A recent update to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 added a new game mode that oddly comes with a warning for anyone that goes to play it. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 released earlier this month to the strongest review scores that the franchise has seen in over a decade. Much of the praise has been directed at the campaign, and while there are many fans of multiplayer, it has also proven to be controversial among some fans.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 multiplayer uses SBMM, aka skill-based matchmaking. SBMM in Call of Duty has been a hot topic for years, with some hardcore fans criticizing its implementation and more casual players appreciating that it ensures they aren’t being absolutely destroyed by people of a higher skill level all the time. Recent Call of Duty games have flirted with removing SBMM, with MW4 testing the waters with a special playlist during the beta. The current live version of Modern Warfare 4 doesn’t have the non-SBMM playlist, but it’s possible it will come back at a later date. After all, new updates are released for Modern Warfare 4 on a regular basis that add new content to the game.
New MW4 Game Mode Comes With a Warning
In fact, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 has been updated multiple times this past week to add fresh game modes to the playlists. Two of the new game modes seem geared specifically for the Halloween season, with Possession and Infected. In Possession, players possess whoever they kill, taking over their loadouts and positioning on the map. It’s a chaotic game mode that is genuinely a blast to play, but it comes with a warning. Before you load up a match of Possession in Modern Warfare 4, you are treated to a warning that the mode contains “non milsim content.”
Call of Duty games have been criticized in recent years for adding cartoon skins and other content that doesn’t match the franchise’s milsim tone. This problem was exacerbated by the rise of Call of Duty: Warzone, with Call of Duty seemingly chasing Fortnite‘s skin business. It’s been said that Modern Warfare 4 will not be making the same mistakes as its predecessors by keeping focused on milsim content, and that is likely why this warning was put into place. Possession is a mode with a supernatural bent, and so those that may turn their nose up at anything non milsim in a Call of Duty game might want to avoid playing it.
Infected doesn’t have the same warning, though it too dips its toes into the supernatural. For the uninitiated, Infected has one player starting the match as the “infected” and the others have to band together to survive for a certain amount of time. Every time the infected player manages to kill someone, more time is added to the clock, and their victim joins the infected side. This goes on until the survivors survive long enough to win or are all zombified. There’s no ghostly special effects like in Possession, so maybe that’s why Infected doesn’t come with the same warning as Possession.
Regardless, there are still plenty of milsim modes for fans to enjoy in Modern Warfare 4. Modern Warfare 4 brings classic Gunfight back, and there is also now a 10v10 Gunfight variant on the ever-changing Killblock map. Standard Team Deathmatch, Search and Destroy, Kill Confirmed, and more are all present and accounted for as well. Here’s hoping MW4 continues adding interesting new game modes as the weeks and months go on.
- Released
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October 23, 2026
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op
