Activision says 'Call of Duty tax' shapes coverage as Modern Warfare 4 nears launch

Activision says traditional games media does not cover Call of Duty the way it used to. The publisher points instead to creators and community channels, and to what it calls the “Call of Duty tax”.

Chief marketing officer Tyler Bahl used the phrase when discussing reviews and reception in an interview with The Game Business. He had been asked whether mainstream outlets had stepped back from the series and whether most coverage now comes from Call of Duty influencers and the wider community, according to a report by Video Games Chronicle.

Bahl did not present the tax as a formal policy. He described it as internal shorthand at Activision for how the company thinks about scores and reaction to each release.

The numbers behind that thinking are large. Bahl said 4,500 people now work on making Call of Duty games, organised across multiple studios. That team supports an annual console and PC release alongside a free-to-play version, which is free to download and funded by optional in-game purchases.

On scale, Bahl put lifetime sales for the paid series at 500 million units. He said the free-to-play player base stands at 100 million players, while the mobile game has reached one billion downloads.

For fans, this means the conversation around each launch lives in many places at once. Trailers and patch notes sit next to streams, clips and creator breakdowns, rather than flowing mainly through previews and reviews.

That shift comes as tracking points to softer early interest for the next entry. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella noted purchase intent for Modern Warfare 4 was 15% among United States console and PC players in August, compared with 21% for Black Ops 7 at the same point last year.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is scheduled for release on 23 October on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2 and PC. Activision has not detailed how it expects creator coverage to affect that launch, beyond its argument that community channels now carry much of the weight.