Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 costs a whopping $80, but that doesn’t stop Activision from shoving its in-game store in your face.
For years, Activision has been tightening the monetization noose around Call of Duty. Curiously, the in-game shops always go online after the review and launch period of a new CoD, but then things really take off: Skin packs now easily cost over €30, and CoD and Warzone are bombarded with collaborations, events, bundles, and more.
The latest trick of the moment: in-game advertising. EA has been experimenting with this in its sports games over the years, and now Black Ops 6 also features ads for its own skin and shop bundles when you want to re-equip your weapon. And as expected, the community thinks this is really great…
In-game advertising in Call of Duty
Reddit has been on fire for days because people are now seeing bundles in CoD when they want to change their loadout or weapon. The threads look like this:
Did they seriously add bundle ads to the weapon selection menu?
byu/JustTh4tOneGuy inblackops6
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Or like this:
Really? I have to see this shit now even in the loudouts
byu/SWO0ZY inblackops6
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The comments are all saying the same thing. Here are a few representative examples:
Just wait until they add pop-ups for bundles while you’re playing the actual game.
–Longjumping-Citron52If you want to buy the bundle, go to the store and buy it. It doesn’t add any value at this point, it’s just annoying
– SentientGopro115935Any means necessary to get people to spend more money
– RikenzuI wouldn’t even have a problem with them adding it to Warzone as a free-to-play game, but in regular CoD for $80? F*** off.
– Justice4Billy
It’s a shame, really, because Call of Duty actually won back a lot of people with the start of the last Season 3: The fact that we can play Verdansk again like in 2020 with the same map, the same operators, the same weapon feel – all of that was extremely well received.
But since Season 3 Reloaded, a lot of criticism has resurfaced, which is now continuing in Season 4. Longjumping-Citorn52 sums it up like this:
I think Season 3 was an emergency protocol to bring Warzone fans back. Now that it’s such a success and they have people’s attention again, they couldn’t resist the urge to quadruple the microtransactions.
The criticism has hardly had any impact on the actual player numbers. Yes, the game has never been able to reach the gigantic peak it achieved when Verdansk returned in early April 2025, but we’re talking about a difference of only 30,000 to 40,000 people. CoD still reaches 100,000 concurrent players per day.
We will probably only see a real turnaround if revenue from microtransactions declines. And when you look at all the Seth Rogans, Terminators, and Ninja Turtles in the lobbies, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon.
