Captain Price Gets a Haircut: Call of Duty Devs Fix Viral Beta Mishap

Captain Price is getting a new haircut. The iconic Call of Duty character — a grizzled British special forces operator who has anchored the series since 2007 — became an internet punchline during the Modern Warfare 4 beta when players on lower-end hardware discovered his hair rendering in a deeply unflattering way.

Developer Infinity Ward confirmed via Call of Duty's official social media channels that the team is aware of the issue and will address it in a future update. The problem, the studio explained, occurs when the game is played on its lowest level of detail setting — essentially a fallback visual mode that reduces graphical quality to keep the game running on less powerful hardware. Players meeting the game's recommended specifications, the account noted, would not encounter the problem (VGC).

The beta, which drew its largest player count yet, gave the public its first hands-on taste of Modern Warfare 4 ahead of the game's October 23 global launch. Screenshots of Price's botched look spread quickly across social media, prompting mockery that eventually reached the development team. IGN reported on August 24 that Infinity Ward had vowed to update the character model (IGN).

This is the Price players already know from the game's marketing. Activision's official blog, dating back to the game's announcement in May 2026, describes the Modern Warfare 4 campaign as a darker, more isolated take on the character — an operator-turned-outlaw waging a personal war from the shadows, driven by a hunt for revenge (Call of Duty Blog). The campaign sits alongside Multiplayer, the extraction-style DMZ mode, and new 6v6 maps in the full package.

The October 23 release spans Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2. That last platform is a milestone in its own right: it marks the first time in over a decade that a Call of Duty game has appeared on a Nintendo console (VGC).

There is one more wrinkle for those who follow the business side. Modern Warfare 4 will be the first Call of Duty title not to launch on Xbox Game Pass — Microsoft's subscription service — on day one since Microsoft acquired Activision in 2023 (VGC). Players who want the game at launch will need to buy it outright, a shift from the pattern set by the previous two entries in the franchise.

For Captain Price, the bigger concern right now is simpler. By October, he should at least have his hair sorted.