- Call of Duty was saved against the odds when Infinity Ward imploded - 4 October 2025
It's hard to think of a more charged environment in which to start work on a game. In the wake of 2009's Modern Warfare 2, the studio that invented Call of Duty had imploded. A power struggle between Activision and Infinity Ward's leaders, Jason West and Vince Zampella, had led to the expulsion of the latter two men from the company... Read more.
- Former Call of Duty director stopped making foreign countries the enemy because he wanted 'to go to these countries' without needing a bodyguard - 5 September 2025
Call of Duty has been around the block a few times, and across the years it's turned a lot of foreign countries into videogame enemies. In the first batch of games, when CoD was still a World War 2 shooter, it was simple. Fighting Nazis is extremely cathartic, and they don't reflect modern Germany... Read more.
- We almost got a third-person horror Call of Duty set in Vietnam with 'stuff you've never seen before', but instead we just got more Modern Warfare - 28 August 2025
s of 2023, Sledgehammer Games has worked on not one but two versions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 , but I would have been much more interested to play the studio's original pitch to Activision: a third-person CoD in a "scary version of Vietnam"... Read more.
- The Call of Duty ban wave continues as Activision dishes out over 65,000 account bans across Warzone and Modern Warfare 3 - 5 August 2024
fter a strange spike in Call of Duty cheaters , Activision is going all-in on account bans, first targeting Warzone cheaters and boosters and now going after Modern Warfare 3, both ranked and non-ranked, to rake up an impressive 65,000 account bans in the last week... Read more.
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 comes to Game Pass this week - 23 July 2024
Starting Wednesday July 24, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will hit Microsoft's Game Pass service, including PC Game Pass. It'll be the second big Activision Blizzard game to hit the service since Diablo 4 earlier this year. It's the full game, including the singleplayer campaign, multiplayer mode, and the cooperative PvE zombies mode—which comes in extraction shooting flavor for Modern Warfare 3... Read more.
- Call of Duty follows Fortnite in adding Fallout skins, out this week - 19 June 2024
Look, who knows when we’ll see Fallout 5 - there’s an increasingly less-than-zero chance we’ll all be living in a real post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland by the time Bethesda get around to revealing anything, if their deliberately slow approach to The Elder Scrolls 6 (it’s been nearly THIRTEEN years since Skyrim ) is much to go by. Still, even without a full sequel, Fallout is all around us - in multiple seasons of a television show , in Fortnite , and now in Call of Duty. Read more
- Captain Price seems to die in a cut ending from Modern Warfare 3, uncovered 13 years later - 20 May 2024
You remember the ending of 2011's first-person bullethoser Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 , right? Everyone does! A big man kills another big man with a gun but then - then! - a third big man kills that first big man with a rope. It's dramatic stuff. Well, a data-diving enthusiast of the CoDwars has discovered a cut ending from the original trilogy's closing chapter. It's a more downbeat and mysterious finale, featuring a shadowy figure whose identity is never revealed. Also, Captain Price, the hero of the franchise and aforementioned big man number three, drops his cigar with possibly mortal implications. Read more
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has a free trial starting tomorrow, which is probably the best way to play Activision's underwhelming sequel - 7 February 2024
Season 2 of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 starts today, though you'd be forgiven for dismissing it outright considering how poorly received Activision's latest FPS behemoth was. But there's also a free trial of the game kicking off tomorrow, and considering what the trial offers, it might just be worth paying attention to... Read more.
- Modern Warfare 3 devs talk multiplayer gun balance and how the meta will shift "from season to season" - 21 November 2023
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 developers Sledgehammer Games (umpteenth reminder: that's Modern Warfare 3 as in the 2023 game, not the 2011 FPS of the same name) have hosted a Reddit AMA in which they answered a bunch of questions about the evolution of the game's competitive meta. That's meta as in the overall balance of power between Modern Warfare 3 loadouts , playstyles and so forth based on a variety of factors such as map design, rather than the Alan Wake 2 kind of "meta", where characters talk about how they're just characters in a game and so on. I would dearly like to see some crossover between these types of "meta". I guess the Call of Duty that comes closest to fulfilling that idea is Black Ops 3 , with its fourth-wall-breaking cyborg theatrics. Anyway, the discussion is interesting because it touches on the fact that the evolution of an FPS competitive meta is an artful bala…
- Modern Warfare 3 disappointment has COD players hankering for the grand old days of Infinite Warfare - 9 November 2023
Every so often in the course of our irregular series of Gamers Hate Thing posts, I like to chuck in a Gamers Love Thing post just to shake things up - though in this case, Gamers Love the Thing in question partly for not being another Thing they Hate, and the Thing they Love is something they Hated back in 2016. Erm. Let's start again. As you may know, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - not to be confused with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - is out from today, 9th November . Pre-ordering players and a few lucky journos (whom we absolutely don't fear and resent for receiving copies early) have been able to play the campaign since 1st November, and the reactions and reviews thus far haven't been great. Read more
- MW3: It wouldn’t be another Call of Duty launch without people complaining about SBMM - 25 October 2023
It must be Call of Duty season, folks! Nothing gets Call of Duty fans' blood pumping like their yearly impassioned pleas to rid the series of SBMM. Modern Warfare 3 is mere days away at this point, which means it's time for the people who buy Call of Duty every year to complain about their favourite topic. SBMM, short for skill-based matchmaking, has been a staple in the discourse around the series for over a decade, but it gained prominence starting with the 2019 Modern Warfare reboot, which, according to everyone who hates it, turned SBMM evil. SBMM, or more accurately, EBMM (engagement-based matchmaking), is a system that exists in most modern games, particularly those with live service components. As more and more live games lean harder on post-launch monetisation through microtransactions, publishers want to make sure the largest portion of their player base remains interested for…
- Diablo 4 and Modern Warfare 3 won't release on Game Pass till next year at the earliest - 10 October 2023
Much like a Call of Duty player inching up the stairs behind a wily sniper, Microsoft are closing in on final, final approval of their multi-billion purchase of Activision Blizzard, having more-or-less won over the UK's competition and markets authority . The company expect to bring it home by 13th October. Aside from hastening the arrival of a grim future that consists of a giant, mechanised Phil Spencer engaged in a trans-Pacific staring contest with Nintendo, this also means we can expect new and recent behemoths like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Diablo 4 on Microsoft's Game Pass subscription service. But not for a while, it seems. Read more
- Activision Blizzard to sell streaming rights as CMA rejects original merger - 22 August 2023
Activision Blizzard King has submitted a new proposal to the UK's Competitions and Market Authority (CMA) following the instituition's final rejection of the intital acquisition. In this newfound proposal, cloud streaming rights for "all current and future" Activision Blizzard games would be transfered to Ubisoft for the next 15 years. Without this follow-up proposal, the CMA's rejection would leave the deal dead in the water worldwide. Now that an alternative has been provided, the CMA must reconsider this newfound arrangement would put its worries regarding cloud gaming and its impact on UK consumers at ease. Activision Blizzard and Microsoft has until October to get the CMA's approval, otherwise the acquisition will be toast. The CMA put out the following press release early this morning : "Under the restructured deal, Microsoft will not acquire cloud rights for existing Activision P…
- Activision Blizzard offers up streaming rights as CMA rejects initial acquisition proposal - 22 August 2023
Activision Blizzard King has submitted a new proposal to the UK's Competitions and Market Authority (CMA) following the instituition's final rejection of the intital acquisition. In this newfound proposal, cloud streaming rights for "all current and future" Activision Blizzard games would be transfered to Ubisoft for the next 15 years. Without this follow-up proposal, the CMA's rejection would leave the deal dead in the water worldwide. Now that an alternative has been provided, the CMA must reconsider this newfound arrangement would put its worries regarding cloud gaming and its impact on UK consumers at ease. Activision Blizzard and Microsoft has until October to get the CMA's approval, otherwise the acquisition will be toast. The CMA put out the following press release early this morning : "Under the restructured deal, Microsoft will not acquire cloud rights for existing Activision P…
- Yes, the next Call of Duty is Modern Warfare 3 - 26 July 2023
After promotional materials for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 have appeared out in the wild, the developer has begun to crack a couple jokes acknowledging the leaks. Twitter user, algebra_sloth, took to the platform to share images of multiple boxes of Monster Energy. You can view the tweet via the folk over at TheSixthAxis (thanks!), as it has since been removed. These boxes don artwork and a logo for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, accompanied by Captain Price, showing that Monster Energy is clearly going to be running a promotional campaign for the game, which is yet to be confirmed. That said, Call of Duty developers didn’t turn a blind eye to the leaks. It’s not like this is the first, or even second, time that this has happened. Instead, Activision and Infinity Ward has acknowledged them, tweeting : “Whew. Mondays. Anyone have an energy drink they can spare?” Read m…
- Call of Duty comes back to life as Xbox-360-era games get surprise update - 17 July 2023
Large numbers of players are swarming back to older Call of Duty games on Xbox 360 thanks to a recent update. As spotted last week by Twitter user ZekcoFS , an update arrived for a number of older Call of Duty titles that fixed matchmaking. This included classics such Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3, and Black Ops 2. Now, it seems that quite a large number of players are returning to the games. As reported by CharlieIntel , Black Ops 2 managed to hit more than 10,000 players over the weekend on Xbox 360, and Modern Warfare 3 had over 7000 players, significant numbers for some now quite old games. Prior to this apparent fix, anyone that tried to play a match of one of the older Call of Duty titles on Xbox 360 wouldn't be able to due to a supposed lack of players. This didn't make much sense, though, as certain game modes only needed as few as eight play…
- Call of Duty 2023 release date leaked by judge during FTC hearing with Microsoft - 1 July 2023
It looks like Call of Duty 2023 will be released on November 10, according to a rather interesting leak. Apparently, the federal judge presiding over the FTC hearing with Microsoft and Activision spilled the beans (thanks, CharlieIntel ). This isn't the first time we've heard about the November 10 date, as an Insider Gaming report stated as much back in February. Read more
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's disappearing maps are back - 30 June 2021
Remember those Call of Duty: Modern Warfare maps that were surprise-added ( and then removed ) earlier this year? Well, they're back once again, and hopefully they're going to stick around a bit longer this time. The returning multiplayer maps are Al-Raab Airbase (6v6) and Drainage (Gunfight), with the former being reintroduced as a 24/7 playlist, and the latter now available in the Gunfight and Gunfight - Snipers Only playlists. The maps were originally added to the game in an update back in March , a move that surprised players given Activision was expected to have switched focus to supporting Black Ops Cold War and Warzone. Al-Raab Airbase and Drainage were briefly available to play in private matches, but in April Activision removed the two maps , later explaining they needed more time in the oven . Anyway, they have now returned, and should help mix things up for those still playin…
- Call of Duty: Warzone just got a new "broken" pistol - and it's wreaking havoc - 16 April 2021
Call of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare got a new pistol last night - and players have already declared it overpowered. The pistol in question is the Sykov, which can be used with a whopping 80-round mag, full-auto mode and the akimbo perk to dual-wield. Players have tested the pistol in Warzone, and it looks like the Sykov has an incredibly fast time-to-kill. It's early days, but already players reckon the close-range Warzone meta has been flipped on its head. Read more
- Call Of Duty has won its legal fight over having Humvees - 2 April 2020
Activision have won their legal battle with the makers of Humvees over Call Of: Duty Modern Warfare games using lookalike warcars without permission. AM General and Activision’s lawyers have been sniping back and forth since 2016, and on Tuesday a judge finally called the case in a summary judgement. The ruling basically says that CoD using Humvees has “artistic relevance” and any harm AM General suffers is minor weighed up against free speech. Case closed, back in your car. (more…)
