Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 won’t be on Game Pass when it launches on October 23rd. You’ll have to buy it to play at launch, and it “will not be included with Game Pass until Holiday 2027,” Activision says.
Black Ops 6 in October 2024 and Black Ops 7 in November 2025 both launched on Game Pass on day one. But Modern Warfare 4 (MW4) won’t.
Activision’s May pre-order guide already said MW4 wouldn’t be on Game Pass at launch. The new post now puts a date on it: Holiday 2027, more than a year after launch. That’s a long time to watch your friends play it.
Game Pass Ultimate members keep Black Ops 7, Black Ops 6 and Modern Warfare III. That last one, a game from 2023, only joined Game Pass on July 24th, 2024.
Subscribers can still get a discount. If you’ve played one of those games on an active Game Pass Ultimate, Premium or PC plan, you can pre-order MW4’s digital Vault Edition at 10% off on the same platform account, until October 23rd. Digital pre-orders on Xbox also unlock the campaign early from October 16th and DMZ from October 20th.
Activision’s quality assurance testers voted on October 15th to authorize a strike ahead of launch week, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) says. The vote lets CWA President Claude Cummings Jr. call one if talks stall.
The testers have been bargaining with Activision for a first contract for more than two years. Their open issues include wage increases and guardrails on AI use. Full resolutions have not yet been reported at this time.
