Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Activision not doing itself any favors with Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 loot boxes

Gabe Gurwin
By
Official Call of Duty®: Black Ops 4 - Operation Grand Heist Trailer

Game giant Activision-Blizzard hasn’t exactly had the best public image recently, with the company splitting from Destiny studio Bungie and laying off hundreds of employees as part of restructuring — despite record profits. Now, the company’s biggest franchise has found itself in hot water after introducing particularly intrusive loot boxes.

Recommended Videos

As part of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4‘s big “Operation Grand Heist” content update, the game added “cases” to the Black Market system. These cases contain certain playable zombie Blackout characters as well as variations on weapons, items from past Operations, and certain skins. For those who happened to miss an Operation that offered an item, this is the way you can acquire it anyway. It can be done through normal play in multiplayer or Blackout mode, or, naturally, by spending Call of Duty Points you paid real money to get.

Related

As Eurogamer noted, some of the items you get can actually provided experience boosts, potentially giving those who pay real money access to gear before those who don’t. It sounds a tad like the system put in place by one of Electronic Arts’ shooters before the company removed them from the game entirely.

Call of Duty®: Black Ops 4 — Black Ops Pass Update

Players on the game’s Reddit community page have expressed their frustration, pointing out that it will now take them longer to get Reserve gear if they don’t want to purchase crates. The progress seems to be brutally slow, as well. It’s a shame, because earning new goodies in Black Ops 4 as you progress through levels is relatively quick, and doesn’t require forking over extra cash.

Those who play Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 religiously could easily be spending more than $150 with this new system. The base game costs $60, and the season pass locks upcoming maps out from those who bought the game alone. Most other multiplayer shooters have moved away from this model, including Battlefield V, which provides players with a steady stream of new content for free.

There are certainly other options for players right now. Respawn’s Apex Legends has been a smash-hit success using a free-to-play model, with more than 25 million players in just a week. The game’s popularity has even caused a surge in activity for Titanfall 2, which also didn’t charge extra for maps.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Gabe Gurwin
Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is official and it’s coming this November
call of duty modern warfare iii release date makarov mwiii

Activision has confirmed a November 10 release date for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III with a teaser trailer following a barrage of leaks.
The shooter, which is going to be a direct sequel to 2022's Modern Warfare II, was the subject of lots of reports and leaks prior to this announcement. Reports from Bloomberg revealed that this game was originally going to be a Modern Warfare II expansion, but it later got upgraded to a full game. Then, over the summer, more game details started to leak before some Monster Energy advertisements revealed the game's title prematurely. Activision coyly acknowledged this leak on Twitter at the time, but finally pulled the curtain back on the project today with a video titled "Modern Warfare III is Coming."
Modern Warfare III is Coming
It begins with some green soundwaves on-screen and a lot of radio chatter in the background. Then, the soundwaves turn from green to red before the perspective then pushes into them, creating a trippy red void. In there, we briefly see waveform images of a snake and Captain Price before he says, "Never bury your enemies alive" over the silhouette of a new character. This is believed to be Vladimir Makarov, the villain of the original Modern Warfare trilogy, who was teased in the post-credit scene for last year's campaign. After all of that, the title Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is confirmed, as is the release date of November 10.

This date falls right in line with the late October to early November window in which Call of Duty games usually come out. It also places its launch after Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition is expected to be complete, so it looks like this may be the first Call of Duty game released under Microsoft. Other than that date, official details on the game are fairly scarce. Thankfully, we shouldn't have to wait too much longer to learn more.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III launches on November 10. 

Read more
Call of Duty: Warzone devs share the design secrets of the best battle royale map
Overhead shot of Vondel map in Warzone.

The Vondel map in Call of Duty: Warzone is one of the best battlegrounds in the history of the battle royale genre. It's a small-scale, densely packed map with a wide variety of points of interest (POIs) that feel distinct. Modeled after European cities, Vondel is a feat of level design as it simultaneously feels fun and functional. It's a city that you can truly imagine as a real place, with a slew of different shops to enter, a canal, and even a water taxi service that moves throughout the map.

But behind the scenes, there are countless design choices that help the flow and pacing of the map. To get a better sense of just what makes this map work so well, I spoke with Beenox Senior Level Designer Fred Wilson and Lead Artist Guillaume Alain. The duo revealed how Vondel's composition seeps into the players' subconscious, with intuitive design choices that work better than any Warzone map that's come before.
Pacing is king

Read more
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III has seemingly leaked thanks to Monster
Five main characters from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.

It looks like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III will be the title of this year's Call of Duty game. Following several leaks, including an undeniable one connected to Monster Energy, a joking tweet from the official Call of Duty Twitter account appears to confirm that this is true.
Leaks suggesting that 2023's Call of Duty game is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III have existed for months, but ramped up recently. On July 17, the Call of Duty Twitter account put up tweets asking if Operators, weapons, and bundles from Modern Warfare II should carry over to this year's game and teasing that a big reveal would happen alongside the unveiling of Season 5. Later that day, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier stated that this is a Sledgehammer Games-led project that started as an expansion and morphed into a full game.
Then, Monday morning, images of Monster Energy promotional materials connected to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III emerged on Twitter, giving us confirmation of the name and our first look at the game's logo.

A leak like this is pretty difficult to deny, so Activision decided to play along with it. "Whew. Mondays," the official Call of Duty account tweeted. "Anyone have an energy drink they can spare?"
While not a traditional, explicit announcement, this tweet confirms the validity of the Monster Energy leak and affirms that this year's Call of Duty will be a direct follow-up to 2022's Modern Warfare II. Now, we'll just have to wait and see when Activision decides to officially reveal more about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III itself. 
Because it's not officially announced yet, we don't know what Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III's release date or launch platforms are. Still, it's likely that it will launch across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox sometime this October or November after Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition closes. 

Read more