Earlier this month, Activision launched PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 ports of 2010’s Call of Duty: Black Ops and its 2012 sequel, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Despite these being pricey ports with paid DLC, both BLOPS and BLOPS 2 on PlayStation are hugely popular. And I estimate, based on my own experience and online posts, that about 90 percent of all matches in Black Ops 2 on PS4 and PS5 are played on like three maps.
Introduced in the original Black Ops, Nuketown has become one of the most popular Call of Duty maps in history and has appeared in every Black Ops sequel. The tiny map features a fake cul-de-sac used for nuclear testing. Matches on Nuketown are often chaotic, exciting, and quick. It’s a map I’ve enjoyed a lot over the years. But uh, there are other maps. However, many players loading up Black Ops 2 on PS4 and PS5 seem unaware or don’t care and just vote Nuketown or similarly popular maps Raid and Hijacked over and over again. This has started to drive many other players bonkers.
“I’m sick of playing Nuketown every game,” posted one player on the Black Ops 2 subreddit.
So you walk into a COD lobby, see the dozens of options for a fun map and mode to play, and you choose Team Deathmatch on Nuketown? pic.twitter.com/voSgbcEsVu
— Rager (@theepicrager) July 22, 2026
“I’ve been loving that they brought BO1 and BO2 to current gen PlayStation, but man… I’ve just hit first prestige, and there’s one thing that’s seriously killing the experience. If the map vote isn’t Nuketown, Hijacked, or Raid, everyone just votes Random, and the second a less popular map gets picked, half the lobby backs out,” posted another player on the main CoD subreddit. “It’s getting really frustrating. Since [Black Ops 2 on PS5] launched, I think I’ve only played maps like Studio or Uplink once or twice because nobody sticks around.”
These people aren’t alone in being annoyed that so many Call of Duty players only want to play the same small selection of maps over and over again. Looking around online, you can find plenty of players voicing their frustration. I’ve also experienced people leaving a lobby because the map ended up being something other than Hijacked, Raid, or Nuketown. And the port does a poor job of backfilling players after people leave, making it even more frustrating and sometimes forcing people to vote for these popular maps or choose “random,” in the hopes that one of the popular maps gets picked, just to avoid the lobby getting emptied.
bo2 est injouable a cause des fils de pute qui quittent dès que c’est pas nuketown ou hijacked
— Souf 🇧🇪🇧🇪 (@soufiaane_) July 25, 2026
A lot of angry players are screaming at Nuketown and Hijacked fans to go play NukeJacked, a playlist in Black Ops 2 dedicated just to those two very popular maps. However, players who love Nuketown and Hijacked don’t want to use that playlist because it contains hardcore modes and every other game mode in BLOPS 2 and is 9v9. What most people voting for these maps over and over want is deathmatch.
One part of all this I want to push back on is this idea that this is a modern problem. I was there in 2012. I played many, many hours of Black Ops 2. And my friend group would often vote Nuketown over and over again. We were assholes. But we loved the map. This has always been a problem in any Call of Duty game that adds Nuketown or Hijacked. There is a large percentage of the playerbase that simply wants to experience a few minutes of bullet-filled chaos over and over again. And if they get the option to vote for one of these popular smaller maps, they’ll do it in a heartbeat. Over and over again. That’s as true in 2026 as it was in 2012, and I suspect it will remain true for decades to come.
