Warzone 2 players aren't sure if 'Roze 4.0' is actually pay-to-win, but they're flocking to buy it

Call of Duty's most infamous skin scandal is back for a fourth round, as Warzone 2 players fear 'Roze 4.0' has arrived as part of the Los Angeles Thieves pack.

Roze, you may recall, got an all-black skin as the top-tier battle pass reward back in Modern Warfare Season 5. It was very hard to see in dark areas, wildly unpopular with the community, and adjusted for better visibility multiple times. Roze 2.0 came in the form of Hypersonic skin for Portnova, and Roze 3.0 arrived with the Night Terror skin for Florence. While the latter two skins didn't have quite the effect the original all-black Roze did, they still let players pay for an all-black uniform and, at a minimum, a perceived advantage against others.

Now Warzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2 have launched a series of Call of Duty League packs promoting various teams, and the Los Angeles Thieves pack once again features an all-black skin. You may not be surprised to learn that it is far and away the best-selling CoD skin pack right now, at least on Steam. It's the 18th best-selling item on Steam right now - the only other CoD cosmetic in Steam's top 100 is in 27th place.

While players are clearly looking to the LA Thieves skin for an advantage, it's debatable how big that advantage actually is. You can browse Reddit if you have the patience to read through the fights for yourself, but the gist of it is that Warzone 2's improved lighting model and desert setting should give all-black skins less of an advantage, though they can still provide an unfair advantage in shadowy buildings.

warzone_20_has_roze_20 from r/ModernWarfareII

Is that potential advantage at all material to the game? We may never know, though Activision is certainly making some extra money off the perception that it is.

One player trolled the entire community by pretending to get Warzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2 purchases for free.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.