Double Fine Productions has made heavy metal video game Brütal Legend free for 666 minutes only to honor heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne, who died this week aged 76.
The Black Sabbath frontman passed away on July 22 just a few weeks after he performed at the Back to the Beginning farewell concert.
Osbourne voiced the character The Guardian of Metal in Brütal Legend. The character’s appearance and personality was based on Osbourne himself.
In a post on social media, the Microsoft-owned Double Fine said it had made Brütal Legend free on Itch.io. “But this incredible deal will only last for 666 minutes, as the prophecy foretold,” the studio continued. “So get yourself clicking, before it disappears like a demon in the night…”
Brütal Legend is Double Fine’s 2009 heavy metal-themed action adventure real-time strategy hybrid, which stars Jack Black as roadie Eddie Riggs. Brütal Legend was published by EA after Activision dropped the game, and Double Fine and Activision ended up in a legal battle over the publishing issues.
Ozzy Osbourne starred in the game itself alongside fellow metal icons Lemmy Kilmister, Rob Halford, and Lita Ford. Double Fine boss Tim Schafer selected over 100 metal songs to be included in the game.
Double Fine, which is busy developing Keeper for PC and Xbox, announced the deal at 4pm PT, which means it ends at 3am on Thursday, July 24.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Back in March we got to reveal Magic: The Gathering’s very first Spider-man cards as part of a special Scene Box outside of the main set. Well today, as part of San Diego Comic-Con 2025, we’re back with an exclusive look at some of the first cards that will actually be a part of that Standard-legal set – and this cast of five spideys will surely look familiar to any Spider-Verse fans out there.
Flip through the slideshow below to see all five Spider-Man cards, as well as an alternate comic book art style for the titular webslinger himself.
Magic: The Gathering developer Wizards of the Coast previously told IGN that it wasn’t limiting this set to a single comic run, and that’s made quite clear with this early look. All five cards are different versions of Spider-Man depicted as legendary creatures: at Uncommon you have Spider-Man Noir and the robotic SP//dr piloted by Peni Parker, at Rare are Spider-Man 2099 and the delightfully goofy Spider-Ham, and finally at Mythic Rare is the man himself, Peter Parker, who flips over to become the Amazing Spider-Man.
That last card is especially interesting as it is double-sided. The front is simply Peter Parker, while the back is his Amazing Spider-Man alter ego, and you have some flexibility in how to cast him. Magic has had what are called “modal double-faced cards” before that allow you to cast either side from your hand, but this is the first I know of that also allows you to pay a cost to flip it while the front side is already in play – in this case, you can play Peter Parker for two mana, and then pay four more on a later turn to have him transform.
If you do, you get access to his very flavorful ability called web-slinging, which allows you to pay just three mana to cast Legendary spells if you also return a tapped creature to your hand. This card is sure to be a popular leader in Magic’s most popular format, Commander, as it will let you cheat all sorts of big and expensive legendary creatures into play far earlier than expected. And because this card will also be legal across Magic’s regular competitive formats, giant dinosaurs and terrifying demons alike could be swinging onto the table.
The rest of the cast here is a clear nod to Sony’s excellent Into the Spider-Verse animated films, only missing a take on Peter B. Parker and Spider-Gwen to complete the first movie’s main cast (though there’s plenty of time for those to potentially be revealed themselves before the set launches in September). But before you get too excited, this was almost definitely just a nod to their reveal as part of this year’s Comic-Con, as these cards and this set in general are not actually tied to that series in any direct way.
And while we may not have a second version of Peter to show here, we do have an alternate art treatment for this one – one that is sure to excite any comic book fans out there. This secondary version shows off what’s called the “Iconic Moments” Booster Fun treatment for this set, and all of the cards that use it will feature art from the pages of Spider-Man’s adventures. This first one is taken straight from the cover of 1963’s The Amazing Spider-Man #1, complete with artist credits for Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.
If you happen to be in the San Diego area yourself, Wizards of the Coast is hosting a Spider-Man event at the Hard Rock Hotel where fans will be able to go hands-on with the set’s Welcome Decks – smaller preconstructed decks themed around Spider-man that are meant to be an intro point for new players as they learn the ropes. WOTC has previously stated that its Universes Beyond crossovers have brought a huge amount of new players through the door, and just today Hasbro revealed that the recent Final Fantasy set made a whopping $200 million on its first day.
Tom Marks is IGN’s Executive Reviews Editor. He loves card games, puzzles, platformers, puzzle-platformers, and lots more.
Bethesda has broken its silence on the future of Starfield, insisting it’s still working on updates and will share details on the “exciting things” it has planned in the coming months.
The Starfield community had hoped Bethesda would announce something to do with the game at its show, but while The Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76 both got their moment in the spotlight, Starfield skipped proceedings entirely. No DLC, no expansion, no PlayStation 5 release… nothing.
Now, ahead of Gamescom in August, Bethesda has piped up with a statement on Steam that is as brief as it is vague, but at least addresses Starfield’s future and promises more content is in the works.
“Looking ahead, we’re continuing work on future updates and will share more about the exciting things we have planned for Starfield in the coming months,” Bethesda said in a post accompanying Starfield Update 1.15.222, which is in beta form on Steam. Patch notes are below.
Starfield players are hoping this means the promised second Starfield expansion is still coming, and that Starfield may follow the likes of Forza Horizon 5 and make the jump to PlayStation 5.
Starfield launched in September 2023 as Bethesda’s first brand new IP in 25 years, but it was not as well received as the studio’s previous games in the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls franchises, and the Shattered Space expansion, released a year later in September 2024, has a ‘mostly negative’ user review rating on Steam.
Starfield went on to reach 15 million players, but the question of whether Bethesda might walk away from the game to focus on its other franchises has been a running theme since release. In June 2024, Bethesda insisted it remained committed to supporting Starfield, and confirmed at least one other story expansion would release following Shattered Space. And in an interview with YouTube channel MrMattyPlays, Bethesda Game Studios’ Todd Howard said the developer was aiming to release an annual story expansion for “hopefully a very long time.”
Minor improvements to format and display in Creations menus.
Addressed an issue that could cause that Extreme Temperature gear to appear incorrectly.
Minor improvements to sorting in the Missions Menu.
General crash and stability fixes.
This update is currently in Steam Beta. If you would like to opt in to the Starfield Beta update, please follow these instructions:
Open your Steam Library and navigate to Starfield
Right click on “Starfield” and select “Properties”
In the new properties pop-up window, select “Betas”
In the beta drop down to opt into, select “[beta]”
Wait for app to download new build and launch
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
While we have put together lists recommending the best DC board games and Marvel board games on the market, there are still plenty of great titles out there that don’t fall under either of those banners and instead highlight the “superhero” motif itself. These are games that pit players against one another as heroes and villains, and those that let you work together to stop some dastardly villains. This list takes a look at some of those games that will appeal to fans of capes and spandex, regardless of publisher.
TL;DR – These are the best superhero board games
If you don’t have time to peruse the blurbs, you can see all the items on this list in the catalog above. But if you want more info about any of these superhero board games, read on for the info.
Kapow!
With art that looks like it was pulled straight out of a comic book, Kapow! from Wise Wizard Games has players filling the role of either heroes or villains as they duke it out in this dice-battling game, players roll a set of dice and then, by locking in different combinations of faces, trigger their respective hero or villain’s signature skills and attacks. While on the surface this may sound similar to Dice Throne, one of the coolest features of Kapow! is its dice crafting mechanic, where you can create unique dice by inserting different symbols into the dice faces, helping to increase the odds of getting those rolls you want. Currently, there are two volumes of Kapow!, each containing six characters – three heroes and three villains – that can be mixed and matched together.
Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition
Sentinels of the Multiverse is a cooperative board game where teams of heroes struggle against a villain in an effort to thwart their dastardly plan of the week. Both the heroes and villains come with unique 40-card decks that show off the characters’ various skills and play styles. One of the things that sets Sentinels apart is how the game also factors in the environment, with each environment also coming with its own deck and effects that further expand the game’s replayability. To keep things manageable, players will only have to worry about their own hero’s deck, with the “game” handling the villain and environment decks. With characters like Citizen Dead or the one-man-army, Militia, Sentinels of the Multiverse feels like a relic of early ’90s comics, in all of the best ways.
Massive-Verse Fighting Card Game
Featuring characters from various Image Comics series including Radiant Black, the Massive-verse Fighting Card Game is a fast-paced 1v1 card game where two players choose from a roster of heroes, each with their own unique deck, and then proceed to attack, block, and hurl large ultimates at one another until only one is standing. Built on the backbone of Solis Game Studios’ Pocket Paragon system, gameplay feels like a mix of the classic War card game and rock-paper-scissors, where both players play down their cards for the turn and then reveal them simultaneously, with some card types being able to counter others. The Massive-verse FCG is a great little game to keep in your car or bag to bust out when you have a few minutes of downtime and are in the mood for a quick brawl. If you want a bit more variety or to play with up to two more players, you can snag the game’s Team Up Expansion, which introduces four new character decks and 30 special team-up cards for 2v2 games.
Invincible: The Hero-Building Game
Invincible: The Hero-Building Game puts players in the superhero boots of the characters from the hit comic and animated series, Invincible. You can play as Atom Eve, Rex Splode, or Robot, and you and your friends are tasked with rescuing civilians, beating up minions, and stopping the big-bad of the day. Featuring a handful of scenarios, each with different goals to complete, this is a deck and bag-building game where you can level up and improve your hero as the game progresses. There’s a push-your-luck aspect that comes into play by letting you fire off more of your powers – but draw too many black cubes, and you crash out and end your turn. The included scenarios can be played either as standalone games or strung together in order as a sort of campaign game. And if you’re looking for additional challenge, you can pick from three difficulty levels – Easy, Normal, or Hardcore.
Astro Knights
Take up arms as an Astro Knight to defend your home planet in this cooperative deck-builder that has a unique twist – you don’t shuffle your deck. More of a Guardians of the Galaxy approach to superheroes than Spider-Man or Superman, Astro Knights has a science fiction aesthetic, as you and your fellow knights build your decks, playing and equipping cards as you fight against the boss you are going up against. For fans of Aeon’s End, this game will feel familiar, as it is a reimplementation of that game’s systems.
Hellboy: The Board Game
Hellboy: The Board Game is a dungeon-crawling adventure where you and your friends move detailed minis of members of the BRPD like Hellboy, Abe Sapien, or Roger, as you work to solve different cases, taking down any bosses and enemies that get in your way. Each playable character comes with a set of skills and attacks that are unique to them, which you will need to use if you have any hope of succeeding in the game’s included scenarios. Besides simply navigating around the modular board that you set up before each game, players also need to adjust on the fly as the Deck of Doom throws wrenches in your way at every turn, helping keep things exciting. This game can be played both as one-off sessions or as a strung-together campaign, and with a bunch of expansions released, there is plenty of Hellboy goodness out there for fans of the Dark Horse Comics series.
Scott White is a freelance contributor to IGN, assisting with tabletop games and guide coverage. Follow him on X/Twitter or Bluesky.
“Here be monsters,” says the legend on so many antique maps, firing the imagination with thoughts of kraken, chimeras, or worse. But what if it were true? What if Lewis and Clarke, setting out on their expedition across the American interior, encountered buffalo-headed minotaurs and man-eating plants.
That’s the premise of the Corps of Discovery comic and now of this board game adaptation. The game comes from the same designers as the superb Mind MGMT, although, save for the comic book connection, this is a very different kind of game.
What’s in the Box
Most box-openings start with a board, and Corps of Discovery is no exception, but the nature of the board itself is rather surprising. Instead of the usual fold-out affair, you get a cardboard sandwich: two layers of card stuck together, with room in between to slip in a sheet of paper. The top layer is punctuated by a regular grid of circular holes, and the box contains an equally unusual supply of thick cardboard sun tokens with wide “pegs” that fit loosely into the grid’s holes.
There are two folders of paper maps that slide into the sandwich, one for each of the two scenarios included in the game. There’s also a second board which is used for tracking the current game state, with spaces for three challenge cards, backpack items and water: this doubles as a handy reminder of the flow of each game day. There are tokens for the various resources that go in your backpack and for your water supply. There are also several card decks, not only the challenge cards that’ll outline the obstacles you must overcome each day, but also characters to play, items for them to use and so on.
As a scenario-based game, there are also additional cards and tokens applicable to particular scenarios. One thing to note is that, as a game based on a comic book series, all the components are furnished with excellent art from the original comics. While it might not be to everyone’s tastes, it does a fantastic job of bringing the game’s dangerous world to life, especially if you’re familiar with the source material.
Rules and How It Plays
Understanding how the game is set up is, unusually, an integral part of understanding how it plays. First, your group chooses one of the two scenarios to play (plus a training mission), and one of the 10 map sheets included for that scenario, covering it with a blank sheet so you can’t see what’s on it. You slip this, cover and all, into the cardboard-sandwich board then cover all the holes with the sun tokens. Then you slip out the blank sheet. The result is a game map that you know nothing about, ripe for exploration and discovery.
This is a cooperative game where you’re working together to map the wilderness and survive. On your individual turn, you simply remove a sun token, revealing an icon underneath, and take a matching resource to add to your collective backpack. There’s no piece to mark where you are on the map. Instead, movement is abstracted away under the presumption that it’s easy to move through already explored territory. The next player just removes a sun token next to any already-revealed space, although there are some mountainous areas on each map that you can’t traverse.
Exploration, however, is far from a random walk in the park. Each scenario has a set of rules about where and how the various different icons are laid out. In the Fauna scenario, for example, there’s always one wood icon per row and column, and there will always be a water icon orthogonally adjacent to each wood. Each mud icon will be next to a water and a stone, while forts always form an L-shape series with a water and a skull. There are more rules – and icons – but you get the idea.
This allows you to make predictions and deductions about what you’re going to encounter on the map. Sometimes you can figure it out with complete certainty, but more often it’s a bit of a gamble, where you can narrow down the odds without being sure. Exploration is thus both a fun puzzle where you can aim for specific resources, and an exercise loaded with tension. The rules are complex enough to make it a good group discussion, ensuring there’s a dynamic sense of cooperation, and something you can master with practice.
The rules are complex enough to make it a good group discussion, ensuring there’s a dynamic sense of cooperation, and something you can master with practice.
Each time you remove a sun token from the board you place it on one of three challenge cards dealt at the start of the game day. These cards have a resource requirement that you must spend in order to pass the challenge and a consequence for passing or failing, the latter of which usually means losing even more, different resources. You have to face these consequences once the card accumulates a certain number of suns, often only two or three. Considering many challenges require more than two or three resources to pass, this immediately puts your game under massive pressure to find the right icons on every turn.
If you run out of water tokens, you die. If you end the day – timing out the three challenge cards for that die – without any food tokens, you die. Monsters generally don’t kill you outright but sap these precious, precious resource tokens until you die. Even when you’re on top of the resource-mapping system, most games will go down to the wire of you gaining your objective with a few measly drops of water left in your canteen. The last few turns ramp up the tension to crushing levels, until it almost feels like you’re struggling through a real wilderness, desperately following signs of water in the hope of surviving just one more day.
As if this wasn’t enough, on top of surviving you also have a goal to complete. This depends on the scenario. In Fauna, for instance, you’ll meet those buffalo-headed minotaurs who’ll make it harder to traverse rows and columns until you find a fort, learn a recipe for killing one, and sacrifice the necessary resources, all of which you were probably hoping to save to pass a challenge card. These kinds of trade-offs are part of the game’s strategy: identifying times when failing a daily challenge can be a useful step in the wider goal of passing the winning objectives.
Other aspects of your decision-making come down to the characters in play and the gear you choose at the outset, all of which offer you special abilities to piece together and increase your chance of survival. You can plan ahead with these since you pick them yourself, look for combos, and build a strategy around them. But there are also destiny cards, random helpful bonuses that you can sometimes replenish by achieving in-game goals, and for these you’ll have to roll with whatever fate gives you, adjusting your tactics accordingly.
With practice and luck you will, eventually, manage to beat Fauna and, in time, the game’s second scenario, Flora, which involves a giant carnivorous plant. Corps of Discovery goes out of its way to make these scenarios replayable by offering such a huge range of map sheets – you can also download and print out more – that memorising the layouts is essentially impossible. Variety, however, cannot fully undermine human psychology: there’s an innate tendency to treat a mission as “done” once it’s been won. This is exacerbated by the game’s high difficulty level and lack of narrative detail. Although it does a great job of conjuring up the spectre of starving in the wilderness, the challenge cards feel pretty mechanical, so repeated tries at a scenario can feel a little same-y.
This isn’t quite the limiting factor it may sound like as it’ll take you repeated attempts to win both the scenarios, and there are expansions available which further the story and build considerably on the core mechanics – all four are included in the deluxe edition, which we used for the photos accompanying this review. But it still would have felt like a more complete experience if more of these elements had been included in the base game. As it stands, the game’s high toughness is the major motivation for a replay, and it’s almost enough by itself: winning against the odds, in a land where almost everything you encounter is out to kill you, is a hugely satisfying moment.
Ahead of EA’s full Battlefield 6 reveal tomorrow, a brief teaser for the game’s campaign has been posted online, revealing a major conflict.
Set in the near future, Battlefield 6’s campaign will see NATO under attack. Its base in Georgia is hit, the British territory of Gibraltar is invaded, and NATO’s secretary general is assassinated inside the organisation’s Brussels headquarters. The perpetrator? An organisation named Pax Armata.
A number of countries, including France, are then confirmed to have left NATO to form a new coalition, as in-universe news headlines question whether NATO itself is now a “thing of the past”. Hmm…
The teaser then concludes with Battlefield’s trademark theme — you know the one, that ‘dun dun dun dun dun’ drumbeat — and a reminder that the game’s full reveal will take place tomorrow, July 24, at 8am Pacific / 4pm UK time.
Eagle-eyed viewers will spot the logo for “BF Studios” on the end of the teaser — this is the coalition of developers that EA has pulled together to work on the game, including franchise founder DICE, Los Angeles-based sister studio Ripple Effect, Montreal-based Dead Space Remake developer Motive, and British Need for Speed studio Criterion.
There’s also the note that “no weapon, military vehicle or gear manufacturer is affiliated with or has sponsored or endorsed this game.”
Pax Armata rises as NATO cracks. Their motto? “Our protection, your peace.”
“Pax Armata rises as NATO cracks,” a message posted on Battlefield’s X / Twitter account reads. “Their motto? ‘Our protection, your peace.’ But who’s pulling the strings and to what end?” Presumably we’ll find out more tomorrow.
Battlefield 6 is currently slated to launch sometime during the current fiscal year, before March 2026. It seems likely we’ll see that window narrowed considerably when the game is fully unveiled.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
If you bought a Nintendo Switch 2 in June, the odds are good you also bought Mario Kart World. In fact, according to Circana, 82% of Nintendo Switch 2 purchasers also picked up Mario Kart World.
That comes from Circana’s June report, which shared that the Nintendo Switch 2 is officially the fastest-selling video game console in the U.S. In total, the Nintendo Switch sold 1.6 million units in the U.S. in June, beating out the PlayStation 4’s previous record of 1.1 million units in November of 2012.
Of those 1.6 million unit sales, 82% either purchased the Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World bundle, or bought the game standalone. This helped propel Mario Kart World to become the third best-selling game of the month in Circana’s rankings, though it’s possible it could have ranked even higher due to the exclusion of Nintendo’s digital data from the sales charts.
As a comparison point, when the Nintendo Switch 1 launched, over 100% of new console owners that month also purchased its launch game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, worldwide. Yes, the game sold more copies on Switch than Nintendo did Switch systems. “This may be attributed to people who purchased both a limited edition of the game to collect and a second version to play,” Nintendo suggested at the time. So Mario Kart World isn’t quite beating those numbers.
Additionally, we learned from Circana this morning that 32% of Nintendo Switch 2 purchasers in June also bought a Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller, helping make it the best-selling accessory of the month in the U.S. by dollar sales.
Unshockingly, one of the reasons people are buying Mario Kart World is because it’s pretty dang good. We gave the game an 8/10, saying that it “may not make the most convincing case that going open-world was the boost the series needed, but excellent multiplayer racing, incredible polish, and the thrilling new Knockout Tour mode still more than live up to its legacy.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
A statement from OnceLost Games, published today, has now confirmed LeFay’s passing — “with profound sadness and heavy hearts”.
“Julian LeFay was not just a colleague — he was a visionary who fundamentally shaped the gaming industry as we know it today,” OnceLost Games’ statement reads. “Known as the ‘Father of The Elder Scrolls’, Julian directed the creation of legendary titles including Elder Scrolls 1 and 2: Arena, Daggerfall, and Battlespire.
“His pioneering work established the foundation for open-world RPGs and influenced countless developers and games that followed.”
Born in Denmark in 1965, LeFay began his career working on early Amiga and NES games, before becoming one of Bethesda’s earliest employees in 1987.
After working on a string of Elder Scrolls titles, his career next took him to Sega, and then ultimately to found OnceLost Games in 2019 to develop a new open-world RPG, Wayward Realms, that was successfully pitched on Kickstarter as a Daggerfall spiritual successor.
“Throughout his courageous battle with cancer, Julian never wavered in his passion for The Wayward Realms,” OnceLost Games’ statement continues. “Even during his illness, he continued to share his vision with our team, mentor our developers, and ensure that every aspect of the game reflected his commitment to creating something truly extraordinary. His strength, determination, and unwavering focus inspire us all.”
Development on The Wayward Realms will now continue under the guidance of fellow former Bethesda veteran and OnceLost Games co-founder Ted Peterson, the studio concluded, with its team “more committed than ever to bringing The Wayward Realms to life exactly as Julian envisioned it”.
Image credit: Shae Jensen/Julian LeFay
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Since the Nintendo Switch 2 launched in June, we’ve only had one first-party bundle available. We knew the Mario Kart World bundle would be a limited-time offer, but now we know that the next big console exclusive to get a bundle will be Pokémon: Legends Z-A.
The new bundle, announced right after the Pokémon Presents July 2025 livestream, will mirror its Mario Kart counterpart by offering the system with a digital download code for the game, and is already available for preorder at retailers like Target and Best Buy.
Notably, the new bundle is simply a standard Switch 2 with Pokémon: Legends Z-A packed in as a download code.
There isn’t anything to set it apart from the standard console just yet, such as the Pokémon Sword and Shield Switch Lite, or the various special edition OG Switch consoles we saw over its life cycle.
At the time of writing, Best Buy, Target, GameStop, and Nintendo have the latest console SKU up for preorder for $499.99 (the same as the Switch 2 + Mario Kart Bundle). It will release on October 16, 2025.
Yesterday’s Pokemon Presents event showcased more about the upcoming title, including the appearance of Mega Dragonite which makes its debut.
While the game will be available on the original Nintendo Switch, it’s getting “Improved performance with higher frame rate and resolution” according to the Switch 2 version’s store page.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
Call of Duty fans believe they’ve discovered proof that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will let players carry over their Black Ops 6 skins.
With the ESRB rating now confirming Black Ops 7 will be rated M 17+ and available on PC, PS5, Xbox Series, and last-gen consoles PS4 and Xbox One, a throwaway line in the rating summary reveals there’ll be weapons that feature “marijuana/joints/paraphernalia: players’ characters inhaling marijuana from a bong-like structure attached to a rifle; players’ characters smoking joints or inhaling through bongs as part of execution sequences.”
Many players are interpreting this as reference to the Dank Days Tracer Pack from Black Ops 6, a bundle that includes a number of skins, finishing moves, and perks like weapon charms and sprays associated with weed.
If fans are on the money, this would indirectly confirm that the premium content available in Black Ops 6 — yes, even the silly stuff — will carry over to Black Ops 7. And while some players are delighted that they get to keep their skins for the new Call of Duty instalment, not everyone’s happy about it.
“So all the stupid s**t is being carried over,” said one player, while another simply wrote: “Carry forward confirmed, huge L.”
Developed by Treyarch and Raven Software, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 — which was announced at the Xbox Games Showcase 2025 last month — is the first ever consecutive release within the Black Ops sub-series. Matt Cox, General Manager of Call of Duty, insisted that “as a team, our vision from the start was to create a back-to-back series experience for our players that embraced the uniqueness of the Black Ops sub-franchise.” It’s set to star Milo Ventimiglia, Kiernan Shipka, and Michael Rooker, with Ventimiglia portraying David Mason, Shipka as new character Emma Kagen, and Rooker reprising his Black Ops 2 role of Mike Harper.
Last month, Activision pulled controversial adverts placed inside Black Ops 6 and Warzone loadouts, insisting they were a “feature test” published “in error.” It’s worth remembering that Black Ops 6 is a premium, $70 game, and this year’s Black Ops 7 is expected to jump to $80 after Microsoft said that gamers will see Xbox charging $79.99 for new, first-party games around the holiday season.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
