Activision has delayed Season 3 of Call of Duty Black Ops 6.
They shared this message on Twitter:
“Season 03 is a big moment for Call of Duty: Warzone and Black Ops 6, and we’re taking the time to deliver a great experience starting on April 3.”
They went on to tell fans to expect more information in Call of Duty Warzone’s 5th anniversary next week.
Call of Duty Black Ops 6 had one of the biggest launches for a Call of Duty game, and also one of the biggest for Microsoft. In the weeks after that launch, however, it was haunted with multiple issues surrounding online play, for both Call of Duty Black Ops 6’s dedicated multiplayer and Call of Duty Warzone.
Activision mitigated some of that criticism to some degree. For example, they claimed to have proof that in spite of what players say and believe, they do end up playing longer and enjoying their experience with SBMM.
While Activision can tout they have data to prove this claim, this news seems to indicate that there is real dissatisfaction behind it. It may not necessarily be from SBMM itself, but other claims fans made, such as falsely flagged bans, that could be creating that dissatisfaction.
It seems most likely this delay was needed so that Activision’s studios could address most, if not all, these concerns, before Season 3 started. But there is another possible reason for the delay.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Activision promised to bring back the Call of Duty Warzone map Verdansk sometime this summer. As we reported, Activision removed the map all the way back in 2021. Activision pulled Verdansk for various reasons, but the appetite to go back to the ‘way the online game was originally played’ has appeared for games like Fortnite and Overwatch.
So it’s possible that Verdansk will be added in in such a way that it is a recreation of how Call of Duty Warzone itself played when it first launched. Overall, we can see that Activision will want to rescue Call of Duty Black Ops 6’s post launch reputation, especially given how many lapsed players jumped back in to the game.
Even if most of those casual players already did most of their playing over the holidays, if Call of Duty’s reputation sinks again before this year’s new release, it could mean their debut as a Microsoft game will turn out to be a fluke.
