DMZ for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 Will Launch Early, but Infinity Ward Dashes PvE Hopes

In another surprise move for Call of Duty, Infinity Ward, the studio behind Modern Warfare 4, announced that the extraction shooter mode DMZ will be released before the game's official launch. DMZ will be available from October 20 for players who pre-order the digital edition. Read more

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In another surprise move for Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 4 studio Infinity Ward has announced that the game's mining shooter mode, DMZ, will be released before the game's official launch. DMZ will be available starting October 20th for players who pre-order the digital version.

Modern Warfare 4 now effectively has three release dates. The campaign opens on October 16th, the DMZ four days later on the 20th, and full launch – which is when multiplayer will be playable – arrives on October 23rd.

Although Infinity Ward has offered early access to the campaign with other Modern Warfare titles in the past, doing the same for DMZ - a multiplayer mode - is certainly new. It's a potentially shrewd move that allows DMZ to attract streamers and build excitement for the game before releasing it over a full week, with a big hit every few days. It also allows players curious about the DMZ to play it without feeling like they have to progress through multiplayer.

Given that the DMZ has its own separate progression, however, early players can potentially have an advantage to boot if they can collect a lot of items, not to mention the map knowledge they spend more time playing.

Separately, Infinity Ward hosted a Reddit Q&A focused on the DMZ, and the question of a PvE-only playlist came up. If you're not familiar, a first-look gameplay video revealed a Single Squad Mission option in the DMZ, which players took to mean a free mode from other players. However, this option disappeared in a later trailer, leading to confusion. So what's going on there? Infinity Ward has an explanation, however implausible.

The developer replied: "The playlist you saw is a developer playlist, never intended for public use, it allows our team to load a match on its own to work on." In transport, players choose to go solo by turning off team fill, but are not guaranteed to be the only ones in that solo lobby.

I am not convinced. Although Single Squad is obviously a developer-only mode, they usually don't require custom icons. It's also curious that Infinity Ward didn't blur the image to cover that part, which is common in these types of behind-the-scenes gameplay videos, whenever the camera captures something we're not supposed to see.

Modern Warfare 4 officially launches on October 23 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch 2.