Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 to have Modding, Map Creation

Modding is a weird beast in the PC gaming world--on one hand, they’re one of the main draws of PC Gaming over Console gaming, especially for people who don’t care about graphical fidelity or FPS. They also improve the lifespan of a game well beyond a developer’s ability to care for it, and can give fans years upon years of joy with their product long after they’ve moved on to other things. But on the other hand, Mods run directly counter to DRM, and giving players the ability to mod games means trusting them with the code, which is basically digital money for developers.

It’s a value judgement. And attempts to get the best of both options (such was the case with EA’s attempt to tightly control SimCity mods or Valve’s attempts to sell them) thus far hasn’t worked--so until a good compromise does get made, developers have to pick one side or the other. And, as it turns out, Treyarch wants to switch sides--the infamously modding hostile series Call of Duty will be getting mod support and mapmaking tools for it’s next installment, Black Ops 3 “soon” after release, according to a new blog post on the company’s website.
 

We’ve been listening to one of your top requests and are excited to announce that modding and mapping are coming to Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 PC!
We’ve still got a lot of work left to do, but here’s our current plan:

• You will be able to create Maps & Game Modes and more!
• We will include Unranked Dedicated Server Files with the tools so you can run servers with modded content anywhere you choose.
• We will provide an Unranked Server Browser so you can easily find and join servers with modded content.
• Closed Alpha target date: March 2016

Please remember that this is software development, so things don’t always work out exactly as planned. Sometimes features slip or drop off altogether, sometimes they get replaced with other, more awesome features as we hit into limitations of our original plans.

 
While the blog post is scarce on details (the above quote is pretty much everything) it’s encouraging news for modders and Call of Duty fans alike. The ability to make new maps and add new content will certainly do wonders for the game--and maybe even make it more relevant than the next Call of Duty game to come out!

Time will tell. Get scheming, modders.