While Call of Duty is a monstrously popular series across the board, the franchise-defining launch of Modern Warfare in 2008 saw it focus on the console market rather than its roots on the PC. However, the next installment will feature something PC gamers are always ready to welcome with open arms — mod support.
Treyarch announced in a blog post published yesterday that mod support will be added to the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 in 2016. Director of development at the studio, Cesar Stastny, writes that the feature is one of the “top requests” that players have aired.
Stastny goes on to confirm that players will be able to create their own maps and game modes, which will be accompanied by tools to help run and find servers that use mods. For obvious reasons, Treyarch seems keen to keep user-created content separate from its official channels.
While Black Ops 3 is scheduled to launch in a matter of days, we’ll have to wait a little longer for its modding suite to hit high gear. Treyarch’s target for a closed alpha is March of 2016, so a full release will likely be made available a little while afterwards.
That timing might be just the shot in the arm that the game needs after several months of play. It seems likely that this schedule has been put in place to ensure that user-created mods don’t steal the thunder from any DLC set to be released post-launch.
Stastny ends his blog post with a brief warning that “things don’t always work out exactly as planned.” Offering mod support for a game as big as Black Ops 3 raises a whole host of challenges, so it’ll be interesting to see just what Treyarch can cook up as development progresses.
