RUMOR: Black Ops 4 To Drop Single-Player, Add Battle Royale Mode Instead

People play Call of Duty games for a lot of reasons, but very rarely is it for the campaigns. It’s not to say they’ve ever been expressly bad – in fact, the single-player component of the first Modern Warfare game was a big reason why the title became such a critical darling. But while people can appreciate a good story, it’s the multiplayer that ships copies, and according to a new rumor started over on Polygon (who sites multiple sources within Activision), that’s exactly what Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will focus on. As apparently, according to those unnamed sources, the game will eschew traditional single-player campaign and replace it with more and improved multiplayer modes.

Which will include, of course, a Battle Royale mode.

This sort of thing wouldn’t be unprecedented, as the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Black Ops 3 (remember when they still catered to the past gen?) didn’t have a campaign either, and focused entirely on letting past gens play online with their newer counterparts. It didn’t seem to impact sales, that we know of, but it would be the first time we saw that sort of thing implemented across all platforms.

As for how exactly these freed-up resources would be spent, well, we don’t exactly know. An improved zombie mode was obviously suggested, as well as a few co-op modes that you and your buddies could try. The Battle Royale mode – which was actually reported by another website, Charlie Intel, then confirmed by Kotaku - would officially be acting as the “substitute” for the campaign, although how exactly it would make itself distinct from the other Battle Royale modes coming out of the woodwork, that’s anyone’s guess. Although we are supposed to get a proper reveal of this game sometime in May.

Still, all things considered, I find this rumor to be extremely believable. Not strictly bad, of course, multiplayer-focused games have their own charm and all, but we’ll have to see how the actual community takes to it.