by adding a "armour health bar" above the player's own health bar, and that, at launch, it will be obvious whether your shots are hitting a vehicle or an enemy within a vehicle—currently, it's hard to distinguish.

For a full list of planned changes, read the Reddit post. Black Ops 4 is due out on October 12.

Oh, and if you fancy seeing a ridiculous long distance tomahawk kill in Blackout, click here.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.