Activision is promising a more grounded approach to the cosmetics and collaborations in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 after the company fell victim to Fortniteification and injected its military shooter series with meme fodder for years.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 became official yesterday: the new Infinity Ward FPS is launching later this year for PC, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PS5 with a new campaign and the multiplayer modes you'd expect. And on the eve of its announcement, Infinity Ward took a second to clear the air.
"Every aspect of Modern Warfare 4 is anchored in the game's narrative," the developer tweets. "Every feature, every decision needs to feel authentic to what Modern Warfare is, and that includes cosmetics and collabs. We're committed to keeping it grounded and transparent, and we want to hear from you on what you'd like to see in our game."
For the past few years, the series' multiplayer matches have followed Fortnite's 'anything goes' attitude: online lobbies have gone from soldiers in tactical gear to lobbies where Nicki Minaj teabags American Dad's Roger before getting blown up by Beavis and Butthead.
Complaints around the meme-fueled cosmetics and crossovers got so loud that other non-CoD developers had to assure their own players. An Arc Raiders lead vowed that you wouldn't see T-Rex costumes or the like in its extraction shooter, while a Battlefield 6 producer also took the opportunity to say the series needed to feel grounded, as well.
Crucially, Modern Warfare 4 is likely to still have crossover content added at some point, but the studio is at least aware that anything coming from the transmedia multiverse should be in line with the series' aesthetics. We'll see if that holds after the shooter comes out in October.
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