Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a $70 premium title in the annual Call of Duty franchise. That fact is weighing heavily on the game’s player base after ads for in-game cosmetics began to appear in the loadout menu following the Season 4 update on May 28. The ads were removed in a subsequent update on June 2, with the official statement on the Call of Duty Updates social media accounts dubbing the ads a UI feature “test” that was pushed live “in error.”
📢 Call of Duty #BlackOps6 | Call of Duty #WarzoneA UI feature test that surfaced select store content in the Loadout menus was published in the Season 04 update in error. This feature has now been removed from the live game.June 2, 2025
Despite the removal, the ads have left many players in Call of Duty’s community upset about Activision’s rampant attempts at increased monetization and in disbelief that the ads were simply a UI test that was accidentally pushed live. “Who even pushed that idea in the first place? The whole game is riddled with ads already,” one player replied about the UI error.
Earlier this year, Activision began to charge for an in-game event pass as part of a marketing tie-in with Squid Game 2. Those additional event passes have continued to be part of the monetization of CoD, layering on top of the existing costs of seasonal battle passes, BlackCell battle pass upgrades, and Operator/weapon blueprint bundles.
Players can spend roughly $60 a season just on passes, not including individual operator bundles for character skins and weapon camos. There are typically 6 seasons of post-launch content for each annual premium Call of Duty title, which also costs $70 for players who are not subscribed to Xbox Game Pass. If you were to purchase every premium pass and the annual premium title, players would be shelling out more than $400 to play Call of Duty for a year.
Interestingly enough, some players who decried the introduction of the ads to the loadout menu claimed that the monetization push from Activision made Call of Duty feel like a free-to-play experience instead of a premium game that is paid for upfront. Call of Duty’s annual $70 titles share a launcher with a free-to-play battle royale experience, Call of Duty: Warzone. The changes tested in the UI in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 were also present in the free-to-play modes.
Advertising cosmetic weapon bundles in the loadout menu actually seems like it could be a marketing mechanic that could have been beneficial for players who enjoy scooping up in-game cosmetics if it had been added at a different point in Black Ops 6’s life cycle. A similar feature, allowing players to see unpurchased bundles when choosing an operator and then being directed to the store where they can purchase said bundles, has been a part of Call of Duty’s marketing for several years with no community pushback.
However, Call of Duty’s post-launch support for Black Ops 6 has been an issue since Season 1, when the integration between Black Ops 6 and Warzone went over poorly. Call of Duty’s dev team has struggled to get a handle on rampant cheating, and server stability has been a sore spot after every update. With every single patch that is released, some sort of gameplay mechanic, beloved playlist, or paid operator skin is disabled because of an issue.
Call of Duty is a billion-dollar franchise that is consistently a top-selling game on all platforms. Despite the justification that the game contains free-to-play modes, there comes a point where even the most loyal supporters of the game are going to throw their hands up in disgust at the increased efforts to separate players from their hard-earned cash.