Pre-order holders get early access from Aug. 21–25, followed by an open beta Aug. 28–Sept. 1. First look at multiplayer, campaign mission, and new Warzone map. Full game drops Oct. 23.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's closed beta kicks off Friday, Aug. 21, right after the Call of Duty: NEXT event wraps at 11 a.m. PT. The early access window runs through Tuesday, Aug. 25, at 10 a.m. PT for players who pre-ordered the game or snagged a code from the NEXT broadcast or streamer giveaways.
Pre-ordering the game is the simplest route in. Activision said codes will be distributed ahead of time. Streamers and journalists will be in the game from 9 a.m. PT onward during the NEXT event, and some are giving away early access codes on their channels.
The beta is a separate download from the main Call of Duty launcher, available on Steam, Battle.net, Xbox Store, PlayStation Store and Nintendo eShop. PC players can pre-load Thursday evening. The developer said shader compilation now happens before launch, reducing in-game stutter, and promised fewer restart-required patches. That is a quality-of-life improvement for a franchise that has historically shipped with day-one updates.
The closed beta is limited to multiplayer modes: Team Deathmatch, Domination, Hardpoint, Kill Confirmed, Search & Destroy, Gunfight, a new Inflation mode, and the Mobility Course. For the first time in a Call of Duty beta, a single-player campaign mission, "Entrenched," is also available. The open beta, Aug. 28 through Sept. 1, adds the Zodiac Warzone Resurgence map, the large-scale Ground War mode Combat Outpost with two maps (Imjin Farmland and Wolves Stadium), plus Hijack and Combat Outpost modes for normal multiplayer. The closed beta map Lotus – available only during early access – gets swapped for Lithium in the open beta.
Beta rewards are tied to progression. Players who reach level 20 in the first weekend and level 30 in the second earn cosmetics and other in-game items that carry over to the Oct. 23 full release. The developer said no additional cosmetics will be available after the beta ends. Watching the NEXT event also unlocks some rewards.
What the beta reveals about the launch
This is the first Call of Duty title to skip the Xbox One and PS4, dropping support for those consoles in both the main game and Warzone. The beta serves as a conversion funnel for new-generation hardware sales. The Switch 2 is part of the open beta but not the first weekend. Nintendo said the beta will be available for pre-load on Switch 2 starting Aug. 26. Pre-loading begins Thursday evening on all platforms.
Infosys and other infrastructure providers that support Activision's servers will be watching load times and crash rates. Investors in Microsoft (MSFT), Sony (SONY), and Nintendo (NTDOY) will monitor beta feedback for clues on launch quality. The full game also includes a DMZ extraction mode, which was not part of the beta. That leaves the feature's polish an open question until October.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launches Oct. 23 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X and Nintendo Switch 2.
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