Call of Duty 4 Blackout Adds Loot Boxes, Because Of Course They Would

Good ol’ Activision is back at it, not content to simply let the firing of 800 employees make them become the most hated company in the games industry. They’ve, in fact, decided to remind the world just how scummy they are by ruining one of their already-existing and well-enough liked games with yet more loot boxes.

The game in question would be Black Ops 4 and its new Blackout mode, which is a Battle Royale mode that could ironically learn a thing or two from EA’s battle royale game, Apex Legends, which is both free-to-play and a whole lot more fun. The boxes themselves are fairly standard as far as these things tend to go: for 200 COD points (a premium in-game currency) or by playing the game for two hours, you get one loot box, which will contain cosmetic items like weapon skins. A bit more unusual is that they’ll also occasionally give out weapons that will provide players with a small EXP boost per kill. So it’s not exactly pay-to-win, but if you’re lucky and can actually kill people it can certainly give you an edge.

Oh, and you can get duplicates in these loot boxes.

Of course, this is problematic for two reasons, the first being is that Black Ops 4 is not a free-to-play game. A free-to-play game can “get away with” loot boxes a lot easier (even if I still hate them) because the psychological nagging is sort of the price you have to pay for not having to slam down $60 for the experience. The second, and more evil, problem is that they clearly only added loot boxes now so that initial reviews of the game that have already been published won’t mention them, which will be tricking future prospective buyers. It’s a scummy move and sadly one that’s becoming way more common in the industry.

But hey: that’s the world we’re living in these days.