Call of Duty® News

Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® III is here. Join Captain Price and Task Force 141 in the action-packed Campaign, deploy across 16 legendary and modernized Core 6v6 Multiplayer maps, squad up for epic battles in Modern Warfare Zombies: This and more awaits you now with the worldwide launch.

But first…whether you’re new to Call of Duty or a returning veteran, get you and your squad up to speed for the fights ahead with our suite of Modern Warfare III launch content:

Modern Warfare III Launch Comms



Get your intel on everything Modern Warfare III related with our Launch Comms series covering the following topics,

Prepare for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III — Everything You Need to Know

Mapping Out Multiplayer — Maps, Modes, And Operators

Fully Equipped: A Deep Dive into Modern Warfare III Loadouts

Upping Your Arsenal: Primary and Secondary Weapons

All You Need to Know About Challenges and Weapon Camos

Modern Warfare Zombies — Operation Deadbolt

Once you’ve got a grasp of all the major systems in play after reading our Launch Comms, it’s time to explore even further with our official Modern Warfare III Guides.

Free and Official: Get into the Game with Modern Warfare III Guides



Get an even deeper look into the game with our Modern Warfare III Guides. Visit and bookmark the main Guides page here for information to get you started, plus a detailed breakdown of everything Multiplayer and Zombies related, including overviews and strategies for every mode, map, and more at launch!

Keep a second screen handy as you play to display our Guides content, which is official and free. Explore the guide’s interactive Tac Maps between matches to get a better understanding of the environment, view our map and mode specific tips to help formulate your next winning strategy, and plan your next mission into the Exclusion Zone using our Zombies tactics.


Purchase Modern Warfare III Today

Dive into Campaign, Multiplayer, and Zombies today. We are just a month away from the launch of Season 01 of Modern Warfare III in early December, so hit the ground running by grinding away now in the pre-season.

Both physical and digital editions of the game can be purchased for your platform of choice. Purchase your copy here.

Welcome to Modern Warfare III!

Massive congratulations to all of the many incredible and talented developers across our Studio teams who made Modern Warfare III possible:

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is published by Activision. Development for the game is led by Sledgehammer Games, in partnership with Infinity Ward. Development for Modern Warfare Zombies is led by Treyarch, working closely with Sledgehammer Games. Additional development support provided (in alphabetical order) by Activision Central Design, Activision Central Technology, Activision QA, Activision Shanghai, Beenox, Demonware, High Moon Studios, Raven Software, and Toys for Bob.

Stay frosty.

© 2023 Activision Publishing, Inc. ACTIVISION, CALL OF DUTY, and MODERN WARFARE are trademarks of Activision Publishing, Inc. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners.

For more information, please visit www.callofduty.com and www.youtube.com/callofduty, and follow @Activision and @CallofDuty on X, Instagram, and Facebook. For Call of Duty Updates, follow @CODUpdates on X.

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Modern Warfare® III celebrates the 20th anniversary of Call of Duty® with one of the greatest collections of Multiplayer maps ever assembled. Get ready for 16 iconic Multiplayer maps at launch plus over 12 new maps to come post-launch.

Team up with other squads to survive and fight massive hordes of the undead in the largest Call of Duty® Zombies map ever. Modern Warfare® Zombies (MWZ) tells a new Treyarch Zombies story with missions, core Zombies features, and secrets to discover. Ready up for an open world PvE survival experience against some of the biggest enemies in Call of Duty® history!

Combining everything #TeamRICOCHET has developed over the course of the last three years with new Machine Learning advancements, RICOCHET: Anti-Cheat™ is preparing for the launch of Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® III with a stronger and faster process to combat cheating.

Machine Learning, in combination with client and server-side systems that continue to evolve and grow, helps advance both the speed and accuracy of our prevention techniques and detection systems.

How Does #TeamRICOCHET Use Machine Learning?

Machine Learning advancements have been integrated into our tech to help with efficiency and speed in prevention, detection, and removal of cheaters. Machine Learning advancements enhance our team’s ability by:

• Examining client and server data to find new cheat behaviors
• Issuing account challenges to validate abnormal behavior
• Collecting and collating problem accounts for action

In short, Machine Learning helps us anticipate behavior better and operate with more effectiveness, with our team validating for accuracy.

Machine Learning works in concert with our team, providing information to make account decisions – but Machine Learning systems do not issue bans.

Machine Learning also helps enhance existing tools. One example of how we’re using Machine Learning to accelerate our anti-cheat capabilities is with the Replay tool.

Machine Learning x Replay Investigation Tool

Earlier this year we announced a replay investigation tool that captured gameplay data so it could be converted into video internally, allowing our teams to review player matches for problem behavior. This tool has been beneficial since it launched, but the team wanted to drive toward a new goal: Speed.

On average, a #TeamRICOCHET teammate could review somewhere in the ballpark of 700 replay clips in any given day.

Some clips are easy: the most egregious “rage hacking” is simple to spot, but the Replay Investigation Tool was helpful to identify hackers who used tools to give them a slight advantage that was harder to spot in-game, such as wall hacks.

For the launch of Modern Warfare III – and across all titles protected by RICOCHET: Anti-Cheat – the #TeamRICOCHET team is activating Machine Learning processes to increase the efficiency and strength of our anti-cheat efforts.

For the Replay Investigation Tool, a Machine Learning model is trained to identify suspicious behavior like wall hacks or raging (plus many others), and immediately prioritizes and alerts the team to review the issue for account action. A single PC running the model can review up to 1,000 clips per day – a number that grows exponentially when multiple computers are tasked with operating this specific Replay Machine Learning Investigation model.

We’re just getting started on Machine Learning integration for the Replay Investigation Tool, but we’re excited to see how it evolves over time. A major focus for this and many advancements is Ranked Play modes across our titles, combating anyone attempting to jump the ranks of the leaderboard unfairly.

This is one of the many ways Machine Learning helps identify and prioritize issues for our team, allowing Team Ricochet to develop new prevention strategies, detection techniques, and mitigations.



Say Hello to Splat

Often when a cheater appears in a match they are immediately kicked from the experience. Sometimes, as we’ve discussed in the past, we issue mitigations to minimize their impact privately to keep them in the game so we can absorb all the information we can about the account and the machine used to cheat. Cloaking, Damage Shield and more will return in Modern Warfare III multiplayer and continue to exist in Call of Duty: Warzone.

While we hesitate to call it an in-game Mitigation – because it’s immediately obvious when it happens – we have developed a new trick for cheaters going forward in Call of Duty: Warzone: We call it Splat.

With Splat, if a cheater is discovered, we may randomly, and for fun, disable their parachute sending them careening into the ground after they deploy.

But what if we catch them after they’ve deployed? Well, Splat can also adjust player velocity, which transforms a bunny hop into a 10,000-foot drop taking them out instantly. This is one of many new tricks we’ve developed – and we’ll talk about more in the future.

Like all mitigations, Splat won’t randomly turn on for a player that isn’t verified to be cheating. Player reporting won’t turn it on, and the game can’t accidentally activate it.

As important as it is for us to continue to fight on behalf of all our players – which includes us – we know that part of the confidence you have in our systems is when you can see them working to protect your experience in real-time. Visuals are important to our players and that’s why a few months ago we added the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat logo to the kill feed, so players could see the system protecting them in real-time. Mitigations do this too.

While it’s fun to annoy cheaters that make it into games, our aim is to prevent them from ever getting near a match. Prevention is key to the continued evolution of RICOCHET: Anti-Cheat.



Anti-Cheat Prevention Systems
Cheaters are always looking for easy ways to get into the game, and stealing accounts is one of the ways they do this. Securing your account by enabling 2FA is important, as is making sure you are not reusing passwords for your Activision ID that you would for other apps or websites. Reusing passwords on other apps or websites in connection with your email can open the door to your account being stolen.

In 2023, our teams were able to identify over 110,000 player accounts on the dark web that were parsed from reused email and password combinations. We have since reset these accounts, returning them to their original owners to prevent these accounts from falling into the wrong hands.

Learn how you can enable 2FA on your Activision ID

In the lead up to Modern Warfare III’s launch, #TeamRICOCHET has banned over 80,000 accounts across Call of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare II, barring these accounts from accessing Modern Warfare III. 

Another important piece of this prevention puzzle is our game code obfuscation and encryption. To play Call of Duty, we send each player the game code (via the game executable) to experience the game. When we send out the game executable, which contains detailed instructions for how our game works, we are essentially sending out copies of our house keys. Imagine trying to keep a bad guy who has copies of your keys from breaking into your home.

To make it harder to unlock the front door, the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat teams are constantly working on new obfuscation techniques to make the game code harder for bad actors to analyze. We then encrypt (or digitally lock) the entire Call of Duty executable, so it is much harder to tamper with. This makes it more difficult for the cheat developers to analyze and modify our code and remove our protections.

This is the ebb and flow of anti-cheat security.

When we take steps to stop cheaters, they readjust their process and look for new opportunities. The nature of multiplayer games, where our systems (the server) exchanges information with your computer (the clients) to make the multiplayer action happen, is how cheating can occur. Our anti-cheat efforts tackle each touchpoint of this trust process, from client to server-side systems and enhancing those process with Machine Learning to combat unfair play.



How We Use Player Reporting

A common misconception we see is that spam reporting will result in actions being taken against accounts. For clarity, whether one player reports another once or multiple times, our system only considers the first report (throttling any additional reports from that player).

Reporting is critical but, must be used in combination with other factors before an account is actioned on. An account, for example, cannot be banned due only to reporting but if that account has also triggered other (and multiple) detections, a report can raise a red flag.

A reminder that spam reporting may be considered in violation of the updated Security and Enforcement Policy regarding “Malicious Reporting,” established earlier this year.

As players of our own game – and other online multiplayer experiences – we too are disrupted by cheating issues. Our team is dedicated to using all technologies, providing our team with more data and tools, developing new prevention and detection systems, and doing anything we can to make the lives of cheaters that make it into our games as annoying as possible.

It's a continuous battle, but it’s one we’re committed to.

© 2023 Activision Publishing, Inc. ACTIVISION, CALL OF DUTY, CALL OF DUTY WARZONE, MODERN WARFARE, and RICOCHET Anti-Cheat are trademarks of Activision Publishing, Inc. All other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners.

For more information, please visit www.callofduty.com and www.youtube.com/callofduty, and follow @Activision and @CallofDuty on X, Instagram, and Facebook. For Call of Duty Updates, follow @CODUpdates on X.

The game becomes available to play on November 9 at 9 PM PT!

For exact availability in your time zone, please consult the adjacent map image.

Welcome to Operation Deadbolt. Your main tasks — aside from surviving hordes of Zombies and the machinations of the PMC group Terminus Outcomes — are threefold:

Operation Deadbolt: Explore an open world and search for valuable Acquisitions and Schematics.

A World of Opportunity: Complete Contracts to earn Essence, collect Acquisitions, and clear Missions to discover what is really happening in the Exclusion Zone.

Secure and Extract: You also need to learn when the situation on the ground becomes advantageous as well as untenable. Immerse yourself and work with other players to complete the more difficult mission objectives, and extract before you’re overwhelmed.

MWZ: Zombies Lobby



The Modern Warfare Zombies Lobby features the same Global Panel access, but the Main Menu is significantly different.

          The Main Menu across the top (Lobby, Gear, Strike Team, Customize, Battle Pass, Store) is meant to prepare you for your next mission to survive the undead hordes.

          The Match and Progress information along the bottom of the screen allows you to launch into your next match, and quickly ascertain how much of the Zombies Story Missions you’ve completed.

MWZ: Readying Up for a Mission

Strike Team Operators



Recruit any unlocked Operator for your Strike Team. Each recruited Operator will have their own “On-Soldier” Gear. All Operators you’ve unlocked from both Modern Warfare II and Modern Warfare III are available, and two Operators — Ripper and Scorch — are unlocked after you complete specific challenges within Zombies.

Each Strike Team Operator can be chosen and comes with five different customizable Equipment Slots. The Gear you find during missions is saved here, and includes Killstreaks, Armor, Gas Masks, and Medical items.

Rucksacks



Fill your Rucksack with essential Acquisitions that you find on the battlefield or craft via valuable Schematics. Initially there are up to five open slots on the small Rucksack. After your first mission, providing you’ve found either Acquisitions or Schematics, you can add such items to the Rucksack.

Loadouts



Choose two Primaries, or a Primary and Secondary Weapon, to take along with a Lethal, Tactical, and Field Upgrade. You have:

            Primary and Secondary Weapons: All MWII and MWIII weapons are available to use in Zombies. Any that are “XP Recommended” are denoted by the small fire icon, and grant you more XP if used.

Insured Slots: These are weapons you’ve leveled up, added attachments to, and come from the weapon pool of over 100 MWII and MWIII weapons. If you fail to exfil with an Insured Weapon, it only becomes available again after a Cooldown period. You have up to three Insured Slots, and two of them are unlocked after completing Zombies missions.

Contraband Stashes: These are weapons you’ve found and exfilled with and are permanently lost if left behind during a mission. Keeping a stash of up to 20 of these weapons, which may or may not have attachments added to them, is helpful when augmenting your Loadout.

Tacticals: A selection of Multiplayer Tactical and Lethal Equipment can be equipped as part of your Loadout.

Tacticals: Stun Grenade, Smoke Grenade, Scatter Mine, Decoy Grenade, Shock Stick, Stim, or Experimental Gas Grenade.

Lethals: Frag Grenade, Claymore, Throwing Knife, Thermite, Proximity Mine, Drill Charge, Sticky Grenade, C4, Molotov Cocktail, Breacher Drone

Zombies Field Upgrades



Field Upgrades in MWZ are completely different from the equipment available to Multiplayer Operators. There are six Field Upgrades, five of which are unlocked as you progress through your Military Player Ranks:

Energy Mine

Medium Recharge

Spawn an explosive, dealing massive damage to enemies who set it off.

Frenzied Guard

Slow Recharge

Repair armor to full and force all enemies in the area to target you for 10 seconds. Enemy kills repair armor during this time.

Healing Aura

Slow Recharge

Heal all players immediately (and in last stand).

Frost Blast

Medium Recharge

Damage enemies with the initial blast and slow those that enter the area of effect.

Aether Shroud

Medium Recharge

Become invisible to zombies.

Tesla Storm

Slow Recharge

For 10 seconds, lightning connects to other players, stunning and damaging normal enemies.

Adding to Your Attacks: Acquisitions and Schematics

Once you return from your first few successful missions, you’re able to place Acquisitions into your Rucksack for use during subsequent outings and start to craft your own Acquisitions at the Schematic Crafting location, between drops.



Acquisitions: These are single-use items that can give you an advantage on the battlefield. Acquisitions you find and exfil with in your Rucksack can be added to your Acquisition Stash, within your Rucksack Menu.

Schematics: These are highly sought-after plans that permanently allow you to craft Acquisitions that you can add to your Rucksack. Schematics have a cooldown period, after which they can be brought into the Exclusion Zone.



The following types of Acquisitions can be found and used, or crafted if the Schematics are located, and all have a Rarity value associated with them (denoting how difficult they are to find and the level of improvements they bring to the weapon or item they affect):

Aetherium



The Dark Aether element is used in conjunction with crafting Schematics to bolster your weaponry:

Raw and Refined Aetherium Crystals: These are used to upgrade your Pack-a-Punch weapon to Levels I and II, respectively.

Uncommon, Rare, Epic Aether Tools: These upgrade your currently held weapon to a rarer form. The rarer the form, the more impressive damage the weapon inflicts.

Perk-a-Colas



The Vest, Gloves, Boots and Gear Perk system is not available in Zombies. Instead, receive a permanent boost (throughout a Mission, unless you fully die) to various in-game attributes by finding (or crafting) a Perk-a-Cola:

Deadshot Daiquiri: ADS (aiming down sight) moves to enemy critical location. Removes scope sway.

Death Perception: Obscured enemies, chests, resources, and item drops are more easily spotted.

Elemental Pop: Every bullet you fire has a small chance to apply a random Ammo Mod effect.

Jugger-Nog: Increases maximum health.

PHD Flopper: Diving to prone triggers an explosion. The explosion increases the higher you fall. Immunity from fall damage while diving. Immunity from area-of-effect damage from weapons you are using.

Quick Revive: Reduce the health regeneration delay time by 50%. Reduce the time it takes to revive an ally by 50%.

Speed Cola: Drink to reload and replate armor faster.

Stamin-Up: Increases run and sprint speed.

Tombstone Soda: On death, you create a tombstone stash at that location, containing your backpack inventory in the next game.

Ammo Mods



The weapon you are currently holding can be further augmented with an Ammo modification. For the exact effect each Mod brings to a battle, why not test them out in the Exclusion Zone once you find or craft them?

          Ammo Mods: Brain Rot, Cryo Freeze, Dead Wire,   Napalm Burst, Shatter Blast

Wonder Weapons



Locate the necessary (and devilishly difficult to find) Schematics, and you’re able to craft some of the most arcane and powerful weaponry ever seen. The Wonder Weapons available at game launch are currently [REDACTED].

Missions Overview: Acts, Tiers, and Rewards



Begin to acclimate to the horrors of the Urzikstan Exclusion Zone and commence a multilayered storyline that focuses on a variety of Tiered Missions in three Acts. Not all missions are immediately accessible, and the mission you wish to complete (which may have one or multiple tasks) is highlighted. Mission completion rewards (including Acquisitions, cosmetic items, durable items, Double XP tokens) are also visible prior to infil.

Complete tasks within a mission (and receive unlocked missions and rewards).

Complete missions within a Tier (and receive unlocked missions and rewards).

Complete all Tiers to finish an Act (and receive unlocked missions and rewards).

Complete all three Acts (to receive a [REDACTED] and continue to uncover the mysteries plaguing the Exclusion Zone, prior the storyline continuation at Season 1).

Mission Parameters: The Essence of Zombies



You have freedom and flexibility to explore the Exclusion Zone throughout Urzikstan, and infilling allows you to complete a wide variety of activities as well as the specific mission tasks you assigned to yourself prior to the session start.

Aside from the specific mission tasks you are undertaking, each Zombies infil enables you to:

          Explore: Investigate the Low, Medium, and High Threat Zones. This can be done with a purpose, or you can simply remain in the relative safety of a Low Threat Zone as you learn how to deal with the variety of enemy threats. Weapon levelling is an excellent plan within the outer edge of the map.

Complete Contracts: This allows you to earn Essence (the in-game currency, mainly gathered after zombie culling) and Acquisitions by completing contracts in the field for Operation Deadbolt.

Upgrade to Progress: Spend Essence at machines across the map and upgrade your weapons and gear.

Extract Acquisitions: Successful exfils allow you to keep Acquisitions to get a head start in the next deployment.



Within a deployment, your Tac-Map displays a variety of interesting game features, and some of the most important ones are detailed below so you can understand how to interact with them.



Buy Stations: Allows you to purchase a variety of helpful items, such as Killstreaks, Gas Masks, and other essentials.



Perk-a-Cola Machine: This allows you to purchase a beverage that increases your prowess in a variety of ways (see above).



Pack-a-Punch Machine: This upgrades your currently carried weapon (usually in the ammunition and damage departments), for a price.



Wall Buys: Outlines of weaponry can be found on the walls of various buildings throughout the Exclusion Zone. Interact and purchase the weapon, as needed.



Mystery Boxes: These offer an exciting randomly generated prize — likely a weapon of varying rarity and occasionally a Wonder Weapon!

Wonder Weapons: [REDACTED].


Nothing gets in, nothing gets out.


For more information on Call of Duty check out www.callofduty.com and www.youtube.com/callofduty and follow @RavenSoftware and @CallofDuty on X, Instagram, and Facebook.

© 2023 Activision Publishing, Inc. ACTIVISION, CALL OF DUTY, MODERN WARFARE, and CALL OF DUTY WARZONE, are trademarks of Activision Publishing, Inc. All other trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners.

For more information on Activision games, follow @Activision on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.