With the launch of Call of Duty Season 4, Activision quietly placed ads within the Black Ops 6 and Warzone loadouts, causing backlash in the process.
Activision already has a bad reputation for the aggressive monetization of Premium Black Ops 6 and its free-to-play Battle Royale Warzone, but this latest move may have handed over some players to Edge.
Following the launch of Season 4, you can see weapon bundle ads in the Build and Weapons menu. These are inevitable for players as they tinker with the loadout.
Elsewhere, Activision has added ads for bundles and battle pass in the tabs. This is another controversial change that caused the complaint.
This is a snippet of responses fed across Call of Duty SubredDits, Discords and Social Media.
- Not only are this in the free game, Warzone, but I’m not mad at how expensive they’re getting, putting it on a paid premium title? f **k off.
- This game is still 80 euros I get them to make a large portion of their money from the store, but I think the minimum of premium products is that ads don’t clog the menu?
- At this point it feels like opening a mobile game where you can see how many options to buy something in this game.
- Anyone who wanted this bundle checked the store and bought it. Putting it here doesn’t mean more people will buy it, it just It’s annoying.
- While playing the game, wait until you add pop-up ads to the bundle.
Call of Duty has, of course, been a monetization crisis in the past. Players will be used for Passes, Premium Battle Passes and even more expensive versions of Premium Battle Passes, plus $70 (which will soon become $80), plus admission fees for even more expensive versions. However, following the $69 billion acquisition of Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard, there is a growing sense that the franchise’s microtransaction strategy has become even more aggressive.
And it’s worth noting that Actionision abandoned earlier this month Warzone Mobilea game intended to lead Battle Royale into a new era, and admitted it didn’t meet expectations.
Passthecontroller reached out to Activision for comment.
Wesley is the news director for Passthecontroller. Find him on @wyp100’s Twitter. You can contact Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
