Call of Duty eases the grind with 20 free skips for the battle pass mess it created, but you only have 2 weeks to claim them

In apparent "celebration" of the Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 reveal – which, you'll recall, was quite a few days ago – Activision is giving players 20 tier skips for the current Season 5 battle pass.

As the official Call of Duty Twitter account announced, you have until September 16 to claim the battle pass skips by logging into Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 or Warzone.

"Speed up your Battle Pass progression today with a little gift from us," the post entreats.

I'm always a little torn on freebies like this, because I'm sure it's a harmless and welcome surprise for many Call of Duty players, but it also reads like tacit admission that this spliced progression and monetization chimera is inherently cumbersome. If skipping content is treated as a reward, how good is the content? Surely you've at least got to question the delivery.

With this giveaway following a Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 gameplay reveal which, at the time of writing, according to YouTube plugins, has 60,000 likes to a whopping 462,000 dislikes along with enormously negative top comments, some people have interpreted it as a transparent bid to either attract or keep players during a waning season. Throwing out some seeds to bring the birds back to the park, as it were.

I do think some people underestimate the size of Call of Duty, and as the Helldivers 2 folks put it, social media feedback doesn't represent a game's entire audience. But there is something to be said for the negative reception that Black Ops 7 has seen. Just last week, pushback on cosmetics and aesthetics drove Activision to stop tacky skins from carrying forward.

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