Black Ops 6 and Warzone having the Squid Game crossover as the only scheduled event in January shows me that Activision and the other supporting development studios don’t have faith in themselves to generate new, original ideas.
On December 23, Raven Software and Treyarch signed off and departed for their holiday breaks. Before heading out, the Warzone development team promised an update in early 2025 that will address several community-requested issues such as Perks not working correctly.
Meanwhile, Treyarch left Multiplayer fans with eight days of Double XP to help fill the void of no substantial updates during the holiday break. When the devs return from vacation, they will have their hands full in rebuilding the game’s image.
Ex-Call of Duty pro Scump worries about the franchise’s future since the BO6 topped 300,000-plus concurrent players on Steam at launch and is now struggling to pull in 100,000.
None of this decline would be an issue if the development team had a sure fire plan in place to restore faith. That plan is… Squid Game?
BO6 and Warzone Season 1 Reloaded conclusion falls flat
Based on the promo trailer for the Squid Game crossover event, which starts on January 3, I am confident that the new red light, green light limited-time-modes in Warzone, Multiplayer and Zombies will be a hit, along with the new operator skins.
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However, the real issue here is that Archie’s Festival Frenzy and all of the Warzone holiday-themed limited-time-modes expire on January 3, leaving Squid Game as the only available event.
And, based on the current Battle Pass timer, we don’t expect Season 2 to start until January 29, leaving three and a half weeks with no content currently scheduled.
The development team should have used this window as an opportunity to introduce new content, but it put all of its eggs in the Squid Game basket instead, and relied on a massive IP to tide players over rather than creating something truly original.
This event will probably be great for Squid Game fans, but also risks alienating hardcore CoD fans. Considering that the core fans are the audience that will keep the game alive in the long term, this strategy feels like a real miss from Treyarch. It proves that CoD may have lost faith in its ability to create something wholly original to draw players in.
Call of Duty is having a real identity crisis at the moment, and relying on a TV show’s hype to promote the game does nothing but make that identity even less clear.