Battle royale modes have been the biggest innovation in multiplayer shooters since, well, the progression mechanics in the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2007. This time, though, Call of Duty is the one that had to play catch-up. After battle royale modes exploded in PUBG and Fortnite, Call of Duty introduced its own version of the concept in Blackout mode for last year’s Black Ops 4. Even Call of Duty Mobile challenges mass groups of players to be the last one standing.
So it was strange to see this year’s release, the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot, launch without its own murder island. But don’t worry, recent leaks suggest Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is in fact getting a battle royale mode.
Because of the way Call of Duty games are made across different development teams, it’s not surprising when a feature from one game doesn’t appear in the immediate follow-up. When making this new Modern Warfare, maybe Infinity Ward didn’t have enough time to wrap their heads around Treyarch’s Blacks Ops 4 battle royale tech in time for launch. Or maybe they felt the cartoonishly large skirmishes didn’t quite fit with the game’s gritty new war crime aesthetic.
BR stuff, wow this is pretty cool, feels like when I first started doing this for Apex and everything amazed me 😀 pic.twitter.com/kM8XSt2D4W
— That1MiningGuy (@That1MiningGuy) November 2, 2019
But whatever the reason for the delay, Twitter user and battle royale aficionado That1MiningGuy has posted a text dump of Modern Warfare files that all mention “BR,” which we can safely assume refers to a battle royale mode. So either the mode did exist and got cut, or more like it’s just coming at a later date. For more on battle royale games that do exist, remember when Fortnite blew itself up?
