A surprise update brings a classic map to Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

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And it sounds like further updates are on the way

Cold War Outbreak Easter Egg guide
(Image credit: Activision)

A remastered version of WMD, from 2010’s Call of Duty: Black Ops, has appeared in 2020’s Cold War today.

The map arrived in an unheralded update, which Activision described as Cold War’s “first… of 2022”. That promise is unexpected, given that the publisher’s studios tend to devote their energies to the newest annual entry in the series, and Cold War was superseded back in September by Call of Duty: Vanguard.

While our Leon rather liked Vanguard, it didn’t sell particularly well by COD standards. Perhaps that’s to be expected, given that each new game is now competing with Warzone for players. A recent Bloomberg report has suggested that Call of Duty will skip 2023 - with executives reportedly concerned that COD games need more room to breathe between releases. 

If that’s so, it makes sense to plump up existing entries with updates like this one. It’s worth remembering, too, that fans were previously upset when 2019’s Modern Warfare was seemingly sidelined for Warzone. It's even less likely that that game will receive new updates three years on. That being said, if Activision is looking to give newer games a longer tail, there's always the opportunity to experiment via the most recent generation of Call of Duty titles without disrupting Vanguard's position as the current front-runner.

Coming to Cold War late? Here’s our guide to the reboot of Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Jeremy Peel
Jeremy Peel
Freelance Writer

Jeremy is a freelance editor and writer with a decade’s experience across publications like GamesRadar, Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer and Edge. He specialises in features and interviews, and gets a special kick out of meeting the word count exactly. He missed the golden age of magazines, so is making up for lost time while maintaining a healthy modern guilt over the paper waste. Jeremy was once told off by the director of Dishonored 2 for not having played Dishonored 2, an error he has since corrected.